Game developers Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch and Bennett Foddy have been friends for over a decade, having met through NYU’s Game Centre, and they already have one successful indie game under their belt. Ape Out had you smashing through halls full of goons as a rampaging gorilla to the tune of a procedural jazz soundtrack. Their next game, Baby Steps, is equally unconventional. A walking simulator in a very literal sense, you’ll awkwardly steer Nate, a caked-up, onesie-wearing basement dweller, to the top of a misty mountain. And often, you’ll fall flat on your face.
“On a controller, players use the triggers to lift and plant each foot while using the left stick to move the lifted foot around in the air, manually taking each of Nate’s steps,” Cuzzillo says. Using this literalist control scheme, reminiscent of Foddy’s earlier games like QWOP and Getting Over It, the team want players to get into a rhythm as they hike, taking in the eclectic sights and letting their minds wander. “That hypnotic space you can get into as you walk is a big part of the appeal of hiking to me,” Cuzzillo said. “We’re trying to capture a bit of that here.”
Baby Steps attempts to blend profound surrealism with levity. A “fully dynamic onesie soilage system” serves as a visual history of the player’s mistakes as they trek through the challenging environment, accumulating mud and dirt. It also stars one of the more unlikely protagonists in video game history. “Nate is in a bit of a rut at the beginning of the story: he’s feeling pressured by his parents to get out of the house and get a job, he’s anxious, and he can no longer bring himself to face the world,” says Cuzzillo. “He wants nothing more than to return to the safety and comfort of his parent’s house and for nobody to notice that he’s lost, clumsy, incompetent, high, and completely unprepared.”
In this Isekai narrative, Nate is whisked away to a mysterious, somewhat lonely land with no immediate understanding of where to go. This is where the soundscape of Baby Steps comes in. “It’s a kind of nascent musique concrète, emerging from repetitive rhythmic triggering of environmental sounds, tied to players’ walking,” Cuzzillo explains. “The individual sonic elements that make up the soundscape are placed in the game world, and each sound emanates from its specific location, such that it can pique players’ curiosity, giving them a hint that there might be something unique or interesting to find if they follow an intriguing sound to its source.”
As the equally hilarious and baffling trailer shows, Baby Steps features a smattering of curious characters. After toppling a rockpile with a wandering foot, Nate is rebuked by a mysterious Australian hiding in the bushes nearby. The startling, farcical conversation comes courtesy of the improvised voicework of the developers themselves, who kept re-recording scenes until they found the dialogue compelling enough to keep.
This world is weird, and Cuzzillo is reluctant to tell us too much about it. “By the time players have finished the game, they’ll probably have some theories about what’s up,” he says. “Our goal is to give players something to chew on as they make their way up. Call it narrative trail mix.”