Baby Steps is a 3D clumsy sim from the makers of Getting Over It and Ape Out
QWOP Stranding
For no particular reason, I decided to give Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy another go yesterday. I was then raving about how good it is to anyone who would listen in the RPS treehouse just a few hours ago.
I had no idea that its creator Bennett Foddy was going to reveal a new game tonight. That game is called Baby Steps, it's being made with the makers of Ape Out, and it looks like a mixture of QWOP and Getting Over It set in a beautiful 3D world. There's an excellent trailer below.
"Play as Nate, an unemployed failson with nothing going for him, until one day he discovers a power he never knew he had… putting one foot in front of the other," says the description on its Steam page.
Baby Steps has "fully-simulated physics based walking", in which you must place each footstep yourself. Place those footsteps unsteadily, of course, and you'll tumble face-first into the dirt. Or, if you happen to be near a cliff on the mountain you're trying to climb, you'll fall straight over the edge and lose who-knows how much hard won progress.
Ape Out was a wonderful, violent topdown escape 'em up with a dynamic jazz soundtrack that played along to your punches, throws, and momentum. Baby Steps will apparently have a dynamic soundtrack of its own, paired with your presumably much less violent, much more clumsy forward progress.
If you haven't played Getting Over It, or if you only played it a little, I think it's easy to dismiss it as a game for masochists and show-off streamers. I don't think that's the case. It's a generous rather than a cruel game; one that teases, cajoles, and supports more than it punishes. Baby Steps' trailer suggests it, too, has a sense of humour, and I hope it also has that sense of a designer's hand leading you through it, however difficult the climb may be.
Baby Steps is aiming for release in 2024
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