How Baby Steps Approaches Difficulty

Imparting the right level of difficulty in any game can be a fine line to walk, but Baby Steps is looking to take the idea of a unique challenge and run with it. Developed by Maxi Boch, Gabe Cuzzillo, and Bennett Foddy, Baby Steps is published by Devolver Digital. Baby Steps is a "walking simulator," though in a much more literal design sense than the term is usually employed. Players will take on the role of 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."

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Baby Steps is aiming to bring fans something new, both in its mechanics centered around navigating Nate through rocky terrain and his surreal journey of self-realization. With former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida expressing excitement for Baby Steps, the title seems poised to deliver something truly special.

The Best War Games spoke with Cuzzillo, Boch, and Foddy ahead of Baby Steps' upcoming launch. They detailed how the game's difficulty and related elements were built and fine-tuned along the way to provide natural paths for players to learn and adjust to its intent and gameplay for an enjoyable but still challenging experience.

Nate Falling Off a Cliff

Baby Steps Devs Detail Designing its Difficulty

Previously, Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy in 2017 was a similar title with the deceptively simple goal of requiring players to overcome increasingly complicated levels, but its intrinsic difficulty often resulted in many amusing playthroughs. It gained a lot of positive traction, especially within the streamer community, as an entertaining rage game. Baby Steps will take some of the appeal of these aspects, expanding and incorporating them into its own vision. It may be rage-inducing for some, but that's not necessarily the goal.

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When asked about whether it would offer variable difficulty, Foddy replied, "There are no adjustable difficulty levels in Baby Step s. Our approach is a little different. We make the required stuff pretty easy (by our standards, anyway), but then the more optional or hidden stuff can be harder, way up to stuff that’s extremely spicy. A lot of the beauty in the system is revealed in the hardest parts of it." And though Baby Steps may present what might seem a steeper learning curve to start with, it will still balance this with a more forgiving and manageable main path, as Boch said:

"For us, difficulty isn't about trying to harm the player; it's about setting up situations where the player can feel an organic sense of accomplishment free of systemic inflation, which has become the standard progression path for this sort of action game."

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Baby Steps' Challenge is About the Journey, Not Necessarily the Destination

Along with the golden path and Nate's personal development, Baby Steps will contain some offbeat comedic stylings, for example, including a "dynamic onesie soilage system." Foddy further explained that it will offer optional routes for fans who diligently explore and decide to take Nate through trickier terrain. Players who undertake these more difficult sections can also expect to come across various funny or odd items and strange scenes that inject more surreal humor into the story and setting. As he stated:

"Some of the optional routes have a bit of comedy at the end of them. Some of them have a view, just like optional routes in real life. Some of them are only there for the pleasure of climbing them. I guess we have a belief that there are enough sickos out there that there will be interest in doing the hardest stuff, some of which was not even intentionally designed."