"Are You Still Watching One Piece?" Flickers on Baby Steps protagonist Nate's TV before he gets sucked into it and forced to tackle a brand new world step by step, or whatever exactly happened there. What's for sure is he's not transported to the world of Luffy and the Straw Hats, despite presumably and responsibly watching all 400+ hours (~17 days) of the One Piece anime. He's taken to a world where even a seasoned hiker would struggle in some areas, and for a failson like Nate, even the simplest areas can be quite difficult.
In Baby Steps, players take on the role of Nate as he makes his way through a mountainous region complete with his number one enemy: leveled and sometimes unleveled ground. The core premise of the game is pretty simple, given it's literally a walking simulator, as players must control each foot as they explore the area. But just like there's more to watch of One Piece, there's more (perhaps) to Nate, and definitely more to Baby Steps itself. For The Best War Games Advance, we spoke with developers Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy about the development of Baby Steps and how it comments on current video game trends.
A Failson is someone who is incompetent and unsuccessful by traditional masculine standards of success but otherwise protected from any economic or personal strife due to his family's wealth, influence, and/or connections.
The Best War Games Advance Speakers
- Gabe Cuzzillo
- Maxi Boch
- Bennett Foddy
It's a Walking Simulator
Through the past decade or so, the term "walking simulator" has been less about a genre of games and more of an insult for games that have you walking from place to place a lot. The critique is that, essentially, the game is boring—even when "walking simulator" is not a proper categorization of the game. There's always been something distasteful about using a genre as an insult, discussing a specific limitation as if that is all a game is capable of, as if in walking simulators all players can do is walk. But that's almost never the case. For example, Death Stranding 2 is a Game of the Year contender, despite arguably being a non-perjorative "walking simulator" too. What's clear is that, when used as an insult, it means that something is boring and ignores the potential of the genre.
Baby Steps is a literal walking simulator, however, and one that understands the genre. Instead of following tropes, the team spent time finding the fun in just walking. It completely dismantles the insult because Baby Steps is all about walking, and it makes it fun. If anyone has seen a viral clip of Baby Steps' demo or even watched a trailer, the fun in forcing Nate through an inhospitable world is easily apparent. We asked Foddy for his thoughts on using "walking sim" as an insult, and he called the team's use thereof as "reclaiming a derisive term":
"'Walking sim' is a term which is used by designers who are interested in making games that are mostly about exploring and observing, reclaiming a derisive term that some players have for those games. They aren’t literally simulating walking, like we are! I personally am a huge fan of walking sims and have played a ton of them, from well-known things like Dear Esther or Gone Home to more niche titles like Fugue in Void or Far Future Tourism. What we have in common is that we don’t want to abide by normal genre tropes."
Furthermore, Foddy also described Baby Steps' trope aversions and particular brand of satire as a "subversion of AAA open-world games like Assassin's Creed, which also, after all, involve a huge amount of walking around the landscape." And Foddy isn't wrong. There are numerous open-world games where players will travel across landscapes from point A to point B with little happening in between. It can be a great time for more emergent gameplay events, but the problem there is how rare such occurrences can be. Most of the time, players travel from one place to another and that, in and of itself, can easily have its fun questioned. But Baby Steps ensures that every step is a struggle, and in that struggle players can find ways to overcome. That, in so many ways, is the definition of fun, and the story of its development sounds just as fun.
A Development Cycle Based on Baby Steps
There are a lot of great, fun ways to make a game, and unfortunately, there are a lot of terrible ways. Baby Steps was a lot of fun, so too was Hollow Knight: Silksong's development, with both core teams notably consisting of three people. For every development cycle like this, there are ten more games stuck in development hell, with BioShock 4's development troubles recently making headlines.
In late 2019/early 2020, the team was working on several prototypes trying to find out what game they would make next. As Cuzzillo recalled, Foddy had suggested that the then-Baby Steps prototype was "the one" two months into prototyping it. This was on Feb 29, 2020, and it unfolded from there. Cuzzillo described this prototype as already being really fun, with the team enjoying just walking up a little test slope. "I don't think the vision of the game has changed drastically since those initial prototypes," said Cuzzillo. "It feels more like it's been added to." Foddy would also recall how the earliest prototypes changed over time:
"Gabe’s first gameplay prototype was a couple of boxes for feet, glowing spheres for a butt, and lines for legs, and that was basically everything. The second prototype had an off-the-rack helicopter pilot traversing a very small piece of mountain, maybe 4 meters by 20. But we had Nate on an overly large foggy, rainy mountain by prototype 3."
Nate Falling Into the River
Baby Steps Rails Against Systems Bloat
Foddy also described the first year of Baby Steps' development as "adding" and the last year as mostly "subtracting." It may be surprising, given its premise, to learn that the story had 45 characters in it at one point, according to Foddy. This cycle of building and removing is not uncommon in development, but it was extremely important to what the team wanted Baby Steps to be. When asked about its core design pillars, Boch explained that,
"We've known from the start that systems bloat is not this game and an aesthetic that our team often finds tiresome."
It's pretty easy to imagine the exact AAA open-world game aesthetic that Boch is referring to, one that often has more features and systems than it really needs to be enjoyable. Oftentimes, these features can feel underbaked because they don't quite fit into the overarching open-world design. Foddy explained that when "making an open-world game, there's a huge temptation to add mechanics to help flesh out the space." Nearly every big budget game has features like these, with Foddy citing resource management, gathering and crafting, map unlocks, quest chains, countable collectibles, fast-travel portals, traversal or skill upgrades, and so on and so forth as various examples. Not every game needs these, but a lot of open-world games have them and more in order to fill that space.
Sometimes, however, it's best to let that space speak for itself. As Foddy said, "[W]e believed the core gameplay was deep enough and enjoyable enough that we wouldn’t need to do any of that, and I think a huge amount of the game’s overall design flows from a strict refusal to pile up systems." The viral reaction to Baby Steps' demo is proof enough of that. And in this, we can see an absolute inversion of everything expected of walking simulators and open-world games and, otherwise, executive expectations at the AAA level. A walking simulator can be fun; Baby Steps is proof of that. The removal of bloat from its large open world shows how bad such bloat can be. And there are so many tropes and common game designs that Baby Steps just refuses that it itself is, perhaps, proof that the industry needs to go back to taking baby steps.
Nate Falling Down Another River
Baby Steps Rails Against A Lot of AAA Demands
Two other examples are the visuals and dialogue, as executive-level demands often require dialogue to be incredibly basic for new players (even in sequels) and visuals to be pushed hard in whatever style the game is. To some degree, this is understandable. Visuals are often the first impression and can be a deciding factor when it comes to mass market competition; new players getting lost in the story because they don't understand or have the proper context can be harmful to the experience, chasing them away from the game. At the same time, these demands often create other problems, use up extra resources, and—arguably—have a limited impact on the fun factor. And Baby Steps does none of this.
Discussing the visual design of Baby Steps, Foddy said,
"The visual design had a few different inspirations, but I had a particular kind of emotion in mind that I wanted at least for the start of the game, and in late 2019, right about the time we were playing Gabe’s first prototype for Baby Steps, I came across an artwork by Tyler Rhodes that was part of the exploration he was doing on Artbreeder at the time that really captured the feeling. He had a series of these images of mysterious candles rising from misty landscapes, evoking sound-stage sets for old movies with bad bluescreen effects, or maybe Max Ernst’s series of surrealist sponge paintings. That would give our world the sense of Nate being a ‘fish out of water’ that I wanted to accompany the gameplay."
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of a developer pitching a visual design based on "old movies with bad bluescreen effects" or "surrealist sponge paintings" to a AAA exec. But these accurately describe the world of Baby Steps and add qualities to it that are often lost in more highly detailed, high-fidelity, realistic graphics. The surrealist influences help set a tone for the game, especially with the confusion of Nate, while they also add to the open feeling of the world. It evokes a serene sense of hiking, which fits perfectly, while also presenting a fun contrast with Nate who can barely walk. There is a grounded sense to its world, thanks to its use of a painterly quality and natural palette. In other words, there's more to see and feel in the world of Baby Steps than most open-world games, with these design senses informed by what's best for the game rather than what the mass market demands.
Similarly, instead of constant exposition dumping, most dialogue in the game is improv. It's super awkward, not "well-written" at all, and super confusing. There are conversations about going to the bathroom and letting someone else watch, as but one example. Secondly, it's clear that Nate has barely ever spoken to anyone else at any point in his life. Maybe he's watched every episode of One Piece more than once. But that adds so much character—the dialogue isn't crafted, tuned, and made so nothing gets lost in translation. It's made to bring every awkward component of Baby Steps' story to life, and it does so for the betterment of everything in the game. At the same time, it creates a strong sense of cohesion because Nate and his interactions are just as awkward as his ability to walk. He's a failure, just like many AAA execs would expect of a game like Baby Steps.
By walking where others just run by, Baby Steps is the tortoise to the blockbuster's hare.
Baby Steps and Failing Upward
There's certainly something to say here about failing upward in the business world and being so tied to specific kinds of codespeak, linguistic nothings, and empty formulas that truly innovative work goes unseen or unconsidered. Innovation in game development has meant less and less over the years, not because of the capabilities of game developers or the limitations of video games, but because innovation no longer means one-of-a-kind, uniquely insightful work; it means the "best" cookie in a cookie sheet. And Nate is no doubt the burnt cookie that no one would eat first, but the crisp and the crunch are certainly there, perhaps even making it the most unique cookie on the sheet. Speaking about Nate and the cohesion of Baby Steps, Foddy said,
"If the gameplay in Baby Steps is resisting the traditional masculine empowerment fantasy in action games, we wanted a character who could embody that idea, so we explored what kinds of things that could mean. The trope of the ‘failson’ is a person who is expected to show certain types of masculine-coded success and is given a lot of material support from his parents in achieving it, but for whatever reason, is not able to live up to that expectation. That seemed like the perfect fit for our gameplay, where someone is living in the world of default action heroes but struggling to do the basics within that world."
Foddy and Cuzzillo spoke a lot about finding Nate's personality and the best way to shape the story, and ultimately, they landed on dialogue that is sourced from improv. Getting there took a lot of iteration and time, but it was the best way to continue unifying its world. Cuzzillo described Nate's delivery as sometimes leaning into extreme awkwardness, but also a very loose understanding of language. "Like, he doesn't really know how to use words sometimes or only has a vague grasp of them," said Cuzzillo, speaking about Nate. As to what made the final cut, Foddy added,
"There’s this nice Patricia Highsmith quote that goes: 'If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publishers and the readers can and will come later.' The stuff that made the cut from our improv sessions was the stuff that made at least one person laugh, which is why Gabe kept in so many of the cases where I misspoke or flubbed a line."
Nate, in so many ways, failed upward. That is part of what makes a failson such a strong trope; Nate can barely walk, can barely use language, and can barely navigate the world around him (and not without falling several, several times). Yet, every part of his world was safe to this point. It'll be interesting to see how Nate's story evolves throughout Baby Steps, and if any more of this failing upward happens OR if there is some actual growth here. From what I've seen, I don't have much hope for Nate, but that's the beauty of the narrative in this world too: if Nate can do this, can't anyone? And for such simplistic gameplay, there is so much more under its hood, just like there may or may not be more to Nate.
Cuzzillo on Balancing The Walking System
"It took many years of tuning. The walking system has evolved a lot over the five years of development, and there have been hundreds of minor breakthroughs in making it feel good, consistent, and controllable. There are two big underlying themes to balancing and tuning that have been continually reemerging as we’ve worked on it. The first is what’s the player’s job, and what’s Nate’s job? For instance, how much should he be leaning his torso to try to stay balanced, or how much should he rotate his foot to make getting your foot onto something easier? The second is how much supernatural balancing force there should be in the system. In general, I don’t like it in physics games when there are “magic forces” making the character move in unjustified ways. A lot of physics games have your controls basically throwing the character around the world with magic forces while the animation tries to catch up. That said, if we had no forces in the game that weren’t justified physically, it would be basically impossible to keep Nate up. Finding the right balance of these two things has been one of the biggest challenges of the development for me, but I’m pretty happy with where it’s ended up."
Nate Falling Off a Cliff
Foddy on Baby Steps' Difficulty
"There are no adjustable difficulty levels in Baby Steps. 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."
Foddy on Baby Steps' Core Level Design Ethos
"It was a pillar for us that if the player falls off a cliff and loses progress, they should end up somewhere that gives them an option of not repeating the same climb they just fell down from. That sense of mercy basically forms the backbone of all the geometry in the game."
Boch on Sound Design
"I started beatmaking in the shower when I was recovering from Ape Out development and got really into what that sounded like. I had already incorporated water sounds into Ape Out’s music, and as the Baby Steps gameplay came together, it became clear that music arising from natural elements would be a great fit for a game about a stoner failson's psychedelic hike."
Nate Walking Across a Beam (Success!)
Boch and Cuzzillo on Post-Release Support
Boch
"Expect ongoing audio design improvements for Baby Steps for months after the game's release. We've got amazing things in store, and it's going to keep sounding better and better."
Cuzzillo
"The only thing I’m thinking about is a developer commentary track. It wouldn’t be the traditional approach though, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it."
Foddy on Streaming Baby Steps
"We tried to make it fun to watch as well as to play! For streamers, that generally means leaning into the physical comedy aspect and giving them enough latitude for creative, exploratory play. There’s also plenty of optional challenge in there for folks who want it."
I recommend checking out CaseOh's playthrough of the demo.
Even Nate Knows Some Rules Are Made to Be Broken
It is because Baby Steps is absurd and breaks so many executive rules that it stands out, and that's not some secret for success. It's there, plain to see, for anyone who is not caught up in a world of their own personal One Piece. Baby Steps did not embrace bloat to fill its world with half-baked features; it sought to make the core gameplay loop as fun as it could be with a tight focus on one defining feature. Nate is not an action hero; he can barely walk. It's taken a genre often used as an insult and turned that into its strength. Baby Steps didn't seek to make its world appealing to the mass market; it sought to make its world truly innovative in a world of dime-a-dozen AAA open-world games. It didn't seek to be on the cutting edge of graphics; it sought to capture a very specific world through a very specific lens. And every line spoken in Baby Steps, whether it's about Nate's bladder or comes across super awkwardly, is in service of the game. And in doing all of this, it brought together a unique, cohesive world that has plenty of eyes on it, from content creators for their viral clips to gamers who just want something fun and even some former execs.
Former Sony Interactive Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida had previously cited Baby Steps as his most anticipated indie game of 2025, with it being notable that Yoshida was able to point to Blue Prince and Expedition 33 as special games ahead of their stellar critical receptions. But, as Foddy told us, he's not the only name associated with Sony who has been invested in the project:
"[T]he Sony folks have been incredibly supportive of the title throughout its development. It’s cool that one of the big platforms has been so open to a game that pokes fun at the biggest games on consoles, the open-world blockbusters."
In the end, Baby Steps is everything these open-world blockbusters are not, ignoring years of cookie-cutter AAA executive direction. It does not promise "the biggest open-world yet," a laundry list of endless features, or even an ounce of "immersive realism." Baby Steps offers a tighter focus on a game design that brings everything together in a deliberately awkward hug. By walking where others just run by, Baby Steps is the tortoise to the blockbuster's hare.
- Released
- September 23, 2025
- Developer(s)
- Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy
- Publisher(s)
- Devolver Digital
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Unknown
