Baby Steps will soon be bringing its brand of bizarre, comedic, and complex physics to gamers everywhere. In the lead-up to this release, the team behind Baby Steps has lifted the curtain on what the title looked like during its inception, and the difference is stark.
Baby Steps' release date places it right on the horizon, and it's pitched perfectly for an online audience. At its core, Baby Steps looks to be part of the rage-game tradition that captivated streamers, speedrunners, and gaming audiences with movement that demands players come to grips with a set of puzzling physics. The Best War Games sat down with Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy—the developer trio behind Baby Steps—to discuss the game and its quirky prototype.
Baby Steps' Prototype Shows Some Funny Design History
Being another project from the developers of Getting Over It, it's no wonder that Baby Steps was built from the foundation of its core physics. Foddy claimed that the fun was apparent in Cuzzillo's 2019 prototype; although this prototype lacked the "ragdoll physics" that'll be evident in the final game, Cuzzillo mentioned that this original build had the team "really enjoying just walking up the little test slope." Traversing a mountainous environment with unconventional walking physics has been the beating heart of Baby Steps from minute one.
When it comes to what these early builds look like, there's quite a stark contrast when compared to the gameplay of Baby Steps' trailer and the realistic environments present. In discussing this topic, Foddy gave an overview of what the early prototypes looked like.
"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."
No title would have visuals ready in the prototype stage, least of all games like Baby Steps that evidently place a premium on physics above everything else, but it's nonetheless amusing to picture what the game looked like when taking its first steps. At the very least, it shows that cheeks have always been an important aspect of Nate's character. While it would be easy to discuss the goofy image of Nate being reduced to an abstract stick figure, these early iterations seem to have been a big success. As stated prior, the team found the fun with Baby Steps fast, and Foddy spoke on how it was found in these original builds.
"I think the fun was there in the first prototype Gabe made in 2019, even though it didn’t have any of the ragdoll physics, and it was just sticks and boxes. I think that’s probably pretty unusual for a 3D game, since so much usually has to be functioning as intended before it starts to click."
Foddy also discussed how the simplicity of Baby Steps' early builds translated into what will be the final product, calling the latter part of the game's development "mostly ‘subtracting.’" He discussed the importance of focusing on core elements, such as the game's unique physics, rather than other open-world trappings.
"When you’re making an open-world game, there’s a huge temptation to add mechanics to help flesh out the space. You see that in nearly every big-budget game—gathering and crafting, resource management, map unlocks, quest chains, countable collectables, fast-travel portals, traversal or skill upgrades, and on and on. We had a very clear sense that we 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."
- 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
