After tormenting gamers with the addictively brutal challenge of Getting Over It, Bennett Foddy is taking his next steps – Baby Steps, to be precise. We caught up with the creative trio behind the new project to peel back the layers and find the deeper meaning in it all.
Bennett Foddy is an iconic, arguably infamous name in the industry. The Aussie academic has spent years toiling away on inventive yet devious interactive experiences. Back in 2008, we had QWOP, and in 2017 we got perhaps his most notorious release thus far, Getting Over It.
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Countless hours of engagement later, not just by the millions playing, but by the tens of millions more watching online, Getting Over It became a sensation in internet culture. While there have been a few other titles in between then and now, Foddy’s most ambitious project is now on the cusp of riling up players once more.
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Baby Steps is finally stumbling into our lives on September 23, and with it comes the potential for dozens of hours of Foddy-flavored frustration.
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What is Baby Steps?
On the surface, Baby Steps is a game all about, well, taking baby steps. Sucked through the TV on an innocuous night, our protagonist, Nate, is left stranded in a mysterious world. Given he’s spent the bulk of his precious time on Earth gorging on Cheetos and binging every show known to man, he’s not exactly well-equipped for the circumstance.
Barely able to control his limbs, because of course, it’s up to us to help poor old Nate navigate the confusing lands and figure out what’s really going on.
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That’s right, we control his limbs, making each and every step a challenge in its own right. Simply walking in a straight line may prove more difficult here for Nate than for an actual baby. He’s let it get that bad.
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Devolver DigitalNate isn’t quite the Nathan Drake build, to put it nicely.
That’s really the full scope of things here. You won’t find a map pointing Nate in any which direction, and there certainly won’t be any waypoints or objective markers to push you forward. There’s a vast open world chock-full of characters to meet, obstacles to climb, and hats to collect.
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As Foddy himself described to us, he begins by “sayings it’s a hiking game. But where normally, you walk in a video game by just pressing a button to go forward, in this case, the gameplay is that you are responsible for doing the actual hiking part yourself.”
What the developers say about it
Designing a game with streamers in mind
With Getting Over It, Bennett Foddy had some notion it might click in the ‘gaming entertainment’ realm, but even he couldn’t imagine just how much of a cultural impact the game had.
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This time around, he’s been able to build a game from the ground up with the notion of streamers and content creators in mind. What might this look like on Twitch? How will it captivate audiences on YouTube?
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While not necessarily a fundamental principle in the game’s design, “We do think about it,” Foddy told us. “It’s certainly something in our minds. ‘How will this particular beat work for spectators?’ You have to think about that stuff now.”
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Bennett FoddyWe’re all familiar with this visual.
“Even just the experience of being able to relay a story that happened to you in a game, those moments are things viewers latch onto in streams,” co-developer Maxi Boch chimed in. “The possibility of telling your own story in the game is something we’re always pushing for.”
Improv comedy in a game
While the gameplay itself inherently leads to all sorts of chaoticically hilarious moments, the dev team actively strived to make Baby Steps a laugh-out-loud game by improvising much of its dialogue.
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Not only is this a considerable leap forward in terms of visual fidelity and scope with its open world design, but it’s the first game from Foddy with a real cast of characters. He told us it was necessary as to mock the average AAA release, and that’s also why full scripts were never written.
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Devolver DigitalBeautiful cinematography here. Why is that not a category at The Game Awards yet?
“We’re doing all the voices ourselves, and it is all improvised,” Gabe Cuzzillo said. “We have loose ideas for what the scenes are, then we’ll do 10 takes and edit something together from that. It’s all very quick.
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“We can have a whole cutscene done in a day, that’s kind of the way we did it.”
How big is the game?
Speaking of the scope, Baby Steps is no small step in that regard. In fact, veering off the main path could take you down a 10-hour detour, if you allow it.
So just how big is the game if you were to see and do it all? “Too big,” according to Cuzzillo. “You shouldn’t do that. Maybe 100 hours.”
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“Yeah, if you were really to see everything, you’d be doing some very hard stuff,” Foddy added. “But we’re trying to let people have enough options to dial in the intensity for themselves. You can have a pretty chill one or explore every inch. It would be pretty spicy to see everything.”
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Are the devs any good at their own game?
Frustrating players is one thing, but how exactly is a game like this balanced in the first place? When you need a certain degree of challenge, the devs themselves must be pretty skilled, right? Well, amusingly so, that’s not always the case.
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“We have to prove that it’s possible… with the help of cheats and stuff,” Foddy said with a laugh.
“It’s Getting Over It design rules,” Boch chimed in. “You can always cheat back to where you were, and then if you can get to the next place from there, it’s doable.”
“Even just playing the demo, there’s already players who are 10 times better than us,” Foddy said.
Devolver DigitalI’m here to see the Baby Steps speedruns a few weeks after launch.
Biggest tips
So, after years of working on the game, what would those responsible recommend for players getting a little too agitated? Their advice is simple.
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“I think you should cherish whatever you happen to see,” Cuzzillo said. Don’t try too hard on any one thing.”
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“Take some breaks,” Boch suggested. “Gameplay skills cement really well with some sleep.”
“Brush your teeth every day,” Bennett stressed. And floss!”