You will not, and did not, play another game like Baby Steps this year. Nate, a deadbeat 35-year-old man, is torn from his basement by the hand of fate and stranded on a purgatorial mountain where he must climb and climb and climb – and, occasionally, encounter extraordinarily well-endowed donkey men. Creators Bennett Foddy, Gabe Cuzzillo, and Maxi Boch challenge you to ascend. One painstaking step at a time, fingers and thumbs working in concert to puppet a man who is two parts ass and three parts anxiety, piloting controls at once surgically accurate and infuriatingly delicate, you climb. What awaits you at the top? A nice hat? Self-actualization? Two hats?
Baby Steps is an act of contemplation cleverly disguised as an exercise in patience. Consequently, it might be interpreted as a rage game – 2017's viral hit Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy has perhaps contributed to this reputation – not as something to be played but rather to be reacted to in a stream or short-form video.
