$19.99Baby Steps Every step is yours to place
Guide Nate up a misty mountain one wobbly, self-placed step at a time, falling often and laughing more.
Is Baby Steps worth it?
Baby Steps is worth it if…
- you want a game that looks like a joke and turns out to have a real story underneath
- you would rather earn a view than check a quest log
- you can laugh at yourself falling over the same rock four times
- you like games where getting better is the reward
- awkward, cringe humour makes you laugh instead of cringe
Screenshots
Every step is yours
Each controller trigger moves one of Nate's legs. That is the whole game: pick a footfall, commit, and try not to tip over on a rock the size of a loaf of bread. The first thing you do is fall, and it only gets more dignified from there.
It sounds punishing, and it can be, but the mountain is fairer than it looks. Most climbs offer two or three routes, plateaus act as soft checkpoints, and the terrain quietly teaches you a move before a real test demands it. Sand ramps with a bend in them, for example, are exactly the practice you need for the sandy slopes later.
Once a rhythm clicks, something shifts. Steps that took an hour at the start become routine, and you start taking routes you would have refused a week ago. Getting better at walking turns out to be a real skill, and it feels great.
A mountain with nothing to collect
There are no quests, no collectibles and no rewards here, and that is the point. Hats exist but cannot be collected in any meaningful way. The prize for a difficult climb is usually a conversation, a cutscene or a view, and the game is confident that this is enough.
So you wander a mist-shrouded world at your own pace, or slower. You chase a tortoise for half an hour because it looked like it could be stood on.
The hardest challenges are strictly optional and pay out nothing but the satisfaction of having done them. If you want to push yourself, the mountain has plenty of ways. If you just want to walk and see what turns up, it lets you do that too.
How hard is it really?
How hard is Baby Steps, really?
Harder than walking, easier than its reputation. The controls are deliberately awkward and falls can cost real progress, so frustration is part of the deal. But unlike similar games, it rarely tricks you: you usually know what is at stake with each step, easier routes almost always exist, and failure often drops you somewhere new or funny. The main climb is very doable in a normal playthrough, and the brutal stuff, like the Manbreaker cliff, is optional side content you can skip entirely. If you do not mind being gently bullied now and then, it is fine.
What is the story about?
Nate, an unemployed man with nothing going for him, gets dropped into a strange mountain world where his one discovered power is walking. The comedy comes first: improvised-sounding dialogue, absurd characters, a fully dynamic onesie soilage system. But the story underneath deals with failure, shame and self-loathing with more care than you would expect, and it lands hard by the end. Some players tear up at scenes they were laughing at an hour earlier. If awkward humour genuinely puts you off, that is the one honest warning worth heeding.
