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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View Essential Hardware PC Gaming Show Dune: Awakening Recommended reading Open world failson walking simulator Baby Steps is clumsily waddling our way in a dirty onesie—play the Steam demo now Baby Steps, Bennett Foddy's slapstick walking simulator about a slob climbing a mountain, stumbles onto Steam in September White Knuckle is a grimy, Buckshot Roulette-looking game about fast-climbing your way out of industrial hell, and I can't put its demo down Out of Words features one of the cutest videogame characters I've ever seen, but there's a tinge of Kafkaesque darkness to it, too Skin Deep review To a T review: Not just wholesome, but wonderfully weird Death Stranding 2 cements Hideo Kojima's legacy as a PC game designer still living in the console world Yes, the protagonist of Baby Steps does have a juicy butt: 'Every animator winds up a little bit arse-focused,' says Bennett Foddy Jody Macgregor 27 June 2025 It's an open world mountain-climbing game, with curves. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Devolver) Nate lifts his left foot when I squeeze the left trigger, and his right foot when I squeeze the right trigger. He swings the lifted foot forward when I push the left stick forward, but if both feet are on the ground when I push the stick he leans forward instead, usually falling over immediately. And probably sliding downhill in his gray onesie, butt in the air. As a third-person game, Nate's rump is in view for a lot of your time playing Baby Steps. Dudes who need to defend their enjoyment of Tomb Raider sometimes say, "If I'm going to be looking at a butt for hours I'd rather it was a nice one." Nate is not Lara Croft—he's a basement-dweller in his 30s mysteriously teleported to the wilderness in the middle of a One Piece marathon, which is probably the only kind of marathon he's ever participated in. But he's been given a lovingly rendered posterior nonetheless. "I have a theory," says Baby Steps co-developer Bennett Foddy, of QWOP and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy fame. "I've been doing art on this project for coming up on six years now, and you look at other people's work, both in film animation and in videogames, and what you start to notice is that every animator winds up a little bit arse-focused. Even going back to the old Disney and Bugs Bunny shows." Related Articles Open world failson walking simulator Baby Steps is clumsily waddling our way in a dirty onesie—play the Steam demo now Baby Steps, Bennett Foddy's slapstick walking simulator about a slob climbing a mountain, stumbles onto Steam in September White Knuckle is a grimy, Buckshot Roulette-looking game about fast-climbing your way out of industrial hell, and I can't put its demo down "As if they didn't start that way," says co-developer Maxi Boch, of Dance Central and Lego Rock Band fame. "Maybe it's what draws people to the field," Foddy concedes. "But there's definitely a butt-centric nature of animation going back right to the beginning. I think it's just part of that proud tradition." ...we can have a cutscene done in about a day, and it means that they can be a little bit stupiderGabe Cuzzillo It's also hilarious. Baby Steps has made me laugh even as I tumble off a narrow plank and slide downhill, thanks to Nate's swearing and goofy wiggly pratfalling. "We put a lot of work into making him ragdoll in a particular way," Foddy says. "He kind of rolls like a sausage now, instead of just being like the typical ghostly ragdoll in a videogame. You can really get into a situation where it seems like he's coming to rest as he slides down the hill, and then he'll sausage roll over and continue to fall. Yeah, we put a lot of work into making those things funny one way or another." (Image credit: Devolver Digital) The other things that made me laugh while playing the Baby Steps demo are the cutscenes. To my surprise, they're voice-acted and motion-captured above and beyond the standard you might expect from an indie game about slapstick physics. Scenes between Nate and the strange folk he meets on his trek flow like a sitcom where actors improvise around a script, like What We Do in the Shadows if instead of being about vampires who are kind of losers it was just about losers. But, as it happens, there's no script at all. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. "Fully fully improvised," is how co-developer Gabe Cuzzillo, of Ape Out and Foiled fame, describes it. "Going into it, we have an idea of what the scene is, and then we just record 10 sometimes very different takes of it, then listen back and find one that we think is funny, then animate around that. We have a mocap suit, and we do facial animations using ARKit on the phone. The whole thing is meant to be fast and flowy; let it be a little bit more spontaneous. We have workflow now where we can have a cutscene done in about a day, and it means that they can be a little bit stupider and more off the cuff, because low investment." All the characters are voiced by the three co-creators, with Cuzzillo as Nate and Foddy as most of the people he meets along the way. It's got the vibe of those old point-and-clicks like Discworld, where Tony Robinson (Baldric from BlackAdder) seemed to voice half the cast. "There's a lot of Bennetts," Foddy says. "Gabe and Maxi both have one character, and I have, I don't know, eight? They all sound the same. Don't get your hopes up." Baby Steps | PS5 & PC on September 8 | Release Date Trailer 🚽 - YouTube Foddy's laconic Australian accent makes his interplay with the anxious, lost Nate even funnier, especially when he casually throws in antiquated Aussie slang like hooroo to baffle him. "I didn't realize that was slang forever," says Cuzzillo. "I thought you had just made up a sound." As well as being funny, the cutscenes work as rewards for all the effort you put in. Whether you slog your way up the mountain or wander off-piste because you saw something interesting off to the side, the friction of the laborious walking controls makes sitting back to watch a comedy sketch feel like something you earned rather than an interruption. Despite the corner-cutting, they have slowed down Baby Steps' development. "It doesn't make a ton of sense production-wise," Foddy admits, "which is why indie games don't tend to have cutscenes. Indie games tend to have some text that appears and nobody's mouth moves, which was the original plan." (Image credit: Devolver) Committing to a third-person camera and relatively realistic graphics—this is the most browncore game I've played since the early 2000s—encouraged them to make Baby Steps more and more like the kind of Ubisoft-adjacent open world games it was parodying. "Working in that zone, you get kind of fidelity-pilled," Foddy says. "You get gradually sucked into, or addicted to, making things look more high fidelity." We can invest deeply in a soiling system for the onesie, but we can't rattle off every single standard open world featureMaxi Boch "When I first became friends with Bennett I was working at Harmonix," Boch says, "leading pretty large teams working on games. And I was like, 'Bennett, someday I want to produce a triple-A game that you design.'" Baby Steps is the closest they'll get to that. It's an indie Death Stranding where you are both the man and the baby, and it ruthlessly takes the piss out of open world conventions like grappling point highlights and overstuffed maps. "Just the fact that we're making you do the walking, just the fact that the character is so unprepared, basically everything about it is making choices that are opposite to those big-budget games," Foddy says. "Except in the aesthetics, except where we try to at least suggest the look and feel of, like, an Assassin's Creed game or a Zelda game or something like that. To me, that's a pretty funny joke." (Image credit: Devolver) "We can only afford maybe 1/10 of the kinds of polish that they might have," Boch adds. "Your standard game, third-person, is going to have destructible aspects of the terrain, etc, etc, etc. We can invest deeply in a soiling system for the onesie, but we can't rattle off every single standard open world feature, and moreover we don't want to. The intent of the game is to make a send-up, or heighten some of the aspects of these types of triple-A games that we find to be tedious or maybe tired." See that mountain? You can climb it. But you'll probably trip and then slide down it halfway, with your butt in the air like a proud baboon. Baby Steps is due out on September 8. You can play its demo on Steam. Devolver Digital Jody Macgregor Social Links Navigation Weekend/AU Editor Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Open world failson walking simulator Baby Steps is clumsily waddling our way in a dirty onesie—play the Steam demo now Baby Steps, Bennett Foddy's slapstick walking simulator about a slob climbing a mountain, stumbles onto Steam in September White Knuckle is a grimy, Buckshot Roulette-looking game about fast-climbing your way out of industrial hell, and I can't put its demo down Out of Words features one of the cutest videogame characters I've ever seen, but there's a tinge of Kafkaesque darkness to it, too Skin Deep review To a T review: Not just wholesome, but wonderfully weird Latest in Games The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature expansion adds emotionally draining fairies and a whole lotta green Rainbow Six Siege X director says free currency gain has been 'buffed' after complaints: 'The goal wasn't to make it a harder grind for players' IO Interactive CEO estimates that Hitman 3 only cost a fifth of Hitman 2016's budget because the studio was brave enough to stop making new bathrooms for every game: 'I swore never to do more new toilets' It's not just you—Steam is getting absolutely crushed under the Summer Sale Dying Light 2's new Balatro costume may be the most cursed crossover I've ever seen The best deals in the 2025 Steam Summer Sale Latest in Features The best deals in the 2025 Steam Summer Sale Erenshor is a simulated MMO built for singleplayer by a single person This month 25 years ago in PC gaming, our biggest concerns were pro gaming, moral panics about violent games… and we still thought Halo was a PC exclusive These are the 5 most ridiculous GPUs of all time (or rather 4 GPUs and one genuine leaf blower) Thief VR producer says 'VR is a natural fit for an immersive sim' Exclusive: New god game Demiurgos puts you in control of a famous deity trying to outplay other gods on a cosmic tabletop version of earth HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested Razer Iskur V2 X review Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS review AverMedia Live Gamer Ultra S GC553Pro review Peak review: The best kind of co-op game—tricky, rewarding, and absolutely hilarious. 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