Like many nice online game concepts, Baby Steps started with three buddies and one butt. A really massive one at that, the sort that set the web ablaze with thirsty cries of “thicc” when Bennett Foddy, Gabe Cuzzilo, and Maxi Boch introduced their new undertaking in June. That’s OK; it’s fairly acceptable within the scheme of issues. According to Foddy, the butt was the very very first thing made: like “two Kleenex boxes,” like “two glowing orbs,” there it was. “In a way I think we’ve been following the butt,” Foddy says.

“Whenever you’re playing an over-the-shoulder action game, you’re kind of looking at that part, right?” Foddy provides. “So we’re kind of following the triple-A norms.”

First proposed as a sport about snowboarding uphill, Baby Steps morphed into one about mountain climbing as an out-of-shape man (a literal strolling simulator, because it advertises itself) named Nate. At age 35, Nate is a bearded, bespectacled “failson,” a failure-to-launch archetype who wears a onesie and doesn’t get off the sofa. Bad information for Nate: One day he’s mysteriously zapped right into a weird world the place the one method out is to actually put one foot in entrance of the opposite; gamers be taught to regulate every of his jammie’d legs to propel him ahead in a goofy, slapstick kind of movement.

Foddy and Cuzzilo describe Baby Steps as a meditative expertise. It’s not what gamers may anticipate from the trio who created the jazzy, artfully blood-splattered beat-’em-up Ape Out, and even Foddy, developer of the mega-hard, browser-based, track-and-field sport QWOP and the climbing title Getting Over It. Baby Steps is extra about philosophical challenges—like getting a deal with in your life.

Slated to hit PlayStation 5 and PC in 2024, Baby Steps is “clearly a descendant of QWOP in a certain kind of way,” Foddy says. But whereas QWOP remodeled working 100 meters right into a hilarious Sisphyean activity—one the place with the ability to management your athlete’s legs is the entire level of the sport—his newest title is a a lot completely different expertise. There are not any upgrades, ability development, none of that. There is simply … strolling. “I think we’re interested in emotional growth, more so than traditional video game type of growth,” says Foddy. It’s about attempting to recreate the best way actual hikes can provide area to assume and unpack your troubles.

Baby Steps is a sport born of an advanced time, when many individuals are scuffling with their careers, their goal, and their motivation in a burnout-heavy, post-pandemic world. And despite the fact that it could really feel like its protagonist is a not-too-subtle jab at its personal fanbase, it’s the other. It’s an escape to assist them cope.

The sport’s narrative serves gamers completely different situations to consider on their arduous strolling journey. The level is to get misplaced in thought. Baby Steps gained’t be out till subsequent 12 months, however already the largest false impression, Cuzzilo says, is that the sport is “primarily about frustration or inducing rage.” It additionally isn’t seeking to make a fast joke out of an grownup gamer who’s caught in his dad and mom’ basement. Baby Steps is sympathetic to its apple-bottomed protagonist, who’s “trying to make the best of a very difficult situation.”