Game 34: Baby Steps

Videogames can be a uniquely frustrating experience for people. You've been drawn in to being that tiny hero with a sword fighting against all odds, and suddenly you encounter a challenge that feels unfair or excessively punishing, and you might spend hours repeating attempts at overcoming it only to fail, over and over. The nature of the challenge can be anything - a difficult boss, tricky moving platforms, a matter of blind luck, or even other players - but the feeling it produces is the same.

Rage. Pure anger directed at the challenge, the game, and at yourself for not being good enough to overcome the difficulty.

Occasionally this rage manifests itself as real-world violence - not necessarily against people, but against peripherals. In the only study I'm aware of on the subject, one in four gamers admitted to having destroyed or damaged their own equipment in a fit of rage.

With such a statistic, a responsible game developer might ask how they could make their games less frustrating. Enter Bennett Foddy, who is not a responsible game developer, because HE wondered if he could make games intended to evoke frustration and suffering, and proceeded to do just that. I have beaten two of his prior games: QWOP in which you directly control the leg muscles of an athlete trying to run a sprint and Getting Over It where you play as a man stuck in a pot trying to climb a mountain using a sledgehammer and somehow that is even more difficult than it sounds.

Lest you think I am exaggerating about Bennett Foddy's personal motivations for these games, let me put that to rest by noting that his own description of Getting Over It is "A game I made for a certain kind of person. To hurt them."

Foddy is not the sole developer for Baby Steps but it bears Foddy's signature style - the game is a 'walking simulator' in the sense that you have very direct control over your walking motion and you are intended to use these unusual controls to successfully overcome obstacles.

Challenge accepted. Our hero is Nate. He's 35, lives at home, and his parents are calling him down for a 'family meeting'.

Shout-out to One Piece

For absolutely no reason whatsoever he is teleported out of his depressing circumstances into a pretty good looking forest!

I immediately fell down. This is going to happen a lot.

Suddenly a man pops out and initiates a very awkward conversation.

Uhhh... cave-drawing number 3 seems well endowed

Jim is a bit off-putting but he does do his best to try to tell Nate what's going on and to try to get him some shoes, but Nate is having none of it - he isn't terribly concerned about having been transported here and mostly just wants Jim to leave him the hell alone.

Jim shows up again just a little ways ahead for another conversation about Nate having to use the bathroom and offers a bush as an option. Nate isn't having any of that either. These are some of the most intentionally awkward conversations I've seen in any videogame, Nate is NOT someone who loves interacting with people.

Ahead, the landscape opens up and in the distance I can see a light on the horizon.

I suppose I'm intended to head for it?

But after taking a look around I see that there's actually another way to go - it appears I have a fair bit more freedom in Baby Steps than the linear climb of Getting Over It.

There's a Ferris wheel in the distance so we're going to check it out.

I should take a moment to describe the process of walking here, because that's mainly what the game is about.

When 3D games were first coming out, it wasn't immediately clear to game developers how you should control your character, and the problem was most pronounced in games that featured an outside view of your character in a 3D space. If you go back and play early games like Tomb Raider and Grim Fandango you'll encounter 'Tank' controls, where regardless of where the camera is (often in a fixed position) pushing 'up' on the controller causes your character move forward in the direction they are currently facing. As games came along with more of a free-moving camera, movement controls became contextualized on your viewpoint - now pushing 'up' would cause the character to first turn directly away from the camera and then start moving forward once they were facing the 'correct' direction, and this intuitive scheme is mainly what we use today to varying degrees of success.

Bennett Foddy took one look at that and said that we didn't have enough fine control of our feet and made this game to solve a problem that nobody had.

So, Baby Steps' game controls are as follows (For a standard controller, masochists can also use the mouse / keyboard):

If you move the control stick in a direction, Nate leans in that direction and leaning too far will cause you to fall down.

The L and R triggers respectively cause Nate to lift his left / right foot. Despite appearances Nate is not the definition of poise and grace, so standing on one foot for too long will cause you to fall down. When lifting a foot, the control stick switching from leaning to moving that individual foot so you can place it where desired. Stretching the foot too far from you or placing it on untenable ground or misplacing it or thinking bad thoughts about Bennett Foddy will cause you to fall down.

In fact I believe that the only reason they didn't call this game 'Falling Down' is that two other obscure games have already taken that moniker.

In any case, I've found it's possible to walk forward simply by tilting the control stick up and correctly timing the left / right triggers so at least on flat terrain it's not difficult to make forward progress (with the occasional tumble).

The challenge comes when you try to do anything other than walk over flat ground.

Like attempting to climb this rail. I did not succeed.

For a game involving falling, I'm happy to report that watching Nate fall is pretty entertaining and both the physicality of it and the sound design make for good entertainment. Especially if a friend is watching and laughing at you.

Deeper into this area I've found evidence that this was a long-abandoned carnival or amusement park.

The horse did not push me over, I fell all by myself

In the carnival area I found signs indicating that someone is missing a cup - as well as another, different light in the distance. Looks like there's multiple options for 'objectives' to find, assuming that's what those lights are.

Get up Nate, we've got a cup to find!

It isn't long before I locate the cup, in an abandoned carnival wagon.

Or at least I assumed it was IN the wagon. Insidiously the damn thing is on TOP of the wagon.

There was an attempt to obtain said cup by climbing to the top of a rock next to the wagon and then stepping over to the roof of it.

I didn't even get to the top of the rock.

If Nate would actually use his arms to help him climb things he might do better, but noooo, it's a feet game so all Nate does is step on things while his arms hang uselessly at his side. I gave up on the cup and decided to head back to the starting area - this is too tough for me at the moment, I need to get better at climbing and I may as well make forward progress while I'm getting the hang of this.

On the way back I was immediately distracted by a treasure map.

Maybe I'll find shoes!

I failed to find the treasure owing to difficulties with determining the intended length of a 'step', since my own steps are highly variable I probably would have gotten off target even if I hadn't fallen over every so often.

If I faceplant and slide a bit does that count as two steps? Three?

As you can see, I'm getting exceptionally dirty from falling over and over. They spent some time getting the look down.

This is for all the sickos that wanted a close-up

Having returned to the starting point and begun the journey towards the original light source, I became immediately distracted by a nearby brick building which had a little pole on top. Climbing it rewarded me with a hat!

My first reward for doing something!

Insidiously, the hat doesn't just stay on your head - if you fall badly enough then you'll lose the hat and it'll roll a short distance away. Thus, trying to keep a hat is going to make the game harder as you need to retrieve it when it's lost - I'm going to try to keep one anyway for the fun of it, though I suspect I'm more at risk of losing it from forgetting to pick it back up rather than being unable to retrieve it.

So far, the consequences of falling in most situations has been relatively minor - on flat ground you might even slide ahead and continue to make forward progress. Once in awhile you'll encounter an obstacle which has dire consequences should you fail.

That looks like a real long way to slide, but at least here I made it across.

After navigating fairly gentle slopes and switchbacks, I'm finally getting close to the mysterious glow.

Almost there.... ow ow ow

And.... success! The glow comes from a large waxy candle and marks the location of an empty campsite where a pot of... it honestly looks like milk... sits over a fire.

Nate checks the place out

Out of nowhere there's an odd vignette where you play a disturbing little sequence of events.

In this my father asks me to go find firewood and then abandons me.

I don't know if this is Nate's past or his fears or has nothing to do with anything and just wants to make the player feel depressed.

Then Mike shows up. Jim seemed like he was something of a tour guide for this place, Mike seems like a tourist - he's geared up for hiking and is going on about equipment and having a map.

The cutscene even briefly pops up a mini-map to show you they could have put one in the game

Nate is still having none of this, turns down all offers of help, including (sadly) refusing a map. I would have absolutely taken a map because I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost easily.

I'm getting the sense that these cutscenes are intended to taunt you, to remind you of things that many games have and you ain't getting for this one.

The nature of this place has piqued my curiosity. Mike mentions heading for the Poison Swamp, and he seems like he's here voluntarily, hiking and climbing around for the fun of it. For Nate it seems like all he wants is to find a bathroom.

We part ways, and I look for the next objective.

That next light is very far away and very high above me

Very shortly after I begin the next leg of my journey I fall victim to being easily distracted and head off the main trail towards a barn.

Hey, an actual human structure!

I found a couple animals here - there's a baby chick which starts following me around, maybe I can take it to it's mother? Also I found a donkey.

I attempted to ride the donkey.

In Mother Russia, Donkey rides You

From the barn I see a watchtower in the distance. At this point in the game, if there's something interesting looking, I'm headed for it.

At the bottom of the tower - the spot where I'm supposed to bring that cup if I can ever get it. Good to know.

At the top of the tower - a viewfinder!

Is that.... a large baby doll? With a crown on its head?

Also in the distance - another campsite.

 I've walked so far away from the one I was originally headed for that I may as well try for this one instead.

The non-linearity of Baby Steps is almost jarring after putting myself in the mindset of the one-route Getting Over It. Part of this game is simply looking for and analyzing your possible routes - on the way to that next light I found a couple options for climbing higher, and the first one I attempted turned out to be too difficult so I gave up and eventually found an easier switchback further ahead.

Realizing that I was close to that Baby thing that I'd seen earlier, I decided to go for it, thinking it might be an NPC I could talk to.

Actually just a large baby doll.. but that crown is another hat if you can brave the cliffside to get it!

Hail to the King Baby

In many ways this place resembles the Appalachian Trail or other American hiking areas - there's are pretty clearly travelled trails (sometimes even marked by humans), and some are fairly flat with others having steep and rocky slopes.

There's also litter, litter everywhere.

Who is ordering a pizza out here? Who is delivering it?

Approaching the summit, I end up overcoming one of the nastier obstacles I've faced so far, a rocky slope that requires a couple tricky maneuvers to navigate.

You may not like it but this is what the process of succeeding looks like

There's a Day / Night cycle and by the time I'm walking up to the second campsite that I've reached, the moon is high in the sky.

That's an... interesting moon....

There's another little vignette, this time depicting a man going out to get a burger and then finding himself working at the burger place. Maybe these are Nate's dreams?

I am rudely awakened by Ethan.

Ethan is part human, part Donkey.

Two parts Donkey, I think.

Ethan wearing a shirt (and only a shirt) makes for a memorable scene

Other than his appearance, Ethan's fairly nice and gives Nate the first thing resembling an objective, saying that if Nate reaches the 'castle' then he can have one wish.

Ethan wants Nate to wish for cigarettes, since he's fresh out of them. The heart wants what the heart wants.

It looked like the castle was way off on the opposite side of the valley, so I'm not going to try to head there now. Instead, I'm going for the closest light I can see. It's through a forest but at least the terrain looks pretty flat.

I like how the destination shines through the fog in the distance.

The going is pretty easy for the most part, and the harsh barren slopes give way to a lush forest.

I think Ethan called it the poison forest but I haven't been poisoned yet.

Even though the general path is easy (and I'm sticking to the marked trail where possible, I'm scared I'll lose my crown in the brush if I fall while roughing it through the trees), there are some new and unusual obstacles along the way.

Did they put this sign up before or after the bear started sleeping here?

Even though this is a 'difficult' game, so far it doesn't seem like you can die, so I figured I'd make an attempt to simply climb over the bear. To my relief, she was a very sound sleeper... but she did prove very difficult to climb over and I fell off the bridge entirely.

Sleeping Bear: 1, Nate 0.

Fortunately, I wasn't the first person to have to traverse this route, and someone had put up brightly colored climbing assistants nearby.

NATE THESE ARE HANDHOLDS USE YOUR GODDAMN HANDS

Probably due to limited sightlines in the forest I'm mostly not being distracted from my destination, but I did make a short detour to some nearby ruins and obtained new headwear.

Embrace your inner Muppet

I reach the light and find that it's practically a castle in it's own right - or at least the ruins of one. The campsite is behind an iron gate.

Get used to this pose because I figured out I can use it to get Nate to face the camera for screenshots.

Attempting to climb to the top in search of a lever to open the gate, I notice something incredibly helpful - foot shadows!

Your feet cast a shadow straight down to help you see where you are placing them.

I reached the top of the castle to find no way to open the gate, and a fence blocking my access to the campsite even from this height. Well, mostly blocking, I can't quite step over it...

Nate, you're not going to like this one bit.

In my first intentional fall of the game, I lean forward and tumble over the fence. Nate slams into the rocky ruins a couple times before plunging over 40 feet downward to slam hard on his back. Worst of all, my Kermit hat flew off and lodged itself somewhere about midway up - I think it's gone for good.

Nate just lies there on the ground for a good 20 seconds before moving again. I don't blame him.

I guess all donkey-people look the same to Nate because he mistakes Moose here for Ethan. In a first, Nate actually accepts an offer of help when Moose shares his cup so Nate can drink.

Nate also finally says what HE wants, which is to go home.

Ethan and another donkeyman arrive (somehow opening the gate, thanks guys) and Moose makes himself scarce. It's off to the trail again.

It's not far before I spy a very strange glow in a tree.

Is that another hat? Or a fruit of some kind?

I haven't successfully climbed a tree yet but I give it a shot. Before I can even start climbing this one though, there's a rope swing attached to it that I have to stand on and swing to get close enough to even start climbing, which is a whole new level of insanity. Guess how that turned out. Did I mention this tree is on the edge of a cliff?

At least I landed in the water. That's the same tree, way up there.

But lo and behold, down here I find something Nate has been wanting for around three days now!

An inconveniently located bathroom!!!

Finally, finally poor Nate can relieve himself.

As Nate is about to find nirvana, Mike shows up to encourage him through the door.

It's an extremely frustrated Nate that stumbles away from the outhouse. His day does not get any better trying to climb out of the lake area.

A huge rolling boulder? That's just mean, Foddy.

Spying another watchtower, I climb it and locate another viewfinder, which shows me a hat on top of a tree. Even with the viewfinder it takes me awhile to find the right tree in the forest, but eventually I'm attempting to climb a tree without using my hands.

This took many, many attempts.

I'm pretty damn proud of getting this hat, it was not easy.

At this point I'm not sure where the next campsite is so I'm wandering and exploring.

I found an abandoned well, perhaps?

At least it's easy to go down, other than watching Nate suffer there's no real consequences to falling long distances.

At the bottom of this well is a cave... with some, ah, interestingly shaped mushrooms.

I'm sensing subtle themes in Baby Steps.

Baby Steps does a phenomenal job of setting the stakes with any given challenge - you can take a moment and look down to see just how far down you're likely to tumble if you fail.

Out here past the forest I'm increasingly finding more and more dangerous 'suffer if you fail' obstacles which will send you a very long way down if you screw up.

Gonna traverse this one real careful and reeeal slow

I am definitely getting better at walking - noticing exactly how I'm moving Nate's legs and feet and how the balance works when shifting legs. I'm pretty confident that if I were to go back and try for that cup near the start, for instance, I could get to it now.

Rather than go back all that way just yet I'm employing the 'ooh what's that over there' strategy and checking out anything that looks interesting. Often this translates into a little (or large) climbing challenge.

This looks like an MC Escher house but it's too small for people.

Climb to the top of it and....

Oh! It is for little people!

I wish I'd gotten a tiny little hat but all I accomplished was to accidentally sit on a 14-inch tall person. He'll probably be fine, assuming he's as robust at Nate is.

When I lost the green Muppet hat, it was in service of a greater good - a daring maneuver that accomplished something important. Muppet hat's sacrifice was worthy and noble. I regret to inform you that yellow tree hat has been lost to no good purpose whatsoever, I fell off a wall and ingloriously slid down the slope, leaving the hat somewhere near the top.

Try as I might to scale the slope back up to where it was, I merely succeeded in falling further and further down until retrieving it was simply too much effort - especially considering that I had already spied another possible hat in a box-maze nearby.

I'm sorry Yellow, this was not the goodbye I hoped for.

The box-maze is fairly challenging to navigate, and perhaps the most difficult part of trying for this next hat was simply finding a route I could take that would get me to it. Once found, the climbing didn't relent on the difficulty.

This is my second time being up here and I don't want to go down empty handed again

I've found another helpful climbing technique - how you move your feet is depending on the camera angle you are using, so you can best climb a ladder by swinging the camera left and right as you take each step, and when the margins are small then exactly how you bend Nate's leg absolutely makes a difference as to whether you can get your foot on the next rung or not. So I very carefully made my way up the ladder, got tantalizingly close to the hat, and I reached for it... and immediately fell off the ladder, caromed off a pile of boxes, and flumped onto the floor of the box maze...

BUT NOT BEFORE I HAD TIPPED THE HAT OF ITS PERCH AND IT FELL DOWN WITH ME!

Papa's got a brand new hat!

I spot another one of those glowing fruits, which turns out to be a bananna. This one is placed atop a much easier climb than some things I've done (aside from some insidiously placed banana peels).

It's nice to see Nate experience joy for once, relishing the flavor of his accomplishment.

I also found a 'Gopro' helmet that changes your camera perspective to first person view. I won't be wearing it though.

I don't get motion sick from playing videogames, but I'd really be putting that to the test if I fell like this.

Finding another watchtower, I locate something I didn't expect to find (possibly) - it looks like something I can actually make use of.

Binoculars! Those could come in handy.

Let's see, now where exactly is that located.....

Goddamnit, I think they're on a cliff right below the little people apartments I was at several hours ago.

Whelp, guess I'm climbing all the way back up there. Ok, I've painstakingly made my way back to the gate, across broken bridges and the collapsed ledge, and here I am, standing across from my quarry.

The binoculars do not look easy to get and you can't climb back up here quickly

I wish I could tell you that I made a valiant attempt and fell, but the truth is sadder than that. I dropped a crumb on my keyboard and absent-mindedly went to fish it out, accidentally pressed a key, and tumbled right over the cliff before even making the attempt.

There's no checkpoints, no reloading a save, no course of action before me than to either take the long route back up there or give up and do something else. The only 'shortcut' I ever unlocked was to get the gate open. Falling has consequences, and those feel especially painful when you fall purely by accident.

Initially, I took a moment to do something else and keep going in the same direction that I'd been heading to see what was over there, when to my surprise I came across a watchtower that I was sure I'd left behind me. I think the world actually repeats itself - go far enough in one direction and you will come back to where you started. I think it was actually quicker to return to the little apartments by continuing forward rather than doubling back.

On returning to the apartments, I made a valiant attempt and fell.

I was within a step of getting them. Time to climb back up.

This time along the way I see a little grotto with a table and check it out to find the Vase, one of the items wanted at a watchtower.

This is much easier to get than the Cup!

The guy at the table grudgingly let me take it while grumbling that I'd probably just break it. I resolved to be extra careful and try to get it to the tower intact.

I broke it anyway. The vase doesn't respawn so that's that.

In better news with the binoculars, I got 'em!

Third time's the charm!

I can actually use them to view distant objects, for what that's worth - thinking about it now I can usually tell if there's something interesting in the distance and the binoculars may not actually help that much. Somewhere along this journey I made the foolish assumption that the binoculars would simply confer unto me the ability to zoom in on things and that would be that. The problem is that they're a carried object (Heaven forbid Nate should tie anything to his waist), and you can drop them and lose them when you fall, same as the hats. In many ways they're now another liability - I've spent more time than I care to admit retrieving various hats after bad falls.

It dawns on me that at some point I'm going to lose these, one way or another.

At least I'm close to the top of this particular cliffside, and I make my way upward.

There's a beach... up here?

The next ridge looks imposing, and beyond it, a second, taller ridge rises in the distance. Seeing a column of smoke along the shore, I find another campsite.

This vignette is Nate's class reunions (including future ones) and it's very depressing.

Ethan and his friends party hard!

Seeing the next two huge ridgelines I realize that the further I get from the beginning of the game, the more difficult it's going to be for me to go back and do things like getting the cup to the watchtower so I drop the binoculars and box hat at this campsite for safekeeping and head back down before I go any further. A lot of the challenges in this game are optional - I haven't been required to obtain any of the hats or fruits or watchtower quests or even stop at the campsites. The main path through the game is not easy, you can feel free to skip a lot of the 'very hard' things you can do - and somewhere the masochist in me wants to do them (or at least attempt them). On my way back to the start I came across a cabin, found the set of keys in it that you're supposed to bring to a watchtower, and ended up dropping them in a river about halfway there - those are gone for good. I'm 0 for 2 on watchtowers.

In better news, I managed to follow the treasure map from the start and locate it.

It's a step tracker! I'll keep it and note step counts.

Getting the cup was still fairly difficult but I managed it this time.

Let's see if I can manage to deliver it.

Unlike the vase it's not fragile, and unlike the keys it's easy to find again when dropped. With these relative handicaps, even I can get it to its destination in one piece.

I'm minimally competent!

Step tracker: 1692 (I wish I'd found it the first time! I'd love to know how many actual steps I'm at.)

One last stop in the starting area: Free shoes!

It's a shame they're too big for Nate - or any other human.

Step count: 3645

I've confirmed that there was never a second campsite around here as I initially thought - the 'second' light I saw was from the same campsite and the world wrapped back to it.

Climbing back out I try some different routes - there really are a lot of options, and I even come across a bucket hat and a Mike 'Just use your grappling hook!' cutscene that I missed on my first ascent. I suspect all roads eventually lead to the second campsite, but there are many ways to get there.

The step-tracker has an advanced feature - when you drop it, it flashes a brightly colored light, so you can see where it is even from a distance.

That way I can find it again, even though I dropped it wayyy down there. It's a conspiracy to make me take more steps.

That's some fancy tech. I would have preferred a wrist strap.

I reach the second campsite, the one where I met Ethan, and as an illustration of how much better I've gotten I only have one minor slip while going up the slope that took me about ten attempts the first time.

Step count: 6211

I nearly lost the step tracker. It started innocently enough - I found a tower near the edge of a cliff and started to climb it. I met Mike again here, and he told me there was nothing at the top and that climbing it would be a waste of time.

I believed Mike, but like mountaineers we climb things simply because it is there.

Things went almost perfectly with me navigating some tough sections all the way up until just before the top when I slipped and fell down a shaft in the tower - and I let go of the step tracker and it landed on a high ledge within the shaft. I climbed the tower again - falling three times before making it up to the same spot - only to plummet down the shaft past where the tracker was.

It is not easy to fall where you want to go, and every miss is another climb to the top.

On my next attempt I managed to land on the ledge with the tracker and pick it up. I then tried to intentionally fall off the ledge with it, but somehow managed to literally scrape the damn thing right out of my hand onto a different ledge, and once again poor Nate slammed into the ground sans tracker.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

By this point I'd probably attempted climbing this tower around a dozen times. I was contemplating giving up on the thing and moving on - after all, the game will be easier if I'm not constantly holding on to things and retrieve them.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying having a step count and posting updates to it here, even though it's completely inaccurate since it's not recording all the steps I'm having to take to pick it up again - so if there's a chance I can still get it, I'm getting it. I managed to fall onto the first ledge, and then to my surprise found that there was a narrow path of jutting stones from there down to the second ledge. One thing about Baby Steps that's impressed me is the terrain everywhere in the game feels very carefully crafted - I'm probably one of a very small number of players to intentionally go inside this shaft, and yet even in here there's carefully laid out footholds that allow me to carefully make my way to my objective.

I probably should have listened to Mike.

After that little nightmare, I hightailed it out of the poison forest and back up to where I left the box and binoculars - which are right where I left them.

Step Count: 9,787

Yes it took me this long to figure out I could press A to look at the thing.

The slopes ahead call to me, it's time to continue upward. The desert / beach (it's a bit of both) area's tower would like some ice cream.

If this happens it's going to be sand-flavored by the time it gets there.

I find an empty pool - because why not - and after examining it for a moment it looks to me like it's impossible to climb out of.

This, of course, tempts me to go into it. Are Bennett Foddy and his accomplice developers truly that cruel, to put in an obstacle that might really trap you and force you to end the game?

I honestly wouldn't put it past them.... but I have to know!

Ok, yes - I think it's actually impossible to climb out of... but there's a skateboard here, perhaps I can use that to...

Skateboarding with these controls is its own special hell.

Fortunately after leaving me in the pool long enough to wonder if I actually am trapped here, Jim shows up and (despite Nate's idiotic insistence that he doesn't need it) gives Nate a stepladder to freedom. There's an unspoken contract between players and modern games that isn't true of older ones - and that is that the game will not allow you to get stuck somewhere that you can't extricate yourself from. There are old adventure games like the early Kings Quests where it's possible - even likely - that you will put yourself into a situation you can't actually escape and must reload an earlier save to continue. As brutal as Baby Steps is, I suspect it won't do that you.

Here you go Nate. You need it.

There's no such protections for the objects you're carrying.

This area has a new hazard - cacti. The very first time I stepped on one and fell, I dropped the step tracker, and the thing suffered a bad physics glitch and zipped off into the unknown. That's gone for good. I think the last step count I checked was somewhere around 10,810.

In short order, I dropped the binoculars over a ledge and just couldn't be bothered to go back for them after the step counter incident. This was immediately followed by sliding down a sandy slope and leaving the box hat on a ledge above me.

I have chosen the Path of Pain.

I will soldier on unencumbered by possessions, for now. Not having to pick up the things you drop is freeing.

I really like the aesthetics of this area, the terrain features giant sandcastles that someone built.

Is this THE castle? Can I get my wish now?

Like the previous areas, there are climbing challenges scattered around. Actually summiting some of these obstacles generally doesn't reward you and often pisses Jim off.

I knocked over a culturally significant bucket.

I don't know what the hardest obstacle in the game is, I probably haven't run across it yet, but I'd like to call this one out for being a huge problem for me. It doesn't even LOOK difficult but those two cacti have knocked me into that white-sludge slide many times now.

The white stuff is very slippery and sounds like a hollow plastic tub when you walk on it, I have no idea what it's supposed to be.

I reach the end of the sandcastles and find a deep, dark cave. Jim shows up with lanterns to help light the way.

Nate refuses a lantern - he thinks Ethan will make fun of him. I may have missed a cutscene.

Fortunately for me (because the area is actually pitch-black and I have no idea if it's possible without a lantern) Moose is just ahead and he has two, and Nate accepts the help this time.

I got up this escalator by using the hand-rail, which thankfully wasn't moving like the escalator was.

At the end of the cave, Ethan and more donkeys than I've seen before are gathered, waiting for Nate.

Nate's fears of being made fun of for the lantern are well justified.

To my surprise, this turns out to be the castle - just ahead is the (shitty plastic) angel, and Nate can make his wish. Ethan again asks for cigarette. Nate clearly wants to go home - or so I thought.

Nate contemplates the life he'd return to.

Nate wishes... that he were dead.

Damn. I haven't really been sympathetic for Nate thus far but now I feel for the guy.

It doesn't work. You can't die in this place. There's nowhere to go but forward. And forward... is a door. A regular, apartment door.

Well sure, of course there'd be an apartment here, why not.

Nate follows a woman's voice through the apartment, which repeats and changes until everything is boxed away - and Nate tumbles back into the world he's stuck in.

Imposing snow-capped mountains promise me that this isn't going to get easier.

At least Nate has made one friend - Moose has been very nice to Nate and unlike everyone else, Nate is actually interested in talking with the guy.

Moose somehow found ice-cream and shares it.

This 'walled fields' area actually starts off pretty easy, there's a long straightforward 'sculpture walk' if you don't feel like scaling a stone wall.

This only encourages me to climb on the things.

I don't hate the sculptures, they're pretty interesting to look at and it's nice to find this sort of art gallery here - it's also nice to have a break from the difficulty of climbing things, you can just walk past all of these if you want to.

Yeah, I climbed on top of Your Mum.

Apparently someone else burned their wish on ruining this area's tower.

But the easy walk must come to an end. I'm about halfway to the mountain slopes and I need to find my way up. I can't make them out very well but it looks like there might be a giant spiral staircase I can use.

The columns with the red lights are actually the same staircase, you can see more than one because the world repeats.

First, I had to cross a gorge. I could fall down and try to find a way back up the other side, but it would be a bit faster if I could use this zipline.

I just have to reach it....

To be fair, there WAS a sign warning me not to use the Zipline.

Hi it's me here at the bottom of the gorge, zipline is way up there where I fell from.

Fortunately all is not lost, down here there's an abandoned rail system for mine carts, and climbing it leads me to an (I assume) abandoned salt mine.

Wait... are the trails of white stuff salt? That would be a pretty damn good joke if true.

Steps Taken: Who knows.

A little ways inside the mine is a campsite, Moose is there once again toasting marshmallows. He tells Nate about the cabin he's built near the summit - complete with a toilet, which Nate has yet to use. I guess in addition to not dying here you also don't have to actually use the bathroom after several days - the miracle of a strange purgatory.

Nate is bad at toasting marshmallows.

This area features a new obstacle - giant waterwheels! The first one I encounter serves as a timer - you have to cross a narrow bridge before the next paddle knocks you off, making it one of a very few times when you have to complete an obstacle quickly.

This waterwheel instead needs to be treated like an elevator - step onto a paddle and then back off again when it takes you higher.

It did not go well.

Nate has fallen from larger heights and probably suffered more painful falls, but I never felt more sorry for the guy than when I stumbled on the wheel and got Nate's legs caught in it, causing him to be dumped out at the apex, slammed into the hub, bounced off a spoke, and dumped prone back onto another paddle causing the entire traumatic experience to be repeated several times.

Why is this sign here? You're in danger of falling in all kinds of places... Ooh, is that a hat?

I made it to the spiral staircase, and I notice there's also a stone path rising up to the right of it.

I guess it's an alternate route compared to... the stairs with a railing?

I don't think I can properly convey just how tall this staircase is. An alternate route to it is just madness, why would I ever-

Jim shows up and explain he built the stairs to help people avoid 'The Manbreaker' route. Nate's pride makes him insist he'll take the Manbreaker up.

I give the Manbreaker one attempt.

It ends like this.

No. Nate may have insisted that he'd take the Manbreaker just to prove something, but Nate's not the one climbing it - I am. And you know what? Nate's whole damn problem is that he won't reach out to people and just accept some help. People have offered him shoes, maps, guidance, and he turns them all down, for no reason at all. No, this time Nate doesn't get to make that choice for me.

I'm taking the goddamn stairs and Nate can swallow his pride and tell Jim 'Thank you.' when we get to the top.

And reaching the top.. is easy. You'd have to make an effort to fall off this staircase, it's really really great. My hat is off to all those who ultimately conquered the Manbreaker - I saw all of it, once, on my way up that stairway to heaven. Looks tough!

Mike is at the camp at the top of the stairs, Nate tries to get him to share his map but only manages to get Mike to burn the thing and head off on his own. In the morning, there's a giant woman nearby - I think she may be the one that built the huge sandcastles. I go to talk to her but she just cradles Nate like a baby and puts him up on a ledge.

Thanks... Mom?

Later on, I hear cries for help.

It's Mike - he managed to get crushed by a huge rock.

Nobody can die here, so this clearly fatal injury merely causes Mike immense amounts of pain. He begs me to go back down the mountain to get Jim to help (not sure if Jim can move the rock either, it's huge). I go back to the giant woman, but she's no help - she just does the motherly cradling again. I have no idea where Jim actually is - he just pops up every so often, so I turn around again and keep heading upward.

The challenge up in these mountains are patches of ice, which are very difficult to traverse without slipping, and a pair of train cars that hang over the side of the slope, forcing you to climb up scattered luggage and seats to ascend.

When you're halfway up the phone rings - you'll have to go back down if you want to answer it.

Triumphantly reaching the top of the train cars, I look around at the landscape. How things have changed!

It's pristine. There's no trash, no random 'climb me' obstacles. Just a wintry mountain slope.

There is only one summit. It's still so far away that the repeating world makes it look like four as Nate trudges toward it.

Keep walking Nate, we got this.

And then, at the base of the summit, I see it - Moose's cabin.

Please, please let me use the bathroom.

Nate knocks. Moose opens the door, chats a bit about how warm it is inside, how nice the toilet is, how he's been mapping the area, and sends Nate on his way.

Nate finally gets the gumption to knock again, and asks to come inside.

Moose is happy to welcome him. Nate has found a home, and a friend.

Nate can stop walking now.

The ending screen is utterly delightful, you finally get to see a map of the whole place and watch yourself wander around everywhere.

The tower (South) where I almost lost the step tracker looks like a bloody mess.

The white substance was milk, according to the map. And thinking back on it I suspect a couple of the 'hills' that were producing milk were actually giant breasts. Also there was a place labeled 'Avoid this place' that I inadvertently avoided - if I ever replay Baby Steps I'll check it out.

Baby Steps was a solid game - my one caveat in recommending it to people is that it is very challenging, both in it's unusual control scheme and that certain obstacles can be quite punishing, and I would completely understand anyone who became frustrated with it. That said, if you avoid various optional challenges I think it's easier than Getting Over It was, and as far as I can tell you are fairly safe from utterly catastrophic 'back to the beginning' levels of falling - plus, falling is just plain funny - this is a great game to watch your friend try to play. As difficult as this game is, it's a kinder, gentler Foddy than in the past - perhaps his fellow devs have made him kinder. Or at least talked him out of hurting people quite so much.

Actual steps taken: 60972

I'm pleased the ending screen gave me the final value, even though I lost the pedometer, I appreciate it.

Oh, and apologies to Mike - Nate forgot all about him when reaching Moose's cabin.

He's still stuck under that rock.