Almost eight years ago, “Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy” was released. You play as a man in a cauldron as he uses a hammer to summit a mountain of trash. While a neat concept on the surface, the game’s true beauty lies in its difficulty. The map is built vertically, meaning that one poor swing of the hammer can send you flying back down to the bottom. Due to the game’s unique source of difficulty, the Foddian game genre was born.
On Sept. 23, 2025, Bennett Foddy’s newest project, “Baby Steps,” was released. In “Baby Steps,” you play as an unemployed 35-year-old man named Nate. You control each foot with a side of your mouse. By holding down left click, for instance, you pick up your left foot. You can then move it around with your keyboard and release left click to put it back down.
Unlike any Foddian game before (that I know of), “Baby Steps” is an open-world game, breaking the standard formula. It still has a main trail, with points along the map you need to hit in a linear order to “finish” the game, but the world itself is infinite. There is tons of extra content hidden off the main trail, and the game is constantly tempting you away from the easy path into those optional, far trickier objectives. For example, there are 25 stacks of cans scattered across the map, all perched at the top of some of the most challenging platforms in the game.
In the community server for the game, Bennett Foddy himself said, “Probably everything in the game is climbable if you are good enough.” The skill ceiling on “Baby Steps” is far higher than I ever could have imagined.
Foddian games are often mistaken for being arbitrarily difficult. Instead, the difficulty stems from their controls. The best Foddian games utilize controls that are easy to understand, tough to learn, but incredibly useful once you’ve mastered them.
Although the game revolves generally around walking, it’s important to remember that the base game mechanic is controlling each foot individually. That means advanced utilizations of the controls, such as precise foot placements and making Nate lunge into a jump (since the game doesn’t have a jump action built in), are required for some of the more challenging, and importantly, optional side objectives. Speedrunners have even figured out how to gallop, making long walks much faster, by adding a second keyboard input to the left foot.
I’ve seen a lot of people online group “Baby Steps” into the general “rage game” category, a game that streamers will play, get unnecessarily mad at, and milk a couple of clips from their worst falls. However, as somebody with 22 hours of playtime, I think this is the only Foddian game I’ve ever played that isn’t like that. I had my moments of pure, unadulterated rage, of course, but my first playthrough (of about eight hours) left me wanting more regardless.
I knew I had not done great exploration my first time around, but I had absolutely no idea how much content I had truly missed, and I’m so glad I decided to run a second playthrough. I’m already 14 hours into this one, and have only made it through about a third of the content I see on my map.
Speaking of my map, there isn’t a way to track your progress from within the game. To get around this, I downloaded a community-created map PDF, imported it into image editing software, and manually drew little X’s as I completed each landmark.
As a huge fan of Geocaching, having a game that encourages exploration, without forcing it (as most games do), was awesome. Although I understand the game’s intentional limitations could be detrimental to the enjoyment of some players, I honestly found that they made the game for me.
The game generally rewards you for finding secrets and completing objectives with cutscenes, which were built off improvised dialogue by the developers. Nate has poor social skills and often ruins interactions with other characters, making for hilarious moments.
Once in a while, you will encounter a cutscene with Mike, another human who has been transported to this place, and he will always be showing off some special item that is making his climb easier. The first time you meet him, Mike shows Nate his map, and a small minimap appears in the bottom corner of your screen, before disappearing when Mike puts it away.
At another point in the game, after Nate comes across a broken bridge, a cutscene plays in which Mike comes by, saying, “Yeah, road’s out, but no worries: grapple point!” as he points to a tree above, boasting a big grapple marker on it. The cutscene ends with Mike grappling away, something Nate very obviously cannot do.
“Baby Steps” loves giving you a taste of that good life, before beating you back down with inconvenient mechanics. Need to bring a trophy to a firetower for a side quest? Great! You’re gonna hold that in your hand as you hike through the forest. If you fall, it’ll get knocked out of your hand, and you’ll have to go searching for it to pick it back up again. Found one of the 16 non-collectible hats? Fun! Oh, you found another one? You can only wear one hat at a time, and there’s no inventory, so you’ll actually have to leave one of those hats behind as you continue your journey. They’re “non-collectible” for a reason.
Wearing one of the 16 hats at one of the eight checkpoints will reward you with a special, pixelated minigame. You will notice, however, that there are way more hats than checkpoints, meaning it’s not even possible to 100% the game in a single save slot.
Remember those 25 stacks of cans from before? Well, once you knock over every stack of cans, you are rewarded with … nothing. In fact, your progress isn’t even tracked anywhere in the game, outside of the cans staying knocked over when you reload that save.
When I first started playing, all of this was extremely annoying. However, over time, I began to appreciate how purposefully inconvenient every mechanic is. There is no jump button, no grab action, and, most importantly, no UI. All of this really drives home the fact that you are literally just a guy walking around.
You’re only rewarded for completing specific objectives with cutscenes, but obviously, it wouldn’t make sense for a character to react to Nate just knocking over some cans, so there just isn’t a cutscene for that. You are completing objectives purely for the sake of challenge and exploration.
The developers provide ways for you to interact with the world through Nate’s singular ability: walking. However, there is no objective way to do this, at least in the conventional sense, such as getting a save to 100% completion.
Walking around the map, discovering secrets, and challenging myself with those evil stacks of cans is all really addicting. Better yet, I know some of the content I still have left to experience, and the best (and most complex) challenges are yet to come! Overall, “Baby Steps” became an unexpected favorite for me, and I am excited to keep exploring!
