Baby Steps will take its first strides into the world when it releases on September 23. Developed by a trio composed of Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy, Baby Steps is the latest collaborative effort between the three and marks another project that shares some of its DNA with the team’s previous games, like Ape Out and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy. With a focus on navigating Nate—a 30-year-old unemployed “failson”—through a beautiful yet surreal mountain setting, Baby Steps will see players learning alongside Nate how to properly put one foot in front of the other to accomplish this seemingly simple task.
Game Rant recently spoke with Cuzzillo, Foddy, and Boch about their approach to Baby Steps‘ design philosophy for Game Rant Advance, given that it goes much further and deeper in its movement and control than other titles. The three talked about their previous experiences, expectations, and experiments, with Cuzzillo shedding light on the extensive iteration process required to make this core mechanic function smoothly and intuitively in Baby Steps, while still providing plenty of challenge and giving players freedom to explore the game’s world.
Cuzzillo described the various methods that were taken to ensure that Baby Steps is built upon sturdy gameplay foundations that are also natural and appealing. The original vision was always formed with the idea of fans controlling Nate’s gait through individual movements, but finding the right feel and flow for how players interacted with this system, along with getting the character to respond appropriately within the game world, was a longer and more involved process.
Cuzzillo said that it took quite a while and a lot of work to get everything right. Baby Steps‘ walking system has evolved a lot over the course of the five years it spent in development, with him stating that “there have been hundreds of minor breakthroughs in making it feel good, consistent, and controllable.” He added that two overarching aspects went into consideration for its design:
“There are two big underlying themes to balancing and tuning that have been continually reemerging as we’ve worked on it. The first is: what’s the player’s job, and what’s Nate’s job? For instance, how much should he be leaning his torso to try to stay balanced, or how much should he rotate his foot to make getting your foot onto something easier?”
Detailing the other major pillar, Cuzzillo said that the team thought hard and looked closely at how strong a “supernatural balancing force” Baby Steps‘ movement systems should contain. He noted his general dislike of heavily physics-based games that make use of behind-the-scenes assist-oriented “magic forces” that can often result in characters moving in jarring or unrealistic ways, creating a sense of disconnect between player input and response. Its use in some games is to keep things on rails, so to speak, meaning it was a serious consideration here too. Baby Steps still needed to retain at least some of this “magic force” to prevent frustration and keep its moving parts held together. As he explained:
“A lot of physics games have your controls basically throwing the character around the world with magic forces while the animation tries to catch up. That said, if we had no forces in the game that weren’t justified physically, it would be basically impossible to keep Nate up. Finding the right balance of these two things has been one of the biggest challenges of development for me, but I’m pretty happy with where it ended up.”
By taking a fine-tooth comb to the designs of its core mechanic and polishing it to a fine sheen, Baby Steps aims to put its best foot forward and deliver a unique gaming experience that leans into its originality while giving players the most responsive and tightest controls possible.
September 23, 2025
Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy
Single-player
Unknown
