HELLDIVERS™ 2
HELLDIVERS™ 2
Game
Game2025
Baby Steps
Developer Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy
Baby Steps is a 2025 walking simulator video game developed by Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy. Unlike other games of its genre, the act of walking is not automated; the player must raise and lower their character's feet. It was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on September 23, 2025 to generally positive reviews. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
399 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 6, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
86
LovedLoved
249 positive · 40 negative
95% range 82–90%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 249 | 40 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 33 | 4 | 63 |
| Mastodon * | 4 | 0 | 6 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
1,822 of 2,013 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
86% recommend · 229 yes, 36 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 265 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (2,441 of 2,709 positive).
Many find the controls awkward and the game punishing, but ultimately fair and rewarding. [1][2][3] Some reviewers criticize the game for being frustrating, tedious, or overly annoying. [4][5][6]
Liked
Representative posts
- [4]
It's clever and meticulously designed. But this thing was created to annoy whoever plays it. It's raising my blood pressure, hurting my hands. And it tries to make you fail at the last moment after a lot of hard work. This feels like the devs should be paying the players to participate in their psychological experiment. Or maybe they are just truly misanthropic and the act of purchasing this game is the joke. Even …
- [9]
I've seen many people refer to this as a "rage game", but I found the experience to be rather meditative. The game usually provides you with 2 or 3 options on how to proceed with your climb. Situations where there is only 1 option are only mildly challenging and thematic. Any time I started to feel frustrated I would also set the game down. Had a break, ate a snack, took care of myself. I probably also found myself …
- [15]
the strange answer to "what if a ragebait game was made with thought, care and exceptionally good writing". it has a vision, and it sticks to it. sometimes that vision is incredibly annoying. but i respect it. this is the first foddy that is surrounded by an actual game and narrative rather than a deliberately bad control scheme taken to its limit. that something like this exists is a minor miracle. the hardest …
- [7]
I approached Baby Steps as if it were a gimmick game, but found something much deeper. It perfectly encapsulates the human experience into an uncomfortable and confronting package. At first I thought it was just a silly walking game like QWOP or Getting Over It, but the more I explored the more I found that it is an exercise of living in the moment and being open to experiences that scare you or seem nonsensical …
- [1]
I so wish that this game wasn't so quickly dismissed as just some kind of streamer ragebait slop. I mean, sure, it can certainly do that job better than most games, but it's so much more, and more than that: I really think this game is fundamentally fair. I'll try to explain... the controls are awkward, and the price of failure is punishing, often extremely so. But it's always up front with you, or at least almost …
Summarised from 34 of the 370 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked Baby Steps talk about deep narrative about male insecurity and trauma; those who didn't talk about frustrating and rage-inducing gameplay. Which matters more to you?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Baby Steps received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator site Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received strong approval, being recommended by 73% of critics. Kyle Orland from Ars Technica wrote that the game can be "punishing, unforgiving, tedious, and enraging" at times. However, he noted that player progression is entirely defined by players' understanding the game's mechanics and controls, and the game created "moments of the most genuinely satisfying sense of achievement I can remember having in modern gaming". He compared Baby Steps to Death Stranding and Foddy's previous games, describing it as a "wonderfully surreal,…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 399 · most liked firstBaby Steps starts as an elaborate shitpost before slowly revealing itself to be a sincere game about male insecurity. A deconstruction of the kind of idealized picture of manhood that video games helped create wrapped in a terrific slapstick comedy. My review. www.polygon.com/baby-steps-r...
positive · AI labelView post →For @aftermath.site, I wrote about the crucible of beating the Manbreaker in Baby Steps, a brutal challenge that the game actively tells you not to do. I am happy that I did it. aftermath.site/baby-steps-m...
positive · AI labelView post →Markiplier playing Baby Steps, Game Grumps doing a Nuzlocke run. Griffin McElroy doing another Trial by Fieri. I'm set for tv this weekend.
neutral · AI labelView post →Gaming’s trickster sage Bennett Foddy breaks down how Baby Steps is “AAA cosplay,” an homage and satire to the cinematic open world game , why we play them and what it says about us. It is struggle as insight. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
neutral · AI labelView post →yeah the more i think on it, “Baby Steps” was a great game. A goofy narrative, actually funny writing, mesmerizing gameplay when you get into the flow state of “walking”, and a lite allusion to Pinocchio’s “Play Land” as the topper. A beautifully weird one. that’s kc’s goty number one with a bullet
positive · AI labelView post →im so locked in playing Baby Steps that when the game gave me this screen and then crashed, my first thought was "wow. what a truly insightful and unflinching look at what video games do to your psyche"
positive · AI labelView post →Still playing Baby Steps because I’m going to beat this game gosh darn it. But I want to say, I lost a hat, in the game. It fell off my head and rolled off a cliff. I had to watch it roll out of my reach. I fought for that hat. Sacrificed good climbs to get it back. And now it’s just gone. It hurts…
neutral · AI labelView post →It is funny that there’s more uncensored half-man half-equine penis in Baby Steps than in Horses. I understand the difference in content and tone, but if you’re gonna ban a game with a nude or seminude chimera I better see that hog.
neutral · AI labelView post →I don't know how to start this. I'll keep this sort of thing short and simple. Baby Steps is a game by resident hard-game maker Bennett Foddy, as well as Maxi Boch and Gabe Cuzzillo. It is a game where you play as a 30-something "hikikomori" / shut-in named Nate / Nathan after he gets transported to an abberation of Australia, a bunch of mountains and various modern day appliances / life things like pizza boxes, bottles of something and lots of other things. The gameplay itself is simple;…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bennett Foddy said Kojima's Death Stranding was "really inspirational" for him in creating Baby Steps, saying that it's basically an indie game wrapped in a big-budget cinematic narrative. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
neutral · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is the latest game to move its release date because of Silksong (from Sept 8th to Sept 23) www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ap...
neutral · AI labelView post →Gabe's Baby Steps GDC level design talk just got set to free - obviously I'm biased but the session feedback scores were also off the charts. Recommended: gdcvault.com/play/1035806...
neutral · AI labelView post →Please, please validate all the time I have spent playing/thinking about Baby Steps by reading this article? Please?? "Instead of doing anything normal with my life for the past week, I have been on a horrible hiking holiday with the worst man in the world." www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...
positive · AI labelView post →I was not expecting Baby Steps to feature any amount of penis, let alone the most amount of penis I’ve ever seen in a non-pornographic game.
neutral · AI labelView post →Non zero chance Baby Steps could end up my game of the year...
positive · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is a pretty kind game because if you get to a part that really sucks it’s usually because you don’t have to do it and choosing to do it is like standing in front of a pitching machine aimed directly at your nads.
neutral · AI labelView post →Big Walk and Baby Steps are really cementing "Australia-coded open world game that feels like you're in an outdoor sculpture garden" genre.
neutral · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is a cruel game. The Manbreaker, the game's toughest challenge, is especially cruel. But even by those standards, this is mean
neutral · AI labelView post →I tell this story now because this is what the video game Baby Steps is about. That is all.
neutral · AI labelView post →Starting to think I should not be doing this very difficult, totally voluntary challenge in Baby Steps that the game constantly warns you not to do.
neutral · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is a menace of a fucking video game. Don't trust it.
negative · AI labelView post →Derelict Star is 20% off! Get the game the creators of Baby Steps nominated for the "Earliest Game of the Year" awards and what PC Gamer calls "one of the best action platformers of the decade." Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3641010/... Itch: gate.itch.io/derelict-star
neutral · AI labelView post →I got to the seemingly unavoidable sad part of the game Baby Steps. And it is indeed very sad…
neutral · AI labelView post →I've seen many people refer to this as a "rage game", but I found the experience to be rather meditative. The game usually provides you with 2 or 3 options on how to proceed with your climb. Situations where there is only 1 option are only mildly challenging and thematic. Any time I started to feel frustrated I would also set the game down. Had a break, ate a snack, took care of myself. I probably also found myself feeling very patient steering Nate around because he reminded me a lot of a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Congratulations @gcuzzillo.bsky.social, @maxiboch.bsky.social and @foddy.net, Baby Steps is our 2025 Game of the Year! Listen to episode 483 of The Computer Game Show to hear how it won 🎧 Podcast: plinkhq.com/i/1100170036... 📺 YouTube: youtu.be/e7usEG5xXPc @devolverdigital.com @ultrabrilliant.xyz
neutral · AI labelView post →My GDC talk is up! It's about the world of Baby Steps, working with what's given, and asking open questions with level design: gdcvault.com/play/1035806...
neutral · AI labelView post →I so wish that this game wasn't so quickly dismissed as just some kind of streamer ragebait slop. I mean, sure, it can certainly do that job better than most games, but it's so much more, and more than that: I really think this game is fundamentally fair. I'll try to explain... the controls are awkward, and the price of failure is punishing, often extremely so. But it's always up front with you, or at least almost always. You nearly always know when you are in danger, and what might happen if…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Kinda a lazy day and I'd rather not be on social media for a second, so here's a twitch stream going live with Baby Steps, my game of the year where I spend an hour trying to get over one box, www.twitch.tv/psudonym
positive · AI labelView post →Silksong is about to land and it's leaving a smoldering crater of other game releases behind. Sorry Baby Steps.
neutral · AI labelView post →BABY STEPS! TODAY! PC & PS5!
neutral · AI labelView post →The #NewYorkGameAwards nominees for Best New York Game are: 🔵 Despelote 🔵 Baby Steps 🔵 Consume Me 🔵 Old Skies 🔵 Ball x Pit 🔵 Skate Story
neutral · AI labelView post →the strange answer to "what if a ragebait game was made with thought, care and exceptionally good writing". it has a vision, and it sticks to it. sometimes that vision is incredibly annoying. but i respect it. this is the first foddy that is surrounded by an actual game and narrative rather than a deliberately bad control scheme taken to its limit. that something like this exists is a minor miracle. the hardest challenges in the game are signified by no rewared whatsoever other than knocking…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Didn't know Baby Steps was a game so this just seemed like practical advice
neutral · AI labelView post →Manbreaker was tough, but it only took me 200 tries and 16 hours. Top of the mountain, maybe 50-70. Gotta get some more achievements before I can truly put this game to bed. Make a second one and make it harder, please, the mechanics are already perfect for frankly, any size mountain for us to have top climb next. Just you know, stop with the slippery bits, timing is tough especially when you can't technically walk fast enough unless you're glitching it like a speedrunner. Like, that's not…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's clever and meticulously designed. But this thing was created to annoy whoever plays it. It's raising my blood pressure, hurting my hands. And it tries to make you fail at the last moment after a lot of hard work. This feels like the devs should be paying the players to participate in their psychological experiment. Or maybe they are just truly misanthropic and the act of purchasing this game is the joke. Even at the times I am enjoying it, I'm still asking myself "Of all the games in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →They should re-release the game Baby Steps as the Conor McGregor Fight Simulator.
neutral · AI labelView post →Woke up thinking about the game, Baby Steps. Yeah I think this one was made for me…
positive · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is an incredible video game. You spend hours looking for a place called Box City, only to discover something much worse.
positive · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is a wonderful game about how hard it is to walk and the little audio cue at the end of this video made me laugh for like 30 seconds, completely covering up my frustration
positive · AI labelView post →So, Baby Steps was a huge surprise to me. I played the Next Fest demo, enjoyed the poo-poo pee-pee awkward humor and decided to wishlist it. But little did I know that, after the full game was out, I was in for a ride of a lifetime. To not spoil much, my first impression of Baby Steps was that of a juvenile-comedy game with goofy mechanics and a lot of exploration/secrets. Then, after the second checkpoint, the actual story beats come. Nate feels like this failson-coded Alice in Wonderland -…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A coda on my Baby Steps review: both a PSA for anyone thinking about streaming it and a short defense of nudity as a storytelling tool in an era where censorship threatens game creators. www.polygon.com/baby-steps-n...
neutral · AI labelView post →After 111 hours of playing this game, I have FINALLY DONE IT. SCREW YOU NATHAN FOR NEVER ACCEPTING ANYBODY'S HELP. You stink. You wasted my time. I could have been doing much more productive things. Like, knitting a sweater for my three chicks named Chicky (shoutout, you're my favorite), Dippy (you're pretty cool too) and Fizzy (i actually hate you, so I probably would not have given you a sweater anywayss, but that doesn't really matter) or whatever you want to call it. I could have been…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game was so much cheaper than going to therapy. Look, yes, I know you can all see how many hours I've played it and it looks insane. I've approached most of the challenges in this game with an obsessive never-give-up mentality, especially the ones that are completely optional and yield no reward whatsoever, but that's not for everyone. You can absolutely play like a normal person, spend 10-30 hours finding your own way to the ending which is very sweet, and have a good time. Now when I…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Baby Steps 9/10 Burgerz TLDR; This is not a Game for everyone, but this game made me look inward. I saw it as a reflection of life and it's challenges. I might have fallen 9999 times, but I got up 10000. The level of challenge you face in this game is shockingly up to you and the punishments you get for taking the path you chose is all optional most times, so how far do you want to push yourself? Foddy makes light of the player and the punishments they choose to take on. For a Small Team of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →a sad story in only six words @remapradio.bsky.social game backlog: Baby Steps (never beaten)
neutral · AI labelView post →THURSDAY EVENING in downtown Brooklyn I'm moderating a talk w/ julian cordero of @despelote.game ! @apthomson.bsky.social + @qdork.bsky.social of Consume Me ! @gcuzzillo.bsky.social of Baby Steps ! Come discuss the SHEER AUDACITY to release an indie game in 2025 alumnideveloperspanel.eventbrite.com
neutral · AI labelView post →no video game has ever filled me with the kind of urgency and desire than baby steps did when i saw a tortoise moving at a brisk pace and decided i needed to stand on it and spent half an hour chasing it while my friend played mario kart music. nor has any game matched the euphoria i felt when i succeeded. this might be THE game of all time
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's Game Devs of Color Expo this week! Gonna talk a bit about my work with @gdocexpo.com on stream, then play some Baby Steps maybe? :)
neutral · AI labelView post →I think this achievement in Baby Steps is maybe now my favourite game achievement ever:
positive · AI labelView post →Works surprisingly well as a couch co-op game: - 2 controllers - leftmost player controls the left leg - rightmost the right leg - and whoever's more prone to simulation sickness controls the camera. Perfect couple's game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very interested to see what Valve and Epic have deemed so scandalous about Horses, because Baby Steps also features full frontal donkey cock throughout the entire game and Steam was (correctly) unbothered by it!
neutral · AI labelView post →Baby Steps is nominated for a DICE award for Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game! Lots of great games on the list
neutral · AI labelView post →Working on a lil something. (using audio from a collection of cutscenes from the game Baby Steps)
neutral · AI labelView post →a thought i don't understand yet but can't get out of my head while playing Baby Steps: this is a mecha game
neutral · AI labelView post →I approached Baby Steps as if it were a gimmick game, but found something much deeper. It perfectly encapsulates the human experience into an uncomfortable and confronting package. At first I thought it was just a silly walking game like QWOP or Getting Over It, but the more I explored the more I found that it is an exercise of living in the moment and being open to experiences that scare you or seem nonsensical upfront. It also has a heavy theme of addressing stored trauma and confronting…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bennett Foddy is a legendary game designer behind games like QWOP, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, and Baby Steps. He joins Joe Nash to discuss game design and why his games stand out. @foddy.net softwareengineeringdaily.com/2026/03/24/g...
neutral · AI labelView post →Baby Steps might be my favourite game of all time
positive · AI labelView post →The discourse of difficulty in video games is nothing new - my, look how it’s grown! Its flourished amidst the development of masochisticly hard games from souls-like to kaiso hacks. Even QWOP, Bennett Foddy’s breakthrough game is nearly old enough to drink, so it’s something of a coming of age ritual to see him revisit the funny walking simulator in Baby Steps alongside co-designers Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch. Playable character Nate is the poster-child for arrested development, teleported…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →is Baby Steps my game of the year? maybe.
positive · AI labelView post →I haven't played Bennett Foddy's other games outside of a token 2-3 minutes of QWOP at some point, but I'm aware of his reputation as a designer of ragebait type games popular among the streaming set for easy content. Baby Steps is, despite appearances, not actually that. Sure, that's the impression it gives, with the trailers full of weird awkward cutscenes and the protagonist falling down a lot, but the game design is a lot more gentle and on-rails than it seems. The map design is extremely…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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