Baby Steps review: the hell and hilarity of hiking

There are only two things that Nate really wants to do: use the toilet (one that, he emphasizes, comes with three walls and a door) and go home. He also walks with a strange gait, with one tiny foot raised awkwardly in front of the other, before landing with a gentle plop. At times, he teeters to one side, nearly off balance, as he strives to hike up a very tall, steep, and seemingly belligerent mountain. Nate’s a ragdoll barely held together by a severely compromised musculoskeletal system, powered by a deep-seated urge to trudge toward an outhouse.

Nate is also you. The incongruity of the tedium of hiking, an activity he perennially curses, and the earnestness of hiking culture makes the comedy of Baby Steps — an open-world exploration game from a trio of indie developers, including QWOP designer Bennett Foddy — surprisingly cathartic. Its hilarity is drawn from the harrowing experiences of a reluctant, athletically challenged hiker. Every step has to be micromanaged. Walk too quickly and you can lose your balance; miscalculate the size of your stride and you will probably tumble off a cliff. Then there are the fellow hikers you meet along the way, and the contrast between Nate’s awkward, morose outlook versus their unbridled enthusiasm for clambering over dirt and rocks is sublime.

Thus, there’s a nearly perverse dimension to hiking that Baby Steps instinctively understands: it’s really exhausting for the innately clumsy.

Even walking in Baby Steps is laborious. This involves pressing a button to gradually lift up one leg, another button to hoist the other leg up, and directional keys that will see Nate putting his weight — or leaning toward — a specific point. It will take you a while to get used to this cadence, and making this even more hilariously frustrating is that Nate possesses none of the upper body strength that most people have. Forget using your hands to break your fall or scramble over small boulders; Nate’s floppy arms will do no work and carry no weight. It’s all part of what Baby Steps proudly presents as “fully-simulated physics based walking,” geared toward encouraging sheer buffoonery.

Beyond just walking, Baby Steps doesn’t give you any sort of goals, aside from heading to the next campsite. This means you can saunter to wherever takes your fancy, be it strutting toward a crumbling tower or climbing a small hill just to see what’s at its peak. Unlike the goal-driven structure of traditional games, Baby Steps offers neither quests nor rewards for your trek. The game also eschews the staples of open-world games with massive maps, such as fast travel, mini maps, and upgradeable gear — features that will ease your traversal from one point to the next.

You can, of course, make your way toward the end with minimal detours, but this approach will make Baby Steps feel very banal, very quickly. To enjoy what Baby Steps has to offer, then, is to find a point in its hike even when there’s no discernible point at all. In a way, it’s a game that offers one of the purest expressions of hiking. Any hiking enthusiast will talk your ears off about how the process is the point: you’re here to take in the sights of the trail, to marinate in the beauty of the wilderness, and to dirty your feet trudging across some of the muddiest terrains in existence.

Even as an avowed hiking skeptic, I can’t help but grudgingly agree with this perspective; Baby Steps does have many sights worth slogging for. Littered across its landscapes are several trees bearing glowing fruits, which you can pick — and noisily devour — if you can reach them. There are several non-collectible hats to discover, which you can plonk on your head gingerly. Unfortunately, these can easily go missing if you fall from a great height; I’ve lost many precious hats in my own perilous journey. Then there are the items you can find and return to their owners. Chancing upon these make up some of the most memorable events of my hike.

In my first playthrough, I found a set of keys while breaking into a seemingly abandoned hut (just another regular hiking activity), but Nate’s less-than-stellar grip strength means that he has a tendency to drop the item whenever he trips over his own feet. This led me on an extensive wild goose chase as I sought to retrieve the keys: painstakingly search through a grassy field, scramble around the rocky chasm of a pit, and waddle after the offending item as it floats down a river. I did lose the keys in the end, but all the scouting led me to discover several landmarks and other delectable secrets. I won’t spoil what they are for you.

Beneath the absurd slapstick of Baby Steps, however, lies an axiom that many hiking detractors have known for ages: hiking is hell. The more Nate walks, the more soiled his onesie gets. The soles of his bare feet are stained with an indelible brown, and he sometimes lays on his back with a defeated sigh after suffering a spectacular fall. It’s how the game stands out from the burgeoning genre of hiking simulators like Death Stranding, A Short Hike, and Firewatch — titles that depict the activity as a meditative, serene experience.

But in Baby Steps, you aren’t just traversing treacherous environments, but also getting around with your own ramshackle body. Your legs betray your exhaustion; your head screams as you make another agonizing misstep. It’s a hiking experience that reflects the reality of folks who lose their motor skills when faced with the prospect of climbing up yet another craggy hill.

_{Baby Steps launches on September 23rd on the PS5 and Steam.}