Baby Steps’ Prototype is as Hilarious as You’d Imagine

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The upcoming game, Baby Steps, promises a unique experience with its quirky humor and challenging physics. The developers recently shared a look at the game’s early stages, and the changes since then are quite noticeable.

I’m really excited for *Baby Steps* to come out – it’s almost here! From what I’ve seen, it’s totally designed for people who love watching and streaming games. It looks like it’s going to be one of those ‘rage games’ – you know, the kind with tricky movement and weird physics that streamers and speedrunners go crazy for. I recently read an interview with the developers – Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy – over at Game Rant, and they talked about the game and how the whole thing started as a really strange prototype.

Baby Steps’ Prototype Shows Some Funny Design History

As you might expect from the creators of *Getting Over It*, *Baby Steps* uses the same core physics engine. Designer Bennett Foddy noted that the initial fun came through in an early 2019 prototype. Even without the final game’s complex “ragdoll physics,” the team found simple enjoyment in just walking up a small test hill. This unusual way of moving through a mountainous landscape has been central to *Baby Steps* since the very beginning.

The initial versions of the game look very different from what was shown in the Baby Steps trailer and the game’s realistic settings. Foddy described how these first prototypes appeared.

Gabe’s initial game idea was incredibly simple – just a few shapes representing feet, a glowing sphere for the rear, and lines for legs. The second version featured a standard helicopter pilot exploring a tiny mountain area, roughly 4 by 20 meters. By the third version, we had Nate navigating a much larger, foggy, and rainy mountain environment.

Honestly, when I think back to the very first prototype of *Baby Steps*, I don’t expect much in the way of polished graphics – especially for a game so focused on getting the physics *just* right. But it’s still funny to imagine what it looked like at the beginning! It’s cool to see that even then, Nate’s little cheeks were a key part of his design. It’s easy to picture him as a basic stick figure, but apparently, those early versions were actually really fun to play. The team quickly realized the game had potential, and Mark Foddy has mentioned they found that core enjoyment in those original builds.

Even back in 2019, the first version Gabe created was surprisingly enjoyable, despite being very basic – just simple shapes and no realistic movement. That’s quite rare for a 3D game, because usually you need a lot more features working correctly before it really feels good.

Foddy explained that the basic versions of *Baby Steps* actually laid the groundwork for the finished game, and that much of the later development involved removing unnecessary features. He emphasized the importance of concentrating on the game’s essential elements, like its distinctive physics, instead of adding typical open-world extras.

It’s easy when creating a large, open-world game to want to add lots of extra features to make it feel more complete. Most big-budget games do this – things like gathering materials, crafting items, managing resources, unlocking parts of the map, completing long questlines, collecting numerous items, and adding fast travel options or ways to improve your character’s abilities. However, we strongly believed that the fundamental gameplay of our game was already engaging and complex enough without needing any of those extra systems. This core principle – avoiding unnecessary additions – heavily influenced the entire design of the game.

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2025-09-17 19:19