I wish I’d known thi…
I’ve only played about five hours of Baby Steps, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned during that time, it’s that you always need to have complete visibility over where Nate is putting his feet. Since this is a “walking simulator” and this logic applies to real life too, it may seem overly obvious. And it might be. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I know I’m not alone in that.
Baby Steps is played from a third-person perspective and it lets you change whether the camera is oriented to the left or right of Nate. But during the trickier traversal scenarios, such as when you’re navigating a very narrow bridge or even something as thin as a tightrope, I found that it was basically essential to train that camera on Nate’s feet via a top -down perspective. Just seeing Nate’s legs is not enough!
Just like this (thanks to Morgan Park for the video):
In other words, don’t just let the camera languish on Nate’s butt. Move it around, but especially move it up.
The physics in Baby Steps are detailed and fun to mess with, but even when you’re just walking along seemingly safe surfaces, a simple obscurely placed rock can send you tumbling. It’s fine to fall—sometimes in Baby Steps you have to fall—but during circumstances when you know that a fall is going to carve hours worth of progress off your odyssey, then let me repeat: get that camera into a top-down perspective.
You’ll quickly learn that Nate’s capable of some pretty amazing climbing feats that would normally be out of reach for a 35-year-old slob. Knowing exactly where you’re placing either of your two feet is pretty essential for all of ’em, along with some complex (and illogical) approaches to momentum that I am very far from mastering at this point.