How Baby Steps Is Actually A Game About Depression

Baby Steps is a silly game about walking, falling over, awkward social interactions, and getting up to some absolute nonsense. But what if I told you that this indie darling is actually about mental health and the spiralling consequences of dealing with depression?

I’ll be honest, I half-expected Baby Steps to lean into this direction before playing it. There are plenty of games that seem lighthearted on the surface, only to dive into heavier themes by the end: Celeste, Omori, Gris, Night in the Woods, Chicory, Psychonauts; the list goes on.

However, many of those games are intended to tackle these topics directly, or eventually touch on similar themes in appropriately heavy moments, with twists and turns that lead into something significantly more thoughtful than expected.

Baby Steps, on the other hand, never connects these dots or gives you direct answers. By the end credits, you’re not given a revelation or complete satisfaction about the journey you’ve spent hours trudging through. Much of the game seems like nonsense, and it is. It’s funny, it’s silly, and it’s inexplicable. But when looking back, reading between the lines, and putting it all together, there’s something indirectly meaningful being communicated.

This article will contain major spoilers for Baby Steps.

Nate Seems Like A Stereotypical ‘Loser’

Baby Steps Nate at the start of the game on the sofa watching TV.

The main character of Baby Steps, Nate, is depicted as a stereotypical loser. He’s a 35-year-old man who lives in his parents’ basement, rarely standing up from the indentation in his couch, surrounded by clutter, eating junk food, playing video games, and watching One Piece.

That’s not a dig from me, he’s literally fallen asleep with Netflix’s “Are You Still Watching?” screen with One Piece written above it in the game.

After overhearing his parents arguing about Nate’s situation, he suddenly pops out of existence and into a strange world that you’ll spend the next 20 hours re-learning to walk in. You’ll get to see the countless interactions between Nate and some truly odd characters as he learns to communicate like a normal person for the first time. It’s awkward, but also strangely endearing.

The First Frustration Is The Core Of Depression

As you get started on this long hike, you might grow frustrated as Nate opts to turn down any help offered to him, albeit in the most awkward way possible. He acts like he’s fine and doesn’t need shoes, like he doesn’t want a map, and like a grappling hook wouldn’t be any help to him. As players, you’ll be struggling to get to grips with the game and really wish you had those things to help – so why doesn’t he just take them?

Well, that’s the point. Nate doesn’t know how to ask for help, how to accept help, and often convinces himself he doesn’t need any help. These are recurring issues amidst mental health patterns, and can be a dangerous way to spiral or decline. Even if you have so many people around you who are actively offering to help and give you what you need, sometimes people just don’t know how to accept it or to ask for what they actually need. In many ways, you can see that Nate tries to brush it off because he’s capable, but in reality, he feels like a burden.

The refusal of help is one of the main recurring themes in Baby Steps. You’ll encounter so many characters and situations that could easily help Nate, but he refuses them. Whether it’s directly turning down equipment someone is offering or ignoring advice from other characters for the sake of proving something. More often than not, it’s us – the player – trying to prove something. But in doing so, we’re only further depicting how Nate can’t do what’s best for himself.

Once you finally reach the end, at Moose’s cabin just before the mountain summit, we see Nate awkwardly knocking on Moose’s door. This happens a few times, as Nate seems to be clearly waiting for the offer to come in. However, he’s turned down help time and time again, so Moose doesn’t offer anything. Soon enough, Nate actually asks if he can come in, and Moose welcomes Nate with open arms as he walks into the cabin, and the credits roll.

There’s no grand reward. There’s no glorious victory. The game ends when Nate actually asks for help. That alone should tell you something.

Baby Steps Is A Long Journey To Nowhere

Baby Steps Nate stood in tall grass looking at a sunrise.

Is there a point to climbing this mountain? No. Are you told, multiple times, that there is no point to climbing this mountain? Yes. But we do it anyway. We put ourselves through the struggle, taking on the full weight of the challenge alone, and ultimately, it’s all for nothing.

Even after the final scene of Nate arriving at Moose’s cabin, you can choose to head back out and climb the mountain’s summit. Moose warns you, once more, that there is nothing up there. But we can ignore that and do it anyway. It’s not an easy climb, and unlike the rest of the game, there’s no clear-cut path or row of obstacles standing between you and the top. It’s a mountain. You have to find the way up and manage it.

But once up there – something that took me over an hour and way too much stress – there’s nothing. One final silly cutscene, but nothing rewarding. The reward was reaching it, but is that good? Was it an accomplishment, or a needless struggle? That’s up to you.

What Happened To Nate In The Real World?

Baby Steps Nate's room dark and falling into disrepair.

It’s never explained why Nate disappears at the start of the game, reappearing in this strange land before the hike begins. There’s probably no canon explanation or reason to investigate it further, but as I progressed, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

As you reach the end of each level, you’ll rest at a campsite before moving on to the next climb. As Nate sleeps, we see a screen where we can select “Onward and Upward”. However, this screen is the same shot of Nate’s basement room, but it changes over time.

We see it empty, before beginning to fall into disrepair. Then we see it emptied, painted, renovated, and new gym equipment begins to show up. Why? Is this a means of showing Nate’s self-improvement? It could be, and it depends on how you interpret things. For me, I get the feeling this isn’t Nate’s room anymore. Perhaps Nate’s disappearance was him passing away, having never asked or accepted help, falling into a state where everything was left too late. Whether that means the mountain is purgatory, the afterlife, or something else entirely, I don’t know. But there’s one key reason I think Nate died and now exists in a state of purgatory.

Nate’s Wish

Baby Steps Nate at the angel in the castle ready to make his wish.

Midway through the game, we’re told about a castle up the mountain capable of granting wishes. Without any real direction, it’s safe to assume this would become our primary objective. There’s humour played out over this idea because Nate clearly wants to use his wish to go home, while other characters ask him to wish for an obscene number of cigarettes.

Once we arrive at the castle and Nate is prepared to make his wish, he suddenly sees his own life for what it truly is. He sees himself rotting away on the couch, surrounded by trash in a dark room, ashamed of who he is and the lack of achievement. Then, Nate finishes his wish by saying, “I wish… I was dead.” This solemn admittance is then sharply interrupted by Ethan saying, “Oh, Nathan, it doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.”

Nate awakens for the next leg of the journey, and off we go once more. There’s a sequence in which Nate has to walk through his parents’ house, looping back on itself over and over, as he hears the distant voices of his mother and his past.

Nate Isn’t The Only One

Baby Steps Nate and Moose sat together looking out at the summit.

After going through so much, Nate eventually wakes up at the next campfire with Moose. Moose is wondering why Nate is still here, but he tries to play it off as if he just decided not to go home. Moose then talks to Nate about how he was once going to use his wish to go home, too, but changed his mind. When asked why, Moose expressed that he didn’t want to go back there, and he was ashamed and hated himself.

Later, there’s another scene where Nate can encounter fellow hiker Mike. Mike talks about how he never really had any friends back home, and was grateful to have a friend in Nate. Nate is just as awkward in this conversation, of course, but it’s a further glimpse into the kinds of people who are here, on this mountain.

There are also end-of-chapter simulated video games you can briefly play if you’re wearing one of the collectible hats. One of these shows a character attending many birthdays throughout their life, as everyone around them grows up and achieves incredible things, while the protagonist has nothing.

There’s Important Messaging To Baby Steps, If You Accept The Help

Baby Steps Turn back sign with Nate stepping forward towards the ledge.

The core experience of Baby Steps is about asking for help or accepting it. It doesn’t give you any answers, any direct advice, or any revelations, but it does touch on the same themes with nuanced introspection. We watch as Nate learns to eventually ask for help from those around him and accept it in the process. Maybe it’s too late when he finally does, both for his journey and for his life, but he gets there eventually.

There’s no victory in this game. There’s no reward or satisfaction. You can struggle through it all, but you’ll have nothing to show for it. That might frustrate you, you might find it funny, and that’s the point. But there’s also a lesson to be learned that some journeys are challenging, even if they don’t need to be, and they might ultimately lead to nothing.

Ask yourself why you did it. Do you wish Nate had taken the help for shoes, a map, and a grapple? Do you wish you hadn’t wasted so many extra hours on meaningless exploration? There’s a lot of extra contemplation once this game is over, and personally, the more I think about it, the more I find myself fascinated by it.