Independent designer Bennett Foddy is famed for unconventional choices in his games—often bordering on trolling players. Baby Steps is no different: the creator opted to “penalize” those who skip cutscenes and ignore the narrative.
Skipping cutscenes here is handled in an unusual way. At first, holding the action button—as most players expect—suffices. But each time you bypass a clip, the mechanic evolves into progressively trickier mini-games: sometimes you must rapidly tap instead of holding, and other times the progress indicator seems to slip away from the player.
Skip too many scenes and the protagonist, Nate, refuses to continue recounting the story; the player will then see no further cutscenes. The ending, however, changes: instead of a standard epilogue, you get nearly half an hour of an unskippable sequence.
SPOILER!
In that sequence Nate is voiced by developer Gabe Cuzzillo, while Bennett Foddy appears as a humanoid donkey. They sit on a cottage doorstep lamenting the lack of interest in the plot. The conversation soon wanders—touching on the Joker, Game of Thrones, and Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The scene plays out almost like a full podcast embedded in the game.
You can debate whether this is punishment for ignoring cutscenes or, alternatively, a peculiar kind of reward.
Source: iXBT.games