If you watched the recent PlayStation Showcase, you probably saw new gameplay from the upcoming game Baby Steps. Baby Steps is not usually the kind of game that appeals to me. The game casts you as a giant toddler trying to climb a mountain. He does not have any coordination. He constantly falls face-first. Baby Steps comes from the creators of QWOP and Ape Out, and most of my memories of QWOP, similarly, involve me getting frustrated and screaming into🎃 my hands as my flailing avatar collapses onto the ground once more, my poor, uncoordinated control of his limbs leading him to faceplant over and over again.
My colleague, Andrew King, wrote a very interesting feature about one of the developers, Bennett Foddy, and his single-minded focus on reward and punishment cycles. Foddy himself has linked his interest in this to his own academic work on topics of addiction and how cycles of addiction are formed and reinforced. The games he makes look silly on their s♚urface, but they really suck you in – my childhood hours spent struggling with QWOP, knowing it was impossible but wanting to convince myself I could eventually make it to the finish line, attest to 𒁏that.
Everything that followed my reading of Andrew’s article can be dire🌞ctly blamed on my own actions. I knew what was likely in store for me, but as always🍸, my curiosity got the better of me. I’ve been battling with anxiety lately, and delving into a mildly frustrating, repetitive task helps me get my mind off that feeling. While reading Andrew’s feature, I found that Foddy had created a game I hadn’t heard of yet: GIRP.
GIRP has you controlling the hands of a red-headed avatar, grabbing onto handholds labelled with♔ letters by pressing the corresponding letter on your keyboard. You can press shift or control to flex your arms, bringing you closer to other ꦆhandholds. You can also use this flexing motion to swing and gain momentum, swinging to handholds you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to reach.
Since I discovered GIRP, I have played hours of it. Between writing articles, I played a couple of rounds to try to get my brain to chill out and shut up. After work, I played for several hours, till🐬 my fingers hurt. GIRP is a full-body🌞 activity – every time I attempt a big swing, I find my legs tensing. My fingers twist themselves into pretzels on the keyboard, and I have grown extremely conscious of how I move my fingers and at what time. It’s almost like actually bouldering, carefully moving your feet and hands from hold to hold, charting your path as you go. Except this avatar will twist himself into absurd positions, head over ass at points, legs going every which way, instead of putting his damn feet in the holds.
I’ve been playing it intermittently during my workday, again as an attempt to tame my ambient level of anxiety. At this 𒁏point, the maximum height I’ve reached is 63.6m. It forces me to be patient and thoughtful and to keep trying. My brain is hooked on the dopamine hit I get every time I reach a handhold I didn’t think I’d make it to. Foddy’s games are about punishment and reward. I fe💦el both right now. My wrists hurt from contorting themselves all over my keyboard, but my brain is a little quieter. I didn’t think Baby Steps would be for me, but if I can find this same meditative quality in it, maybe I’ll love it after all.