Indie developer Bennett Foddy is known for unusual decisions in his games, often bordering on trolling players. Baby Steps is no exception, as the author decided to "punish" those who skip cutscenes and don't delve into the plot.
Skipping cutscenes here is unusual. At the beginning, it's enough to simply hold down the action button, as most players are used to. But with each skipped video, the process turns into increasingly complex mini-games: sometimes you need to quickly press the button instead of holding it, and sometimes the indicator "runs away" from the player.
If you skip too many scenes, the main character Nate will refuse to tell the story, and the player will not see a single cutscene until the end. But the ending changes: instead of the standard epilogue, almost half an hour of unskippable scene opens.
SPOILER!
In this scene, Nate is voiced by developer Gabe Cuzzillo, and Bennett Foddy appears as a humanoid donkey. They sit on the doorstep of a small house and complain about the lack of interest in the plot. Soon the conversation goes off to the side — they discuss the Joker, "Game of Thrones," and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet from Naughty Dog. The scene sounds almost like a full-fledged podcast inside the game.
One can argue whether this is a punishment for ignoring cutscenes, or vice versa — a kind of reward.
