Bennett Foddy's Latest Trip: Why the QWOP Architect Still Loves Making Us Choke (and Learn!)
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Bennett Foddy, the quirky genius behind 'choke machines' like QWOP and Getting Over It, is set to unleash his most ambitious project yet, *Baby Steps*, a 3D open-world game about the sheer, wobbly struggle of walking. He's not just making us fall over for laughs; he's crafting experiences designed to teach us the profound pleasure of learning through failure.
Right, so Bennett Foddy, the bloke who famously made us all flail about like a digital puppet on a unicycle with QWOP, is back with a new game, *Baby Steps*. And believe you me, it's a wilder, more ambitious trip down the rabbit hole of human locomotion (or lack thereof) than you might expect. I've been tinkering with this story all morning, and bloody hell, it’s got me thinking about all sorts of things – mainly, why this digital wizard keeps making games that are designed to make us spectacularly fail, and why we keep coming back for more.
Foddy, apparently, has spent two decades perfecting the art of the glorious pratfall, the 'choke machine,' as he rather brilliantly calls it. You know that feeling when you cast a spell and it works a bit *too* well, or when you're just *certain* you've nailed that tricky jump, only to find yourself plummeting into the abyss? That's Foddy's bread and butter, mate. He’s the maestro of making the mundane incredibly, hilariously difficult.
Now, here's a bit of delightful irony for you: when asked for his best walking pro tip, Foddy's wisdom was, "Don't think about it." Coming from the chap who built entire digital worlds designed to make you *overthink* every single muscle twitch, that's just gold dust, isn't it? He shared a cracker of a story about kids falling over during slow Christmas service walks because everyone was watching, and they thought about it too much. That image, apparently, has been the secret sauce behind his game design for nearly two decades. Genius, really, spotting that pattern in human behaviour.
We all remember QWOP, don't we? Uploaded to his personal website in 2008, a casual Flash experiment that unexpectedly blew up two years later when a certain content creator, Cr1TiKaL, decided to give it a whirl. Suddenly, the internet was ablaze with people trying to make a runner move more than two paces without collapsing in a heap. It was a glorious time when finding a weird, poorly designed website with a bizarre, impossible game felt like unearthing some ancient, deep internet treasure. Foddy, cleverly observant as ever, even held back from updating it, preserving that 'amateurism' that gave it a 'sense of life.' You don't get that feeling much anymore, do you? Most things are polished to within an inch of their lives these days.
But here's the kicker: Foddy reckons his games aren't just about walking. They're about failure, and more importantly, about *learning*. It's like grinding through a Souls-like – you start off completely rubbish, die a thousand times, but each spectacular failure teaches you something. You adapt, you learn, you get a tiny bit better, and eventually, you achieve mastery. That, he argues, is the core pleasure of video games, condensed into every agonizing step and every humiliating tumble in his creations.
This philosophy really came into its own with *Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy* in 2018. If QWOP was about your legs, *Getting Over It* took them away entirely, replacing them with a man in a pot and a sledgehammer, traversing a ridiculous landscape. It was maddening, sending you spiralling back to square one with one false move, yet Foddy's soothing narration encouraged players to find peace in their failures. It spawned a whole subgenre of 'rage games,' proving that sometimes, being intentionally antagonistic in your game design can create a profoundly resonant, almost zen-like, experience. It’s a genuine innovation, even if it feels like a cosmic joke at your expense.
And what about golf, you ask? Foddy's not even a golfer, but he talks about it like it's the ultimate 'choke machine.' That moment when you know you're about to mess up, but it hasn't happened yet – that delicious, terrifying anticipation of failure. He sees games like *Golf With Your Friends* as tapping into that, creating social, high-pressure environments where the simple act of hitting a ball becomes an existential crisis. Fair dinkum, he's got a point. It's the human story behind the corporate announcement, distilled into a single, wobbly swing.
Now, all of this culminates in *Baby Steps*, his most ambitious project yet. Imagine QWOP, but blown up into a 3D open-world game – 'Morrowind-sized,' no less! Foddy and his collaborator, Gabe Cuzzillo, looked at games like *Death Stranding* and thought, 'What if we actually made the walking *the thing*?' Not just an abstracted animation, but a full physics simulation where every step is a deliberate, precarious act. It's an anti-hero's journey, starring a couch potato 'manchild' with atrophied legs who gets sucked into a dark world. It's a clever satire of those uber-competent open-world protagonists we're so used to, forcing players to grapple with something we all take for granted: simply putting one foot in front of the other.
When players first tried *Baby Steps*, they naturally mimicked the movements of a toddler learning to walk – not because Foddy studied infants, but because that's just how humans figure things out. It highlights his core belief: there's immense pleasure in learning. Whether it's piecing together how to make QWOP's runner crawl across the finish line (Foddy admits he's never actually done it himself, which is just brilliant) or slowly mastering *Getting Over It*, his games offer a fast-track to that sense of mastery we crave. You get to learn, fall, curse, and then learn some more. It’s what keeps us gamers hooked, isn't it?
It's a testament to Foddy's journey as an indie developer too; always learning, always adapting. He jokes that perhaps he has 'undiagnosed ADD' for constantly wanting to pick up new skills, but honestly, that's the spirit of true innovation. After *Baby Steps*, he's even quipped about making a golf game. And you know what? After this deep dive, I reckon I'd be genuinely excited for that. Because with Foddy, it's never just about the game; it's about exploring the very human experience of trying, failing, learning, and finally, getting over it.
Tags: Indie Games, Game Design, Bennett Foddy, Player Experience, Physics Games
Original article: Polygon