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Speedrun Potential: Can Baby Steps’ Clumsy Mechanics Spawn a New Speedrunning Meta?

UUnknown

2026-02-15

9 min read

Baby Steps’ awkward physics may be speedrunning gold. Learn how glitches, TAS, and community categories can form a new meta in 2026.

Hook: tired of well-polished games with shallow speedrun ceilings?

Speedrunners and streamers—if you’re frustrated hunting for new titles that reward repetition, frame-perfect skill, and emergent tricks, Baby Steps might be the weird, clumsy synth-wave your category roster needs. Its intentionally awkward controls and physics-first design create a deep, quirky mechanical space where glitches, precision movement, and creative routing can blossom into a full-blown meta. This article breaks down why that’s true, how a community can codify categories, and practical steps for runners, streamers, and event organizers to build a sustainable speedrunning scene around an indie darling released in late 2025.

The thesis up front

At its core: Baby Steps is engineered to be awkward—an aesthetic choice from creators like Bennett Foddy and Gabe Cuzzillo that purposefully resists smooth, reflexive play. That resistance creates a wide skill ceiling. Where a polished platformer evens out inputs, a physics-driven, clumsy protagonist produces exploitable microstates and borderline exploits that skilled runners can master. Given the game’s developer pedigree and community appetite for novelty in 2026, the title is primed to spawn both TAS experimentation and live speedrunning categories—if the community organizes early and smart.

Why intentionally clumsy mechanics attract speedrunners

Speedrunning thrives on two things: repeatable complexity and the potential for optimization. Baby Steps delivers both.

Repeatable complexity

Physics-driven animations produce non-linear outcomes: the same input can yield different trajectories depending on micro-positioning and momentum.
Long, exaggerated animations create windows for animation cancels and timing exploits.
Environmental interactions—rock edges, ropes, ledges—respond differently at high vs. low velocities, opening up movement tech discovery.

Potential for high-skill optimization

Because inputs are hard to execute cleanly, mastering them rewards practice—perfect for high-level runs.
The game’s “awkward” feel creates a meaningful difference between a casual run and an expert run—exactly what categories need to stay engaging.

What kinds of glitches and techniques are likely to appear?

Emergent tech usually starts as a fluke. In Baby Steps, expect the first discoveries to follow familiar patterns from other physics-focused indie hits.

Collision clipping: odd hitbox states when Nate squeezes into seams between terrain and props.
Momentum cancels: timing an input to interrupt a long animation and preserve speed or directional intent.
Edge grabs and ledge stutters: repeated partial grabs that let players inch past an obstacle faster than normal traversal.
Camera or physics desync: frame-perfect actions that exploit update loops to skip frames of restitution, effectively teleporting small distances.
Safe-fall saves: exploiting ragdoll or recovery states to bypass slow climbing sections.

Tool-assisted and AI discoveries

By 2026, the speedrun and TAS communities routinely use machine assistance to explore high-dimensional input spaces. Expect neural-net-driven search and frame-by-frame simulators to surface routes humans miss, then human runners will practice those optimized inputs. The community should plan how to treat these discoveries: a TAS can demonstrate feasibility and inspire live runs, but live runners need space to claim the human execution meta.

Lessons from QWOP, Getting Over It, and similar indies

Bennett Foddy’s previous games became cultural touchstones for emergent challenge—QWOP’s limb-by-limb controls and Getting Over It’s brutal momentum-based climbing both drew obsessive communities. Those titles taught the scene two enduring lessons:

Developers with a playful stance toward player failure often fuel community creativity—Foddy’s openness to speedrunning helped QWOP and Getting Over It keep relevance.
Frustration-as-design breeds long tails—players return to practice perfect sequences, and speedrunners build categories that celebrate the game’s unique pain points.

"It’s a loving mockery..." — developers of Baby Steps framed Nate as a deliberately pathetic protagonist, a design choice that doubles as a mechanic-rich playground for players.

Practical roadmap: how the community should seed a Baby Steps speedrun scene

Start with structure. Organized communities survive patches and meta shifts; ad-hoc leaderboards do not. Here’s a practical step-by-step plan.

Create an official hub: establish a Baby Steps Discord and a page on Speedrun.com with clear instructions for proof, versions, and routing FAQs.
Define versioning rules: lock leaderboards to the release version or allow a "live" board with patch notes. Prefer version tags (e.g., v1.0, v1.1) so runs remain comparable.
Set submission standards: require full-game footage, an input display where feasible, and a webcam or audio commentary for races. Encourage LiveSplit splits and a short run notes section.
Encourage TAS-led discovery: create a TAS category and a rotating "TAS Findings" thread where optimizations are shared, then voted into live-run categories after community vetting.
Document glitches early: set up a public Google Sheet or wiki to log consistent reproducible glitches, with steps to reproduce and whether they are allowed in each category.

Tools to adopt from day one

LiveSplit for timed segments
OBS for stream capture and overlaying input display
Input visualizers (controller/mouse/key displays)
Frame-advance/TAS tools if the community wants a TAS leaderboard
Versioned builds and archival methods (record the checksum/hash of the running executable)

Suggested community categories to kickstart a meta

Good categories balance accessibility with depth. Here are practical, immediately actionable categories tailored to the game’s design.

Any% — finish the game as quickly as possible with no restrictions (standard starter).
Glitchless — no sequence breaks or known clipping exploits (to reward pure traversal skill).
Minimal Steps — minimize the number of discrete climbing or climbing-rest cycles; forces optimized movement and route selection.
Perfection — no falls that cause reset; punishing, high-skill category for elites.
TAS Any% — tool-assisted runs demonstrating theoretical minima and opening up live-runnable goals.
Relay/Co-op — a community-friendly format where teams pass off after each major section (perfect for marathons).
Seeded RNG/Challenge Runs — fixed seeds or modifier-based runs (e.g., low-visibility, strong wind) for variety and spectator appeal.

How speedrun events and streamers should present Baby Steps

Indie games with comedic failure states are gold for streams and marathons—they generate memorable moments and high viewer engagement. Here’s how to leverage Baby Steps at speedrun events.

Highlight the comedic tragedy: add slow-motion replays of spectacular fails during interstitials; viewers love schadenfreude when it's tasteful.
Segment novelty runs: open a marathon block with a TAS demo, followed by a top-tier Any% run to show the human gap.
Use incentives: donation incentives for risky route attempts or community-submitted challenges (e.g., "Fastest run wearing the onesie hat").
Verification at events: capture raw footage to multiple devices and keep checksums/console logs for official runs to prevent disputes.

Race formats to test

First-to-Checkpoint races — competitive, short segments ideal for Twitch races.
Streak races — multiple small stages run back-to-back; penalties for falls increase tension.
Viewer-controlled RNG — integrate chat votes that alter modifiers mid-run to increase unpredictability and entertainment.

Dealing with developer patches and maintaining a healthy meta

Patching is the speedrunning scene’s existential challenge. Indie developers often patch exploits either intentionally or as collateral.

Negotiate a patch policy: create a publicly agreed set of rules for leaderboards—version-lock or live-mode distinction.
Archive builds: runners should keep versioned copies and checksums; event organizers should require version proof for submissions.
Work with devs: invite the team to community channels; developers often enjoy seeing their odd systems celebrated—this can lead to "glitch-preserving" patches or official categories.

Ethics and etiquette around TAS and AI-assisted discoveries

TAS runs and AI tooling accelerate discovery—useful, but potentially controversial. Set community norms early:

Segregate leaderboards: keep TAS separate from human-run leaderboards.
Credit and transparency: share TAS scripts, input logs, and methods that discovered a trick.
Community votes: major category changes (e.g., accepting a folder of TAS-found glitches into Any%) should be decided publicly, not unilaterally.

2026 trends shaping Baby Steps’ speedrun future

Recent years (late 2025 and into 2026) accelerated a few trends relevant to Baby Steps:

AI-assisted routing matured in 2025 and is now a standard research tool for route discovery and TAS labs—expect AI-derived optimizations to seed the early human meta.
Indie prominence in marathons continued to rise through 2025, with more indie speedruns featured at major events in 2026; Baby Steps is likely to be invited to indie showcases if the community forms clean categories.
Streamer-run tournaments (short, themed speedrun cups) scaled up in 2025—these formats pair well with Baby Steps’ spectacle and could quickly create rivalries and meta storylines.

Actionable takeaways (for runners, organizers, and streamers)

Runners: start logging reproducible tricks and time your microtech with LiveSplit. Record input displays and consider TAS to explore theoretical routes.
Streamers: create short-form content around clutch saves and fails. Host viewer races for short segments to grow interest fast.
Organizers: draft early category rules, lock versions, and offer a TAS category—this preserves both human and tool-assisted history.
Community leads: set up a Speedrun.com page, a public Discord, and a glitch tracker within the first month of community activity.

Risks and how to mitigate them

Potential pitfalls include meta stagnation, toxic leaderboard disputes, and developer patches that remove beloved tricks. Mitigation strategies:

Versioned leaderboards prevent retroactive invalidations.
Transparent dispute resolution and community voting prevent toxic takeovers.
Developer outreach can often secure a cooperative patch stance; many indies appreciate the free marketing of a thriving speedrun scene and will work with the community.

Final predictions: will Baby Steps become a speedrunning staple?

Short answer: very likely—if the community organizes. The game’s design intentionally invites both frustration and mastery, which is the speedrunning alchemy for a long tail. Expect a rapid early wave of glitch discovery (driven by TAS and AI tools), followed by steady human optimization. By mid-2026 we could see Baby Steps blocks in indie speedrun marathons and niche weekly race circuits on Twitch and other platforms.

Closing — join the climb

Baby Steps is more than a comedy about a reluctant hiker—it's a mechanical playground that rewards precision, creativity, and community curation. Whether you're a runner hunting a new high-skill challenge, a streamer craving memorable fails with competitive edges, or an organizer searching for fresh categories for speedrun events, this title has everything you need to spark a meta.

Ready to help build the scene? Start by assembling a Discord, claim a Speedrun.com page for Baby Steps, and host a TAG-style community night to catalog early glitches. Post your runs, share TAS findings, and nominate the first Any% and Glitchless record holders. The climb is slippery—and that’s exactly why it’ll be fun.

Subscribe to our newsletter for trackers, toolkits, and featured runner spotlights, and tag your first Baby Steps runs on Twitter/X and in Discord so the community can surface the next-gen tricks—in 2026, novelty wins attention.

Unknown

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Senior editor and content strategist. Writing about technology, design, and the future of digital media. Follow along for deep dives into the industry's moving parts.