Peter Silk / KestrelPi

ugh I don't believe they made peanut butter woke

I met you once at some games event. I don't exactly remember what I was there for, but I remember that I didn't know many people there, and you were nice to me. I appreciated that.

Is a selfie stick like one of those long cigarette holders or

Just finished Baby Steps. Perfect game. Perfect ending. Perhaps one of my favourite games ever.

On the mountain analogy: I think in reality, no two people are ever climbing the same mountain. A pro mountain climber and a toddler are not really climbing the same mountain, even if they literally are. So as an ideal, it's unattainable. That said Baby Steps is a masterpiece and this piece is great

As someone with experience doing ESRB submissions for games, I desperately want to see the ESRB submission for Baby Steps.

No shame in it! The stairs are right there and obviously the sensible way up. I will say though, though I never was comfortable with that part, by the end I could do it more often than not.

Oh yeah, welcome to fucktown

Is it the bit that's really close to the stairs, like you could step onto them maybe?

Maybe I like Baby Steps (video game) for similar reasons to why I like Cardiacs (band). I think I'm drawn to things which are ostensibly challenging and abrasive but secretly very generous and lovable

I did, or at least to it's landmarks.

Awkward Ramp
Banana peel
Seagull
Weird colour rock
The bit before the cutscene that I like to call "fucktown"
Platform
Scary but easy planks
Horrible ledges
Deceptively slippery slope

Huh, really? I found that tricky but I did it second try. The ramp only got me once though, I misjudged it and second time did it very carefully. But there were a lot of falls in between.

I don't think I'll soon forget it, it's burned in. Banana peel, seagull, weird colour rock, the bit a little bit after that I like to call "fucktown", the mid-run reprieve, scary planks, the terrible very bad ledges and the deceptively slippery ramp.

To me it's only a hard choice the first time. It was an almost impossible route for me to take the stairs as a first choice. I would have done it as an absolute last resort, to see the rest of the game. Now I've done it my attitude is "yeah, stairs, obviously"

Maybe this is why I never got into those too!

Haha. I'm still going to climb the stairs though. I'm playing the game on stream to 2 different groups of friends so the other one is getting the stairs run now I'm afraid.

I guess really I'm saying that I did the Manbreaker and was determined to do it and did so happily. But if Silksong sometimes had stairs I'd sometimes take them, just to get to the bits I care about because to me those 15, 20 attempts are NOT what gets me to the dance in that game

Which is a stance I respect but I think also illuminates why these discussions about difficulty are so... Well, difficult. We have a similar reaction to Baby Steps but an opposite one to Silksong and it's not totally obvious unless you spend a lot of time thinking about it why that would be.

I've certainly spoken to a lot of people who relish the way Silksong does it and that's fine too. I just wish it didn't repel me as I like *so much about it*. But after I decided near the end of Act 2 to take a break, I feel so good about that decision I'm not sure I'll go back.

So I personally find its frustrations wear harder on my patience. Goes back to the Manbreaker I suppose: it's impossible to be mad at it because the stairs are right there. I can only be mad at my own pride. That said...

I find it hard to imagine a version of it that isn't like this. But Silksong is about so much more than its most frustrating moments. 70% of the time I'm having a blast with the environments and exploration, movement etc then 30% of the time I'm hitting a wall that got boring for me 15 attempts ago

I think for me there's perhaps another angle here which is that Baby Steps is almost entirely a game about challenge and why people make things difficult for themselves and what that means and I think also about the assumptions we make about people's motivations.

But I agree that both are very interesting games to think about when talking about challenge

Yeah it's very misunderstood like Getting Over It before it. I just think it makes the case for challenge far better than Silksong, because it explores the players' decisions in a really provocative way and is generous while Silksong engages in much more "f you for trying" type moments.

Or to put it another way, I think the Manbreaker is a far more honest and kind way to explore challenge in a game than the two instances of benches being trapped in Silksong at the end of tricky platforming and combat sequences. The former has something to say, the latter is all "ha ha gotcha"

Don't want to go over it too much by in my view Silksong is often pointlessly mean, and obtuse in communicating its difficulty to the player, while Baby Steps is hard but almost always straightforward with the player

well I actually have my own problems with the way Silksong metes out difficulty and a lot of thoughts about why despite getting a lot of the way through it I have been way more annoyed by its design than Baby Steps

I don't know, though. As I alluded to... You finished the climb. You still won't take the stairs. You won't let yourself. So... which way is REALLY harder?

I'm starting to think Baby Steps is a masterpiece, and one that could only be made by people who have thought long and hard about why people make things hard for themselves and what that says about us, both positive and negative.

Naq, vs lbh gnxr gur fgnvef lbh trg na npuvrirzrag. Ab fgnvef? Ab npuvrirzrag. Lbh zvtug guvax V'q or natel, vg znxrf frafr gb zr gung vg'f guvf jnl ebhaq. Gurl qrfvtarq n pubvpr orgjrra fgnvef naq n chavfuvat pyvss snpr, naq fbzrubj znantrq gb znxr fgnvef gur cflpubybtvpnyyl uneqre pubvpr.