The ‘Who’s Your Daddy’ Baby-Killing Game is the Most WTF Video Game You’ll Ever See
(Via Steam)
I just walked into my living room to find my partner laughing at the computer with a look of abject horror on his face. He was over on Steam, a website where people get video games, so I asked if he’d found something new.
“I can’t play this!” he said. “It looks weirdly brilliant, but I absolutely can’t play this.”
That’s when I met Who’s Your Daddy, a new one-on-one, player-vs-player indie video game that pits two online players against each other. One player plays the daddy and is the father of a crawling baby who is trying to babyproof the house and keep the baby safe. The other player plays the baby, and that player’s goal is to kill himself by any means possible.
If it sounds like a joke, that makes sense. According to Kotaku the project initially started as a joke, but then people liked it. The developers got funding via Kickstarter and the early access version is currently available on Steam.
There was once a time I thought no game could be weirder than the game where you escort Kanye West’s mother to heaven. Then I thought no game could be weirder than the one where you perform a C-section on Princess Anna from Frozen. I’m sure something will come along to unseat Who’s Your Daddy soon, but for now, it wins.
The baby’s player has a lot of ways to achieve victory. He can shove forks in electrical sockets, eat batteries, drink cleaning fluid, jump in the bathtub, turn on the oven and climb inside, etc. Meanwhile the father player is trying to babyproof an entire house in real time while also keeping the baby from killing itself. I think the deck may be stacked in the baby’s favor.
The dad player does get a lot of bonuses throughout the game, though. Doing chores like picking up toys or changing the batteries in the smoke detector give the dad powers that do things like let him know where the baby is, or see objects through walls. Fruit can counteract the effects of poison or batteries, and the dad can install babyproofing supplies like cabinet locks and outlet covers. It seems like the baby has the advantage in the beginning, but if the dad successfully covers the outlets and locks the cabinets and completes his chores, it becomes much more difficult for the baby to hurt itself.
From the reviews on Steam, people seem to actually be really enjoying it. One proud dad was crowing about babyproofing so successfully that the baby quit the game in a fit of rage. Another player suggested varied difficulty modes. On “easy” you could have two parents vs. a baby. On “nightmare,” you could have one parent vs. two babies.
I’ve been staring at this game for well over an hour now and I legitimately don’t know what to make of it. I mean, it’s messed up. But it’s also a pretty clever way to pit two human players against each other in a battle of wits. I wouldn’t mind some good player-vs-player gaming right now, though I think I’m too squeamish to play this one. I can’t stand to watch it when the baby wins.
