‘Who’s Your Daddy’ Lets You Play as a Suicidal Seven-Month-Old Baby

Video games let us, regular people leading regular lives, experience the entire gamut of fantasies. Wanna be a spaceman soldier and save the galaxy from an ancient evil? Sure. Go back in time and alter the events of human history so as to create an alternative present? Not a problem. Date a dude with massive bull horns and sex drive to match? Got you covered. Send legions of lemmings to their deaths? Sign me up.

But here's something completely different. Just receiving the seal of approval on Steam Greenlight, Who's Your Daddy is quite unlike any game I've heard of before. Having met its Kickstarter target earlier in 2015, developer Joe Williams' "casual one-on-one video game featuring a clueless father attempting to prevent his infant son from certain death" is now playable by the public, albeit in a somewhat sketchy Alpha version. And that description is pretty much the entire point of proceedings: one player is the daddy, the other a crawling, nappy-wearing baby, already desperate to end its brief days on Earth.

Reads the Steam description of the baby's gameplay: "The baby's goal is to take his own life using whatever objects within the house that he can get his little hands on. This includes actions such as: shoving forks into power outlets; chugging various cleaning products; scuba-diving unsupervised into the tub." The father figure simply has to stop any of this happening by tidying away hazards and keeping everything baby-proofed. Item placement is randomised around the household environment each session, and the dad earns power-ups, including seeing his baby through walls, by completing chores as he goes.

As a parent, I don't find this offensive in the slightest. It's supposed to be a funny game, and the vast majority of comments on Steam get that. Reads one: "Yo, who ever made this game, you are one sick motherfucker, but i love it." I do find the baby character fairly terrifying, though. I mean, look at him. I'd probably let him die.

(Nb. I've no idea if the baby is supposed to be seven months old, but they generally begin crawling around then, so sure, why not.)

Alpha gameplay footage from 'Who's Your Daddy'

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