With so many video games competing for an audience’s attention at any one time, many titles aim to have a unique selling feature to help them stand out. Some have discovered that having an unusual protagonist who piques the interest of potential players can help.
Babies are not what most people envision when they think of a gaming protagonist. They’re inexperienced, little, and defenceless. However, there are a respectable number of games that feature babies in some capacity, using their unusual heroes to provide unique gameplay and narrative, or simply to add a more unexpected member to a playable ensemble cast.
The Kirby Series
Despite being one of the most well-known video game characters, virtually little is known about Kirby himself. Players learn almost nothing about where he came from or what he is. However, it appears that he and Meta Knight are of the same species, prompting speculation about Kirby’s age.
Kirby is likely a baby or toddler if Meta Knight is an adult. He lacks the ability to speak in entire sentences, preferring to communicate through gestures, facial expressions, and the occasional word. Despite this, he is by far the most powerful character in his series, and he consistently adds charm to every game he heads.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Kingdom Hearts is well-known for incorporating difficult topics into its ever-expanding tale. One example is the character Roxas, who is a nobody; a heartless being. While most nobodies have memories of their previous lives, Roxas is born with no recollection of who he once was.
The only game starring Roxas is Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, which covers his year in Organisation 13. While he has the body and mind of a teenager, Roxas is only created near the beginning of the game and spends the majority of it learning basic concepts like friendship and hearts. Though he may not appear to be one, he is essentially a baby in the sense that he is brand new to the world.
The Chibi-Robo Series
Contrary to popular belief, the Chibi-Robo games do not all feature the same character. The Chibi-Robo is a range of robot assistants that may be purchased to help with domestic chores and to make life easier in general. They are a very new product, and the Robo are frequently only alive after acquired, making them similar to babies in that they are unfamiliar with the world around them.
The Chibi-Robo games would go on to explore with a variety of gameplay techniques, but the original challenged players with navigating a family house and assisting in the improvement of their lives. This entailed taking on chores in the family home, which, from Robo’s tiny perspective, is a big playground.
Among the Sleep
Among the Sleep is an intriguing indie game developed by Krillbite Studio in Norway. It places players in the shoes of a 2-year-old boy, restricting all movement and viewpoints to those of a toddler.
The protagonist is pursued by many horrible monsters while being guided by a talking teddy bear in the game, which contains many horror aspects. It is strikingly similar to other outstanding horror games such as Limbo and Little Nightmares. Most modern hardware supports a remastered version of the game.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten, an independent adventure game portraying a young child in a kindergarten, continues the subject of endangered toddlers. Even though the characters can walk and talk, they are at least 20 years younger than the normal gaming protagonist. Instead of playing and studying, they are faced with obstacles such as investigating missing students and suspicious employees.
Flappy Bird is a gruesome game with numerous ways for the main character to be bludgeoned, shot, or otherwise killed. It was first launched on Steam in 2017, and it was later followed by a sequel that improved on everything that made the first game worthwhile.
Baby Pac-Man
Because of Pac-Man’s international prominence, numerous revisions and spin-offs of the original game have been created throughout the years. This includes Ms. Pac-Man and the relatively unknown Baby Pac-Man.
Baby Pac-Man, released as an arcade machine in 1982, combines Pac-Man and pinball. The top screen is a typical Pac-Man stage, but in order to obtain power pellets, players must descend to the lower screen and complete various objectives on a pinball board before returning to the top screen.
Donkey Kong Country 3
The Donkey Kong Country games are the DK family’s defining franchise. While they may appear in other games such as Mario Kart, DKC is where they truly shine. This features Kiddy Kong, the group’s baby, who gets his day to shine in DCK3.
Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have been kidnapped by a robot known as KAOS in DKC3. Kiddy and Dixie Kong embark on the standard platforming adventure that the franchise is known for in order to retrieve them.
The Super Monkey Ball Series
AiAi from Super Monkey Ball, like Pac-Man, has a young child who has made playable appearances. Baby originally appeared in Super Monkey Ball 2 as a time traveller attempting to save his parents’ marriage.
While he was never the series’ main protagonist, he was a main playable character in several games, most notably Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Super Monkey Ball 2. Fortunately, remasters of the original games have made both titles available on newer consoles.