14 DAY TRIAL // I am supposed to be feeding the baby, even if the kitchen is now a hellscape and some troubling messages keep appearing on the walls. I locate the bottle and run to give it to the little horror. Once he’s fed it is time to change the nappy. Which should be easy if the baby didn’t choose to teleport away from the bathroom every time I turn my back on him.
I try two times more before I decide it’s a better idea to escape the building. The first elevator doesn’t take me where I want and the baby keeps throwing jump scares at my character. Another elevator doesn’t have electricity and the horrific toddler keeps stealing the fuses.
I spend a little time looking around the maintenance area and find a chute that might contain the threat. With him out of the way, I pop the fuses in and get to the elevator only for an enraged baby chasing me through the corridors and locking doors. Escape might not be easy but there seems to be no way to kill this monster.
The Baby in Yellow is developed and published by Team Terrible. It is in Early Access on Steam on the PC. This is a horror tonged adventure action hybrid where the main antagonist is a baby who has tapped into cosmic eldritch power.
Players become a series of babysitters hired to deal with one particularly fussy baby. He might be a direct incarnation of a creepy cosmic power (the reference to The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers is very clear) or simply controlled by one. Regardless, the baby is very interested in terrorizing the babysitters, creating horror scenarios but giving them a way to escape.
The Baby in Yellow delivers different situations depending on its chapter. Players can always interact with objects in the world, from the baby itself to food in the fridge, all the doors that are not locked, and plenty of puzzle elements. You can put food on the baby’s face but that won’t make him behave any better.
The horror moments aren’t that frightening, although there are a few jump scares to deal with. To escape the baby’s eldritch clutches, players will have to solve environmental puzzles and, when the time is right, run for their lives. Don’t forget to always look around for other souls to liberate.
The gameplay is enjoyable, although the timing on some of the escape sequences is tight, while the horror is predictable and fairly tame. Given the mix of early childhood and cosmic terror, there’s a lot more space for innovation for both narrative and gameplay.
The Baby in Yellow doesn’t aim for realism, which is a good choice given how silly its core ideas are. The apartments and halls players will mostly move through make spatial sense before the cosmic horror sets in but there’s nothing here that stands out when it comes to design. The soundtrack and effects are suitable for a horror experience but, once again, there are no surprises, apart from an interesting music-driven puzzle.
Conclusion
They are asking players to offer feedback about their favorite game elements. The title really needs to tune its mix of horror and comedy while adding more variety to its gameplay. The Baby in Yellow has a good main idea but has to find more innovative ways to expand on it.
A preview key was provided by the publisher
