I’m expecting a baby imminently. Well, my wife is. Today, the day I write this article, is the due date. While only five percent of babies arrive when they’re predicted to, my wife and I are bored of waiting and just want to meet the little fella at this point.
How am I spending my time preparing for the birth of my second child? You’d think I might be practising my nappy changes to get them as efficient as a Lewis Hamilton pitstop. Maybe you think I’m doing breathing exercises and listening to relaxation podcasts. I did a bit of all that, but then kind of forgot to keep it up as we approached D-Day. So for the past week I’ve mostly beenplaying Disco Elysiumand getting lost deep insideMariolore holes.
Who is Baby Mario? He’s Mario as a baby. How do they both appear in Mario Kart, then? And baby Rosalina? Isn’t she some kind of deity? Can deities be babies? Can babies be deities? How does this impact the continuity of Yoshi’s Island? Why isn’t there Baby Wario?
Few of these questions have canonical answers. The latter, however, is answered by common sense. Baby Wario would be a terror. He’d punch his way out of the womb like a moustachioed Xenomorph, before pulling a tongue at his mother, letting out a raucous fart, and heading off to play a round of golf with his brother/partner/bro Baby Waluigi.
Baby Waluigi was presumably, coincidentally, born at the exact moment as Baby Wario, except he was born upside down or something.
Bundle Of Joy Is A Heartwarming WarioWarelike
What does any of this have to do with a silly, heartwarming indie game? Very little. My brain is mush at the moment and I find myself going off on these tangents. Apologies if you read all that. Well done if you skipped and/or skimmed it and avoided my Wario birthing fanfic – birthfic, if you will.
Except, there is a point there. As well as playing Disco Elysium and scouring Mario wikis, I’ve been jumping into an indie game calledBundle of Joy. Game designer and college teacher Nicholas O’Brien created this wonderful romp as a way of processing his experience of becoming a father during the pandemic, and its rapid narrative slices of ridiculous baby-related minigames are exactly what I’d imagine a nappy-filled, sleep-deprived version ofWarioWarewould look like.
Bundle of Joy has that perfect balance of realistic scenarios – changing a nappy, cleaning eye gunk – and colourful playfulness. Its cutesy sound effects alone are enough to make me smile; each short minigame comes across as both sincere and silly at the same time. It’sWarioWare in a diaper.
Clipping fingernails was a personal stressor in the game, as I accidentally caught my daughter’s toe while doing this once and she has (rightfully) never forgiven me.
If Wario had a baby, or indeed if you were Baby Wario’s dad, this is what I’d imagine the situation would be like. Except maybe every other minigame would be nappy changes, the kind that require a shower and a full change of clothes for you and the baby.
The Heart Of Bundle Of Joy
One thing that surprised me about Bundle of Joy, however, was an option that appears when you start the game up. Do you want to play the family-friendly version of the game? I was playing alone, although my three-year-old daughter would probably love to join me for a subsequent playthrough, so I declined the family-friendly option.
This revealed a depth to the game that I was wholly unprepared for. Through diary-writing, dialogue with your partner, and breathing exercises, O’Brien tells a story of parenting that isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. You experience a parent struggling to bond with their newborn child, feeling like they’re just going through the motions of ‘chores’ – i.e. keeping the baby alive, clean, and fed – you experience some sense of postnatal depression.
While I never experienced anything like that after my daughter was born, there are moments that reflect my experience. I was granted two weeks of paternity leave – the standard for new fathers in the UK – and took another week unpaid. After just three weeks with my daughter, I went back to work. For a long time, I felt like I wasn’t able to help enough, to bond enough. I didn’t feel like I was good enough, like I wasn’t even really a father.
All of this is exacerbated by the sleepless nights and constant state of readiness you find yourself in as a new parent. You never know what time of day or night your bundle of joy will need changing or feeding. If it’s your first, you’re not sure if their every sound is a gurgle of happiness or a desperate cry for aid. I feel a little more prepared the second time around, but I’m sure my newborn will find new and creative ways to surprise me.
Bundle of Joy nails that, but it never feels like a downer. It never feels like a cautionary tale. It nails the inherent humour of trying to apply cream to a wriggling baby’s bum, but juxtaposes that with some of the introspection that new parents rarely get a chance to reflect on.
I happened upon Bundle of Joy at the perfect time, like some kind of celestial sign that I’ve forgotten exactly what I signed up for nine months ago. It has reminded me that I’m going to look and feel a mess for the next six months to a year of my life. And it has reminded me that it will all be worth it in the end.
