Bundle of Joy, a game about the frantic monotony of early parenthood

The relentless skill challenges of caring for his newborn baby reminded developer Nicholas O’Brien of his day job. He explains how turning it all into a game helped him cope

I don’t remember much from the first weeks of parenthood – a colicky baby and extreme sleep deprivation will do that to you – but I do vividly remember one night with my baby son when absolutely nothing I did seemed to help him. I walked him around: he screamed. I tried to feed him: he screamed. I put him down: more screaming. So it went for a couple of hours. I remember thinking: this is like a text adventure video game where none of the answers are right.

Game designer and college teacher Nicholas O’Brien had similar thoughts. His first child was born during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City, and he and his partner were trapped at home, on the endless merry-go-round of menial baby-care tasks. It was getting to him, like it gets to all new parents. “I didn’t have a lot of social or emotional outlets besides my partner,” he tells me. “I felt like I needed to create something about how I was feeling, work my way through it by making something.”