The Evolutionary Logic of Childhood in Retro Game Design

This paper examines how three retro-style video games, Evoland (2013), Undertale (2015), and Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning (2018), employ constructions of childhood as a vehicle for meta-reflection on the history of the video game medium. Its central argument is that this use of childhood can be traced to G. Stanley Hall's recapitulation theory, which held that individual development mirrors the evolutionary development of a species. Although the author acknowledges that Hall's work is entangled with scientific racism and eugenics, the paper focuses on the broader conceptual move of framing childhood as an index of evolutionary or historical transformation.

The analysis proceeds through three case studies, each treating childhood differently. In Evoland, the childlike character design and cartoonish gameworld visualize the game's theme of video games' technical evolution, with the protagonist's expanding abilities and combat modes paralleling the medium's maturation. Undertale uses the naive aesthetics of its protagonist and gameworld to ironically contrast its pacifist, narratively driven design with the combative, power-oriented conventions of earlier games. Baldi's Basics draws on uncanny, child-like drawings and the awkwardness of 1990s edutainment, blending an innocent educational format with survival horror mechanics to produce critical commentary on that era's games and the nostalgia of a specific generation of players.

The paper's broader framing situates these works within wider scholarship on childhood and games, including studies of games as children's culture and of nostalgia in retro design. Its methodology is qualitative and textual, based on close analysis of the three games rather than on survey or quantitative data. The author concludes that the childhood-as-evolution logic is paradoxical: it strengthens the games' critical reflections on video game history, yet it also reproduces a long tradition of othering and objectifying childhood in service of an intellectual project.