Physics-based climbing game
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a purchasable video game in which a man whose lower half of his body is inside of a cauldron uses a sledgehammer to scale the sides of rocks and random items. The game is developed by Bennett Foddy and published by himself and Noodlecake Studios. The creator of Getting Over It narrates the game throughout the experience.
Why did Bennett Foddy make Getting Over It?
The title is available on Android, Apple Mac, iOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows (including Windows 11) operating systems. The name Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is interestingly fitting as the developer guides the players through the game with encouraging and intellectual dialogue about the game design and notions of failure and frustration.
The author’s voice is accompanied by renditions of traditional blues songs that, in some cases, have been re-recorded to the point of their origin being unknown: ‘Poor Boy Long Ways From Home’ and ‘Going Down the Road Feeling Bad’. These titles directly reflect the emotions that are simmering within gamers.
The character within the pursuit is a representation of Diogenes, who was a freethinking Greek philosopher around 404-323 BCE. The minimalistic man did not own anything except for the circular container that he lived in, which resembles the one in the rage game. Throughout his intellectual script, Bennett prods the gamers to consider the modern culture of consumerism.
How do you play Get Over It?
The terrain during the beginning of the game is comprised of nature: trees, rocks, etc. Momentarily into the journey, the first material item that is displayed is a plastic coffee cup, and after that, the users encounter garbage can with trash spilling from the container. As the game advances further, there is an enormous mountain of random items sporadically and strategically placed that users climb.
Foddy symbolically created the items to harp on the concept of unconsciously consuming products. Diogenes is remembered for the same rhetoric, which is that people abandon themselves to add material items into their lives; he is regarded as the person searching for an honest man. There are illustrations of the cynic on the path to the summit.
Gamers are compelled to observe the objects in a different manner as they analyze the curves of each of the articles to advance: dog houses, ladders, rakes, etc. This theme is directed at the concept that people are so adept at materialism that they skim over creations instead of appreciating the energy that went into making them. This game is about the journey more than the destination.
The mouse or trackpad controls the character’s hammer, which can latch onto objects. Move the mouse around to determine where the hammerhead will hit. The pot that the man is within slides around easily, which can benefit users and – more commonly – hinder their gameplay. The bottom of the vessel has a meager straight line; when calculated correctly, the pot can be positioned on products.
Participants need to maneuver their way up the obstacle course by strategically directing the hammer in the appropriate places with the cursor. If the tool misses the target or the cauldron slides down a slope, then the player risks falling back to the starting point. In this way, the player is re-experiencing the terrain.
Is Getting Over It the hardest game ever?
Scouring tutorials for tips on how to win this anti-design adventure is not going to be advantageous as the only components of the game are the player and the objects: Diogenes and the materials. Gamers can conceive that success equates to comprehending the angle, extension, and speed of the character’s arm movements.
Essentially, the progress happens between each of the decisions by the consumers. The app is un-curated and requires people to feel their way through rather than conceptualize the movements. There’s a spin on how we view success in this; instead of intellectualizing the process of winning, Foddy prompts gamers to speculate their relationship to things: the very ones that are hindering their advance in the game.
Within the narration, Bennett repeats quotes from others and himself about failure. This single-player game is only the mountain of items and the man in the cauldron, which can be isolating; ironically, the game has forged a communal experience with people showcasing their tactics on live streams or prerecorded YouTube videos. They perfect swings with slow and methodical movements or sporadic and spastic ones.
Alternative climbing game choices
Fish Out of Water, Jump King, Hammer Man, and Sexy Hiking are alternate options. Sexy Hiking by Jazzuo inspired Bennett to create a similar version of the title. Both of the games include men that use hammers to become master hikers; Foddy developed Getting Over It with aesthetically appealing graphics while Jazzuo designed Sexy Hiking with disfigured art.
Jump King is the only one of the aforementioned titles that are free to play. All of the alternatives involve either jumping or using a hammer to elevate them from one place to another. Sexy Hiking came first followed by Getting Over It with the rest coming after. While Foddy was inspired by Sexy Hiking, the other developers seem to have been influenced by Getting Over It.
Cross-platform climbing journey
Bennett Foddy developed other anti-design games: GIRP and QWOP. This certain kind of gaming experience is experimental and often receives news coverage in the tech space: on Steam. Getting Over It is a satirical spin on the modern world people live in and insinuates that we need to get over this obsession with consumerism while simultaneously implying that we need to get over our impulses to obtain accolades: winning the game.
On Foddy’s official website he states that he’ll only ever email people who provide their addresses when there is a new game release. The current game does not get updated often, except for releases like people being able to buy the title through mobile devices: Android and iPhone.
