In the climbing sim developed by the titular New York Game Center professor, players are not tasked with pushing a boulder up a hill.
However, we do know that players accept a similar fate when they download Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. We don’t know why Sisyphus received this particular punishment, although scholars speculate.
When he reached the top-gasping for breath, hands numb, pouring sweat- the giant stone rolled back down, and our damned hero returned to the valley below to resume his toil. At a point on the game map, the player can guide the protagonist to where a cauldron and hammer are located.Īctivating them puts the game into a side-view mode, challenging the player to move about scattered obstacles as in Getting Over It, with Bennett Foddy narrating atop about the folly of the exercise and meta-humor of the Easter egg.Sisyphus was sentenced by the Greek gods to roll a boulder up a hill, endlessly, for all of eternity. Polygon ranked it 36th on their list of the 50 best games of 2017.Īn Easter egg to Getting Over It appears in the game Just Cause 4.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun listed it as one of the best PC games of 2017 and GameSpot said it might have been the "weirdest game" to come out of 2017. Getting Over It's difficult gameplay was praised by reviewers, including PC Gamer writer Austin Wood. Getting Over It was aimed towards "a certain kind of person, to hurt them" and took inspiration from Sexy Hiking, a similar game released by Czech video game designer Jazzuo in 2002. He said, "whenever you see something that disproves a strongly held design orthodoxy it's extremely exciting because it opens up new avenues for exploration", and considered Getting Over It as his exploration of this new development space. In August 2017, Foddy observed that while there was outcry by players over the saved game mechanism in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which reportedly would erase the player's save file if they died, other players readily took to the challenge, showing renewed interest in games that were difficult by design. More recently, Foddy had seen a return of difficult games such as through the Dark Souls series. People of a certain age still have that taste, or maybe everyone has it, but it's been written out of the design orthodoxy." Into the 1990s, video game developers in the United States and Japan began adding means to save or have checkpoints, so players would not have to return to the start on death.įoddy said, "The flavor of being sent back gradually disappeared up to the point now where it's this boutique thing. When a player indicates they are not, the game provides access to a chatroom populated by other players who have completed the game.įoddy had been drawn to difficult games while growing up living in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s, he was limited to what was brought into the country through imports, with many of these being games that lacked any type of save mechanism and required players to be sent back to the start of the game if their character died, such as Jet Set Willy. Upon reaching the conclusion, a message asks players if they are recording the game play. The game concludes when a player reaches the highest point of the map and then enters space. There are no checkpoints the player is at a constant risk of losing some or all of their progress. The game increases in difficulty as the player progress up the mountain.
The commentary also provides quotations relating to disappointment and perseverance when significant progress is lost by the player.
The game is accompanied by voice-over commentary by Bennett Foddy discussing various philosophical topics. Using the mouse or trackpad (controllers are supported but make the game harder because of the lack of precision in the joysticks), the player tries to move the man's upper body and sledge hammer in order to climb a steep mountain. Getting Over It revolves around a silent man by the name of Diogenes - who, somewhat true to his namesake, resides in a large metal cauldron - and wields a Yosemite hammer, which he can use to grip objects and move himself.
The Android version was released on April 25, 2018. The game was also released on iOS that same day. The game was released as part of the October 2017 Humble Monthly, on Octowhere it went on to be played by over 2.7 million players.Ī Steam version of the game was later released by Foddy on December 6, 2017.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a platformer video game developed by Bennett Foddy.