My longtime friend Bennett Foddy released his latest game, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, on Steam on Saturday, December 7. On that very same day, we had him come to our office in Manhattan to play it on a livestream.
I’m really sorry about my hair. Also, I should have shaved. Look, we’re still working on our stream studio setup, over here. Also, I’d just had a dilated eye exam so I had to wear sunglasses because of light sensitivity. I am however quite proud of my Shaquille O’Neal shirt. That’s Bennett Foddy on the left. I’m sorry this is such a long caption.
Prior to the game’s release, several high-profile streamers and video-makers, some of whom I think I have heard of (one of them was called, I think, PewDiePie?) had funnelled wheelbarrows of apoplectic rage into playing Getting Over It for their captive audiences. This catapulted the game to a dizzying height. For a period of several hours, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy topped even PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on the Steam sales charts.
Foddy had not, prior to this, played the game on any kind of a public livestream, so this was a fun opportunity to see how good he is at his own game. In the Steam store description of Getting Over It, Foddy explains that “I made this game for a specific person. To hurt them.” One of the goals of having him in to stream was to find out if that specific person was himself.
It turns out the answer is “Kind of, uh, no.” Foddy is pretty good at his own game. He is perfectly chill when he plays it. Whenever he falls, he whispers, “It’s fine.” And he’s right: He never falls all the way to the bottom. All of his setbacks are only temporary.
We had some deep discussion of what it means to be good at one’s own game, and we also discussed Amiga games more than a couple of times. We talked about the performative rage of game streamers and YouTubers. I confessed that I hadn’t beaten the game yet: I want to just leave it where it is, and think on it prettily from time to time, knowing that someday I will climb its unholy mountain and see whatever snippy conclusion Foddy tacked on to the sparse narrative. I’ll definitely do it someday.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is $US7.99 ($11) on Steam, or $7.99 on iOS. It’s one of the best games of the year, if you ask me.
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