Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy is a nonsensical game that challenges players to climb a mountain with a hammer. The silly premise and highly animated reactions from streamers who take a tumble have launched it right to the heights of Steam’s best seller list one day after its release on the platform. It looks like a nightmare but is actually very relaxing with the right mindset.
You do one thing in Getting Over It: Climb. Using either a mouse or a stylus, you swing a hammer to scale a ridiculous mountain hell of sheer rocks and random garbage. It’s created by Bennet Foddy, who also made floppy running simulator QWOP. It’s absurd to control, and a single mistake can lose all of your progress. YouTubers such as PewDiePie have yelled in frustration upon failure, while speedrunners have turned the game into a gorgeous whirlwind of tricks and skips. Now, the game is a higher seller on Steam than PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Kotaku‘s resident video game expert Tim Rogers called Getting Over It a “desk toy for freaks” and a “game that defies tutorials”. (Disclosure: Rogers is friends with Bennet Foddy.) I played Getting Over It yesterday on Kotaku US‘ Twitch channel and found myself agreeing. Getting Over It is both a devious torture device and a strange playground. Unlike the many streamers who ragequit after losing progress, I found myself greatly enjoying the climbing process in spite of many failures.
What makes Getting Over It work isn’t just its propensity to create meme-tastic reaction videos, but also how remarkably straightforward it is as an experience. All you have to do is go up. I found figuring out a technique for doing so a surprisingly relaxing process. Failure can cost you time, but it doesn’t rob you of the many miniature successes and revelations you’ve had along the way. During my stream, viewers in chat expressed anxiety and even said they were experiencing vertigo, but I found Getting Over It to be very calming.
Getting Over It‘s success rests beyond the anger. The simple goal and iterative learning process makes it easy to focus on and exciting to master. It appeals to a primal urge towards improvement. Players climb Foddy’s mountain for the same reason people climb Mount Everest: Because it is there.
Comments
3 responses to “Frustration Simulator Getting Over It Climbs Steam Best Sellers List”
What drives me crazy about this game is the feel that I don’t really have control over the hammer the guy wields. Feels like theres huge mouse acceleration with it. Maybe it’s intentional but one movement done again for me never does the same thing. Very frustrating D:
I don’t have the patience to play it, but after watching a few vids that have popped up there is a clear difference between those that understand the controls, and those that don’t.
People speedrun this game in ~3 minutes (no idea what the record is, if ones listed), while other very adept gamers struggle time after time to make progress. Even after miracling their way to near the end of the game, they still struggle with what are essentially basics. Or a particularly brutal part with ice, or something similar.
And understandably, for the reason you say – its easy to feel like you have minimal control.