Last week, I invited my longtime friend Bennett Foddy into Kotaku Headquarters to play the hardest part of Battletoads. I did this because Bennett Foddy made Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, and therefore deserves this. He gave two hours of his valuable time to the task of traversing the Turbo Tunnel. Did he make it? Well, here's a video. Warning: It might burn your brain.
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.
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.
Last week, I wrote about popular streamers rage-quitting Getting Over It, a game about climbing a junk mountain that represents digital content and probably also Hell. Now for the flip side of that coin: People being extremely good at the game... being watched by people who are extremely bad at it.
Getting Over It's Steam description is brief. "A game I made for a certain kind of person," it reads. "To hurt them." Having watched multiple streamers howl in despair and rage-quit right at the end of it, I think it's safe to declare the game an unmitigated success.
My longtime friend Bennett Foddy makes frustrating video games. You might have played QWOP, or GIRP. Somehow, making purposely frustrating video games about humans with malfunctioning legs landed Foddy a job teaching game design at NYU. In other words, the universe conspired to inspire him to keep doing it. So we absolutely deserve his latest game, Getting Over It.
