Recently took some time during our ongoing pandemic to play through Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, one of the games I’ve kept thinking about despite not finishing the game when it came out. The first episode of my play through is embedded above. New episodes will be uploaded daily through that same playlist on the YouTube channel daily for the next few days.
Getting Over It is a very strange game. If it’s new to you, I guess the easiest way to describe Getting Over It is as a side-scrolling game about a man in a cauldron climbing a mountain made of stuff that sometimes resembles things you’d expect and other objects that look like they don’t belong on a mountain at all. The only control you have is your input device swinging a long hammer in order to overcome the challenging physics along the way.
It’s a challenge that might seem familiar to the other “physics” games that have become popular in the intervening years since Getting Over It came out in 2017. Fall Guys, or Totally Reliable Delivery Service, all feel a little bit like they get a little bit of the “physics” aspect that is the challenge of Getting Over it. I’m not sure if these other games would have existed without Bennett Foddy’s work on Getting Over It and prior work with games like QWOP and GIRP.
There are also dozens of similar games inspired by Getting Over It out there that range from fun takes on the original theme, incredibly popular creepy 3D versions with built-in ads for grifters, or just slapdash recreations but those all kind of feel appropriate to me because Foddy was inspired by a much earlier game too, Sexy Hiking by Jazzuo which has incredibly similar gameplay to Getting Over It and came out a decade earlier in 2007.
However, despite all the imitators and the inspiration, I don’t think anything can eclipse Getting Over it as being so one of a kind. Looking back on it now, it’s surprising in some ways that in the 7 years since Getting Over It came out, there never were any big budget games that took more from Getting Over It. All of those games I mentioned in the last paragraph are decidedly independent productions. Maybe the only big budget game I can think of that has a very tiny bit of Getting Over It in it is Death Stranding, but that’s not what that game is.
On the technical side here I’ll note that you don’t really want to play Getting Over It with a gamepad. A mouse or trackpad on a computer is preferred. On the computer I’d really recommend turning on the trackpad tuning option even if you’re using a mouse. It seems to make things more predictable and was helpful to me for completing the game. There are also versions for mobile platforms that use touch controls.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is $8 on Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Here is the link for the $5 iPhone and iPad version that also includes silly stickers for Messages. Here is the link for the Android version that’s also $5 but on sale for $2 right now.
Bennett Foddy is working on a new game called Baby Steps. It’s supposed to come out this year.
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