You know we have lots of games these days. Was a time when if there was a free game there I'd have been like, heck yeah give me that free game. These days I'm not doing that. I saw this and thought: that's probably neat! And then I didn't play it.

UNTIL I saw a screenshot on the Steam page, which charmed me enough to actually download the thing. The way all the mazes are just tossed in a big pile for you to dig through: beautiful stuff. Could only be a video game, and yet feels so physical.

So I guess what I'm saying is that they're good mazes.

"Why Henry? *sniffle* Why are you rating this? Its a bunch of mazes you beat in a single 35 minute sitting! You might as well rate the Saturday morning sudoko in the local newspaper as well! Waaah waaah."

Shut up twerp. My grandfather served in the second world war. Every day my grandmother didn't know if he'd come home. But once a month she'd receive a letter from the front lines confirming his survival. "Sarge gave me the Newspaper for this week, cross word was a bit shit this time, 3/5." I am honouring a multi generational legacy with this rating. I am literally fighting a war on backloggd.com right now. What are you doing? Playing Final Fantasy 7-2.67? How about you get a grip before you tell me how to run MY account.

I cant believe it, A Game inspired by Getting over it that is actually well made, challenging in a fun way, and requires real skill and practice to beat rather than mastering an incredibly broken and unpredictable physics system? actually so awesome

dont get me wrong, i like bennet foddy's work, but whenever youre playing getting over it, it feels like youre fighting the games controls rather than just controlling your cauldron dude, but this game makes you feel so much more in control and this improves every aspect of it

this game is just as punishing as getting over it, and you will likely rage and die inside, but instead of it feeling unfair cause the broken physics messed you up like in getting over it, every failure feels like YOUR failure, not the game's failure, if you fall, that was your fault, and since it was your fault, it makes you want to overcome your failure, get better, get over the hurdles

basically this game masters challenge and reward in a genre of rage game like this, i fully think this game is much better than getting over it so give it a try if you enjoyed that

Took one look at this game and said "oh streamer ragebait climber bennett foddy rip off" and nearly passed on it, but I noticed it was by the same solo dev as punch a bunch, which ended up being quite rewarding once I got used to the strange controls, so I figured I'd see if that was the case here as well.

I was then completely walled on the game's first proper obstacle, a simple jump. The controls felt weird, the climb back required an intended but precise skip, I could do the jump but I'd fall right before the next safe point.
I quit the game then and there.
Then the thought of "losing" to this game crept its way into my head; "I know I'm good at games, I Got Over It, with Bennett Foddy, I surely I can do the tutorial of its weird clone. That's it I'll beat the tutorial and then uninstall this stupid game."

After being stuck for more days of casual attempts, I finally overcame that first hurdle, and now I had some confidence, the controls had become comfortable. The exact same pattern as Punch A Bunch and its weird physics punching repeated itself.

All that to say, it's okay. It's obviously much shallower than Getting Over It (no ethos to be found here, just climbing) but despite the name it prioritizes creating fun climbing challenges rather than being as balls-hard as possible. The regularly spaced resting pools, and other well placed handholds, made me feel as though I was being (somewhat) protected from the brutal reality of vertical ascension; to begin with, as long as you can chain solid grip to solid grip there's virtually no risk of failure. This gives a strong feeling of fairness to the chaotic physicsy world; anything more precarious, like balancing a hammer on a cliff, would force the game to lock itself in a static state, or else become a physics based casino.

So this game surprised me with how much I enjoyed it, even though I had already seen the speedrun before committing to play it did nothing to lessen the enjoyment of going through and doing it myself. I think we needed a pretty good game about climbing.

Very glad to have finally beat one of these "impossible" games. At least I think. I'll ask my carpal tunnel about it later. Definitely lite/almost anti(?)-Bennett Foddy because it is fun/satisfying to play (for the most part), possible to control (again, for the most part), and I would love to play another map from this guy (actually! but maybe that defeats the point of this? Whatever.). Hits a good amount of Foddy's musings though maybe not with the same impact and that's okay because I didn't want to kill everyone within a seven mile radius while playing this (or at least not as much) as I did in my few miserable hours of playing and healthily not completing Getting Over It. Wouldn't say that I'm done with this "impossible" genre being I plan on getting Foddy and company's Baby Steps when it comes out (assuming it'll be part of the genre) but this has definitely given me the strength to close the door on all those low-tier, rage bait games that I always have too much interest in.

I love Getting Over It and have beaten it hundreds of times. I was excited for this game, it looked the most similar to Getting Over It out of any other rage-bait game out there. Living up to the "foddian" name it talks about in the steam description.

But the core gameplay is just too annoying and painful. Like it literally hurts my hands to play this game for more than 10 minutes. Having to hold down the buttons and yoink my mouse super fast and hard to swing is like the least ergonomic activity in the world. So I'm refunding this game sorry.

The dev really did nail the style of Getting Over It perfectly though.

You see these type of “spot the difference” games dont work when sasuga unreal engine farts out visual and audio glitches onto my screen. “Has this room always been this bright? Has the rolling trolley always been silent?” Well these are going to be the most subtle anomalies you’ll come across, and they’re not even intentional. Also thanks for a ‘game over screen’ that is functionally identical to just failing the loop?
Idk, it’s not as bad as my review makes it out to be, but I cant type without sounding mad after playing an unreal engine game.
P.S. the unreal engine info’s source is that i made it the fuck up