LET’S PLAY

Why we can’t get over Getting Over It

Is this the hardest game on the App Store? Maybe…

Getting Over It

with Bennett Foddy

View

Conquering Getting Over It must feel incredible – like standing triumphantly atop Everest, with hours of toil and frustration finally behind you.

We presume so, anyway. We’re not among the tiny number of players who have reached the end of the game; we’re not even half way.

Under one per cent of players have reached the top of the mountain, in fact. Getting Over It is a game about failure, a test of not just your skill, but your patience. It’s just you, a hammer and a ruddy great mountain. And months after it landed, we’re still trying to climb it.

“I don’t think of Getting Over It as being difficult moment-to-moment,” contends creator Bennett Foddy. “It is difficult because it asks you to string together a lot of easy moves without making a single mistake.”

He’s right, of course. There are no save points in this game, so you either manage to get over each obstacle successfully, or slide agonisingly back down the mountain. Again.

If at first you don’t succeed...

It’s punishing, but each (small) victory feels amazing. “I’m interested in building a sense of high stakes for the player,” says Foddy. “By allowing the player to make an emotional investment in their own progress, I’m trying to create a more affecting experience, more of an emotional rollercoaster.”

It’s an unusual way of designing a game, but one which really, really works; we just keep coming back for one more try.

One day, maybe, we’ll be in that golden one per cent of players who have seen the top of the mountain; but for now we’ll just have to keep swinging away at one of the App Store’s greatest challenges.