Getting Over It <quotes

There’s no feeling more intense than starting over.
If you’ve deleted your homework the day before it was due, as I have.
Or if you left your wallet at home and you have to go back, after spending an hour in the commute.
If you won some money at the casino and then put all your winnings on red, and it came up black.
If you got your best shirt dry cleaned for a wedding, and then immediately dropped food on it.
If you won an argument with a friend and then later discovered they just returned to their original view.
Starting over is harder than starting up.
If you’re not ready for that, like if you’ve already had a bad day,
Then what you’re about to go through might be too much.
Feel free to go away and come back. I’ll be here.

Alright, thanks for coming with me on this trip. I’ll understand if you have to take a break at any point…
Just find a safe place to stop, and quit the game.
Don’t worry, I’ll save your progress, always. Even your mistakes.

This game is a homage to a free game that came out in 2002, titled ‘Sexy Hiking’.
The author of the game was Jazzuo, a mysterious Czech designer who was known at the time as the father of B-games.
B-Games are rough assemblages of found objects. Designers slap them together very quickly and freely, and they’re often too rough and unfriendly to gain much of a following.
They’re built more for the joy of building them than as polished products.

In a certain way Sexy Hiking is the perfect embodiment of a B-game. It’s built almost entirely of found and recycled parts, and it’s one of the most unusual and unfriendly games of its time.
In it, your task is simply to drag yourself up a mountain with a hammer.
The act of climbing, in the digital world or in real life, has certain essential properties that give the game it’s flavour.
No amount of forward progress is guaranteed; some cliffs are too sheer or too slippery.
And the player is constantly, unremittingly in danger of falling and losing everything.

Anyway when you start Sexy Hiking, you’re standing next to a tree, which blocks the way to the entire reset of the game.
It might take you an hour to get over that tree. A lot of people never got past it. You prod and poke at it, exploring the limits of your reach and strength, trying to find a way up.
There’s a sense of truth in that lack of compromise.
Most obstacles in videogames are fake — you can be completely confident in your ability to get through them, once you have the correct method of the correct equipment, or just by spending enough time.
In that sense, every pixellated obstacle in Sexy Hiking is real.

The obstacles in Sexy Hiking are unyielding, and that makes the game uniquely frustrating.
But I’m not sure Jazzuo intended to make a frustrating game — the frustration is just essential to the act of climbing and it’s authentic to the process of building a game about climbing.

A funny thing that happened to me as I was building this mountain:
I’d have an idea for an obstacle, and I’d build it, test it, and… it would usually turn out to be unreasonably hard. But I couldn’t bring myself to make it easier.
It already felt like my inability to get past the new obstacle was my fault as a player, rather than as the builder.

Imaginary mountains build themselves from our efforts to climb them, and it’s our repeated attempts to reach the summit that turns those mountains into something real.
When you’re building a videogame world you’re building with ideas.
And that can be like working with quick-cement. You mold your ideas into a certain shape that can be played with,
And in the process of playing with them they begin to harden and set
Until they are immutable, like rock. At that point you can’t change the world — not without breaking it into pieces and starting fresh with new ideas.

For years now people have been predicting that games would soon be made of prefabricated objects, bought in a store and assembled into a void.
For the most part, that hasn’t happened, because the objects in the stores are trash. I don’t mean they look bad or they’re badly made,
although a lot of them are. I mean they’re trash in the way that food becomes trash as soon as you put it in the sink.
Things are made to be consumed in a certain context, and once the moment is gone they transform into garbage. In the context of technology those moments pass by in seconds.

Over time we’ve poured more and more refuse into this vast digital landfill we call the internet. It now vastly outnumbers and outweighs the things that are fresh and untainted and unused.
When everything around us is cultural trash, trash becomes the new medium, the lingua franca of the digital age.
You can build culture out of trash, but only trash culture. B-games, B-movies, B-music, B-philosophy.

Maybe this is what this digital culture is.
A monstrous mountain of trash,
the ash-heap of creativity’s fountain.
A landfill with everything we ever thought of in it.
Grand, infinite, and unsorted.
There’s 3D models of breakfast
Gen-xer’s fanfic novels
Scanned magazines
Green-screen Shia leBoeuf
Banned snuff scenes on liveleak
Facebook’s got lifelike bots
With unbranded adverts
And candid shots of kanye
And taylor swift mashups
Car crash epic fail gifs
Russian dash cam vids
Discussions of McRibs
Discarded, forgotten, unrecycled
Muddled, rotten, and untitled

Everything’s fresh for about six seconds
Until some newer thing beckons
And we hit refresh
And there’s years of persevering
Disappearing into the pile
Out of style

In this context it’s tempting to make friendly content…
That’s gentle, that lets you churn through it but not earn it.
Why make something demanding, if
It just gets piled up in the landfill.
Filled with bland things.

When games were new, they wanted a lot from you.
Daunting you, taunting you, resetting and delaying you.
Players played stoically. Now everyone’s turned off by that.
They want to burn through it quickly, a quick fix for the fickle
Some tricks for the clicks of the feckless.
But that’s not you, you’re an acrobat
You could swallow a baseball bat.

Now I know most likely you’re watching this on Youtube of Twitch
While some dude with 10 million views does it for you
Like a baby bird being fed chewed up food.
That’s culture too.

But on the off-chance you’re playing this, what I’m saying is
Trash is disposable but maybe it doesn’t have to be approachable
What’s the feeling like? Are you stressed
I guess you don’t hate it if you got this far
Feeling frustrated it’s underrated.

An orange is sweet juicy fruit
Locked inside a bitter peel
That’s not how I feel about a challenge
I only want the bitterness.
Its coffee, its grapefruit, its licorice.

It feels like we’re closer now.
Composer and climber.
Designer and user.
You could have refused but you didn’t.
There was something in you that was hidden.
That chose to continue.

It means a lot to me
That you’ve come this far.
Endured this much.
Every wisecrack, every insensitivity.
Every setback you’ve forgiven me
Is a kingly gift you’ve given me

We have the same taste, you and I
It’s not ambition
It’s ambition’s opposite.
An obdurate mission to taste defeat
You’ll feel bad if you win
So I put this snake in for you

*This gets more frightening each time you return,
*Knuckles whitening, stomach tightening, once bitten, many times burned.

Have you ever thought about who you are in this
Are you the man in the pot, Diogenes?
Are you his hand?
Are you the top of his hammer?
I think not-
Where your hand moves, the hammer may not follow
Nor the man, nor the man’s hand.
I’m this, you are his WILL. His intent
The embodied resolve in his uphill ascent

Now you’ve conquered the ice cliff,
The platforms, the church, the rectory,
The living room and the factory,
The playground and the construction site,
The granite rocks and the lake side,
You’ve learned to hike
There’s no way left to go but up
And in a moment I’ll shut up, but let me say
I’m glad you came

I dedicate this game to you, the one who came this far
I give it to you with all my love

Oof, you lost a lot of progress. That’s a deep frustration, a real punch in the gut.

Uff… Sorry about that.

Oh no, it happened again. Keep on trying, don’t let it get to you.

(♪♫♩) ‘Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad’ - Cliff Carlisle

"The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears." - John Vance Cheney

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal." - C.S. Lewis

"I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience." - William Shakespeare

"You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing this will make you less miserable." - Abraham Lincoln

(♪♫♩) ‘Poor Me Blues’ - Edna Hicks

"Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die." - Mary Frye

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Life is a mosaic of pleasure and pain — grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn, the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower" - Sathya Sai Baba

(♪♫♩) ‘Whoops a Doodle’ - Buddy Weed and His Trio

**Hang in there. Don’t let it get to you. But also… let it get to you a little bit.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’" - John Greenleaf Whittler

"If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them." - Andrei Tarkovsky

(♪♫♩) ‘Born To Lose’ - Tedd Daffan’s Texans

"Don’t hate the player, hate the game." - Ice T

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought. I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing sought, and with old woes new ail my dear time’s waste." - William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXX

"Patience is the foundation of eternal peace. Make anger your enemy. Harm comes to those who know only victory and do not know defeat. Find fault with yourself and not with others. It is in falling short of your own goals that you will surpass those who exceed theirs" - Tokugawa Ieyasu

"Your failure here is a metaphor. To learn for what, please resume climbing." - Rob Dubbin

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must
borrow its mirth, but has trouble enough of its own." - Ella Weaver Wilcox

"Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad." - Christina Rosetti

"Something filled up my heart with nothing, someone told me not to cry. Now that I’m older, my heart is colder, I can see that it’s a lie." - The Arcade Fire

"(Music) ‘Going Down the Road Feeling Bad’" - Gussie Ward Stone

I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore
And I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand.
How few! Yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save them from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seen but a dream within a dream? - Edgar Allen Poe

"Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?" - William Blake

"In the end, we only regret the chances we don’t take" - Lewis Carroll

(♪♫♩) ‘Easy Street’ — The Pied Pipers with Axel Stordahl and his Orchestra

"I'm crushing your dreams and dashing your hopes. You're climbing a mountain with a hammer and no ropes."

"She smiled in defeat, with unconquerable eyes." - Atticus

You got so close, but this is past mending.
You got the baaaaaad ending.

Listen, this is a little awkward, but,
you've clicked the mouse button 500 times now.
I'm gonna say you're gripping the mouse a little hard.

A game I made
For a certain kind of person

To hurt them.

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a punishing climbing game, a homage to Jazzuo's 2002 B-Game classic 'Sexy Hiking'. You move the hammer with the mouse, and that's all there is. With practice, you'll be able to jump, swing, climb and fly. Great mysteries and a wonderful reward await the master hikers who reach the top of the mountain.

"The hiking action is very similar to way you would do it in real life, remember that and you will do well" - Jazzuo

Climb up an enormous mountain with nothing but a hammer and a pot.
Listen as I make philosophical observations about the problem at hand.
Between 2 and ∞ hours of agonizing gameplay, depending. The median time to finish for my playtesters was 5 hours, but the mean was closer to ∞.
Lose all your progress, over and over.
Feel new types of frustration you didn't know you were capable of.
Magical reward awaits hikers who reach the top.

Epilepsy warning: contains some surprising elements.

You’ve done this part before, you know it’s possible.
Just do what you did the first time.

This thing that we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down - Mary Pickford

I feel your pain: the pain in knowing this has happened to you.
The pain in knowing what more tears we have gained.
But through all this I feel your pain. - Octavia Hawkins-Richardson

Yeah, this part is hard. Sorry.
In my testing, a lot of people would just freak out and stop at this point. - Unused voice lines

Wow, you're doing really well.
It's heartening to see.
Remember restarting?
Remember when you quickly fell? - Unused voice lines

A leap of faith would be insufficient.
Five leaps would prove your faith in this religion.
The first drop can send you back to the anvil.
The fifth will do something more substantial. - Unused voice lines

A lot of people get a little scared here.
I'm scared for you.
There are those who didn't leap,
and those who dared to. - Unused voice lines

Don't just flail wildly with your hammer.
This is a game about when to use force and when to use finesse.
Plan carefully, execute freely. - Unused voice lines

Easy does it in this section.
Which is not to say it's easy,
just...
take it easy. - Unused voice lines

From this point, this minute
there's no more safety nets.
Don't be hasty, yet don't be timid. - Unused voice lines

Hah.
The slight angle on the rock here makes it much harder than it otherwise would be. - Unused voice lines

I can absolutely assure you that it's possible to proceed here. - Unused voice lines

I defeated the bucket on my first try.
That convinced me it was easy.
Then came the second, twelfth, fiftieth try.
That convinced me it was good. - Unused voice lines

[Now] I don't mean to go on,
but I do want you to go on.
Go on. - Unused voice lines

If I'm messing you up, you can mute me in the settings.

If the bucket's too tricky,
there's always the snake.
If you need to say...
uuh maybe that's a mistake.
You can just take a break. - Unused voice lines

If you fall here don't panic,
don't twitch.
The slow hammer can catch,
but the manic hammer can only throw you. - Unused voice lines

If you need to take a break, it's okay.
I've saved your progress.

If your hand is starting to get sore,
find a safe spot and then just take a rest. - Unused voice lines

I'm uh...
I'm gonna let you be for a little bit...

In this game, there's two types of jump.
The hop, where you push the hammer down really hard into the ground,
and the fling, where you rotate the hammer to launch yourself up from a ledge. - Unused voice lines

In this section, you're forced to go quick.
It's a lesson with no protection, a course of three tricks. - Unused voice lines

It's just you and the hammer.
And the pot. - Unused voice lines

It's really not as bad as it looks though,
just go up one step at a time. - Unused voice lines

I've seen a lot of people get stuck here.
You can't get there just by reaching and grabbing.
You're gonna have to try something a little more athletic. - Unused voice lines

My favorite feeling in video games is when you know you're expected to proceed,
yet progress seems literally impossible.
You're left only with your own frontiering spirit.
The knowledge that if you persevere, you'll find a way. - Unused voice lines

Now you're through,
so hurry up the stairs and hammer a chair.
Don't worry, the camera is with you. - Unused voice lines

Oftentimes making progress in this game is about chaining together multiple movements.
Try to break them down into their component parts. - Unused voice lines

People sometimes ask me whether I can finish my own games.
In this case, I got to the final obstacle, several times.
And I fell all the way back down to the beginning of the game.
So I know it can be done, but I haven't done it.
Maybe you'll be the first. - Unused voice lines

Sorry about the bats by the way.
That was uncalled for. - Unused voice lines

Steady,
steady,
steady,
steady,
steady. - Unused voice lines

The first time you go out here,
you thought you were safe.
A base camp for reaching the summit.
That's how it seemed on its face the first time,
but your face can fall faster when you plummet.

The living room is cluttering,
with little room for hammering.
I'm leaving room for stammering and stuttering and suffering. - Unused voice lines

The pot and the hammer are heavy,
which makes angled surfaces so hard to grip. - Unused voice lines

The vertical wall here has a way of getting harder the more times you try it.
I think anger makes you swing the hammer harder and that can push you away from the wall.

Want you to think about the momentum of the pot.
Sometimes when you want to go high,
you have got to lower yourself down first
so you've got room to swing your hammer. - Unused voice lines

This...
is tougher than it looks.
There's no point sugar-coating it. - Unused voice lines

This part has the hardest leap in the game,
the most awkward.
Strike the anvil and forge your way forward. - Unused voice lines

What's holding these rocks in the air.
In buoyant tranquility.
They laugh at your feeble inability to stay aloft.
Scoff at your civility to gravity.  - Unused voice lines

You can hit the escape key if you need to change the mouse sensitivity.

You fell from above, but I know you won't linger here.
Your hammer's no longer, your jump is no stronger.
But your hunger will tell.

You know what to do, vault over the barbecue.
Go for it. - Unused voice lines

You'll be back here again and again.
Avenge and repent until you've ascended.
Or until you've repented.

You may need to chain more than one move in sequence here.
Leap catch push. Push leap catch.
Move with speed and with frequency. - Unused voice lines

You're back here again.
Showing patience, and then attacking.
Scraping, then flapping and snagging.

Whenever I climb, I'm followed by a dog called ego - Friedrich Nietzsche