Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

Hello, Steemers and Steemettes!

Today, I want to talk with you about a game that left quite the mark on me. It was famous and infamous a little while ago even though it is very simple and minimalistic by concept. The game in question is called "Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy". Perhaps some of you have already heard of it.

In the game, you are an unnamed guy sitting in a cauldron and your task is climbing a huge mountain with a hammer being your only piece of climbing equipment. Sounds silly at first, right? And it really is.

What brought the game to its infamous reputation is the fact that it was very difficult and, at times, unfair. The obstacles on your way up to the top can be difficult to understand and overcome, the controls and physics of the game are special to say the least and to top it all off, the mapping of the mountain is designed in way that punishes mistakes being made in the arguably harshest way possible: By losing a lot of progress and forcing you to do it all again.

Some may label the game as just another rage game at this point and they may be right. What really caught and kept my interest about the game though is the developer, Bennett Foddy himself, who also does narration as you progress (and fail) throughout the game.

How the game cought my interest

It started with the very first thing he said shortly after starting the game.

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 won an argument with a friend and then later discovered they just returned to their original view. Starting over is harder than starting up.

Those words really hit home immediately. And I think that some people may feel similar about it. We all have attempted to do things at some point, with varying success, dropped it for whatever reason and had a hard time getting back to it at a later point.

I was reminded of the time in late summer 2013, which was the first time where I ever really went hard on doing sports and taking care of my eating habits with the aim of losing weight. I had success and lost 20 kilograms and felt great about myself, accomplished. Something happened just shortly after that landmark and I dropped the entire thing. Over time, I gained the weight I lost back and felt miserable. It took about another two years until I finally managed to get my ass up again, wanting to do something good for me.

And it was and still is exceedingly hard for me to do. I remember how I was back then. I don't know exactly what triggered it (and trust me, this is a question that I really want to figure out), but the spark I had back then that made me go hard on pretty much everything health and sports related back then is much smaller today. On the other hand, the feeling of wanting to get back to that mindstate I had back then is even more intense than that.

About Bennett Foddy

I created this game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them.

He said these words in the trailer for the game and trust me, he means it. This game will make you go through this experience plenty of times. People playing this game failed, a lot, all the time. Bennett Foddy always takes the opportunity to make a smart "encouraging" remark, citing someone saying something motivational on the topic of failing or playing a music clip, all of it in the name of adding salt to the wound.

And yet players kept pushing, climbing and failing and climbing and failing until they finally made it to the top. Some frustrated, others in tears, most expressing their unadulterated rage, yet they kept going. They got invested into this sadistic and silly game and wanted to see it through to the end. At times, you saw people go past the same obstacles they have overcome dozens of times and it was actually uplifting to see them manage get past those within seconds or minutes where it has them taken hours at times before.

Foddy makes a clear point about how important it is to him that in gaming, we have lost a sense for "real" obstacles and I agree with him there. To an extend, this can also be applied to real life.

Today, people actually have gotten so far that they can speedrun the game within 2 minutes while it has taken them hours to overcome certain obstacles to begin with. There aren't a lot of things in life where you can see actual improvement in ones performance this drasticly.

Résumé

So what is the take away from this post for you?

For one, play the game, it will make you want to spit your teeth out. There are also some interesting quotes to consider and think about and Bennett Foddy also makes some interesting points about todays entertainment and gaming industry, which I do think hold quite a lot of value.

The more important part here is that wanting to reach a certain point in life will always come with obstacles. And some of these obstacles may even be so harsh that they throw you back so far that you might as well have to start over entirely. These obstacles in life may get you down, but they won't keep you down for long. And in time, you will find that you as a person have grown better, stronger, faster, smarter, to the point where past obstacles that gave you lots of trouble will be relatively easy to overcome.

Now I would like to know what your experiences on this topic are? Has life ever done something like this in a particular harsh way to you? If so, how did you overcome it? Comment down below, I am eager to talk about this with you.