Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy ($4.99) is one of those games where you’ll want to tie your phone to your wrist because chances are you’ll be flinging it across the room multiple times. I’ve been playing around with the game since it came out yesterday, and it’s perfect on mobile but still hugely frustrating; and yet that’s part of its charm. As we wrote about yesterday, Getting Over It is the new game from QWOP ($0.99) developer, and it’s made its way to mobile with the help of Zach Gage, the developer of games like Flipflop Solitaire. The gameplay is pretty simple: you have to swing your way to the top of this enormous mountain filled with all kinds of obstacles. Climbing is tricky though when all you have to work with is a huge hammer. Add to that how half of your body is for some reason stuck in a cauldron, and you’re in for a huge challenge.
I’ve been playing the game since last night, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how well it plays on mobile. You use your finger to swing the hammer, and you can change the sensitivity of the swing to match your taste. The controls are spot on, and while I’ve heard people complain that the mouse sensitivity on the PC game can make it hard to navigate the trickiness that is that huge mountain, I had no such problems swinging accurately on the mobile version.
No matter how good you get at swinging though, prepare to fail and fail again. Getting Over It really is about constant desperation punctuated by short-lived triumphs. The genius (or perversion) of the game is that when you make a mistake or lose your footing on the way up, you come tumbling quite a ways down, so forget concepts like checkpoints; life is brutal, and I literally hit rock bottom repeatedly.
Yet the game’s great physics system makes me feel that I can do it, I can swing over those crazy obstacles if I get my angle right. Part of why I like the game so far is that I don’t blame the mechanics when I lose my footing and slide all the way down; I blame myself. And I can definitely see my skills improving as I figure out how to best combine hammer swings to clear obstacles. The obstacles are pretty nuts and have a tendency to jut out of the mountain way more that I’d like them to, but that’s part of what makes the game challenging and easy to talk about (and stream). It’s more fun talking about that early oar obstacle rather than just have a generic height meter or something like that.
The other great feature that makes Getting Over It great for mobile is that I can pause and leave the game at any moment and come back at the exact moment I left. This is great for playing on the go or having to quickly exit the game to do other stuff. I’m not used to mobile games remembering exactly where I left, and I have to say it’s a great feature to have on a platform that’s all about playing on the go.
The other fun feature of the game is the philosophical musings of the game’s creator that put your struggles in the context of life obstacles while at the same frustrating you by pointing out how your constant failures are to be expected. The musings and the game’s title work together to make Getting Over It about more than just a guy swinging a hammer, although, to be fair, you’ll not be thinking of the philosophical context of the game on the 100th time you slide down that mountain.
So far, Getting Over It is a great mobile game that I think fits on mobile better than on PC, and you should definitely check it out if you enjoy physics-based games and don’t mind (or actually enjoy) the frustration of constant failure. Those failures do make those short moments of glory feel amazing. But they are short, and fleeting.
Me and others are hoping for a portrait orientation for the game (as you see over on the forums) because it makes it much easier to play on the go. I’m hoping we see that as an option in the near future (although no idea how much work that could be), but even in landscape, it’s a great game to play. If you have any questions about the game, go ahead and ask in the comments below. And keep this little trick in mind: you can push off the hammer and jump straight up if you swing straight down. Very useful and not immediately apparent. And don’t just swing; push with your hammer as well. You’ll still drop down all the way all the time, but that’s part of the “fun."
