Your download will begin in 10 seconds.
getting over it.
In my website on Cuphead, I talked briefly about what makes a good rage game and why some people, myself Ayush, love to play them. I mentioned that the challenge has to be fair and the player needs full control over their character in order for the accomplishment to feel satisfying, but I think there’s more to it than that. Two other key factors that most rage games employ to be successful are fast respawns and incremental progress.
The reason these titles are able to have overwhelming obstacles in your way is that you can restart to try again with practically no punishment. Often they’ll have a dedicated retry button so that you can get back into the action as quickly as possible. But this combines with the fact that you’re gaining little bits of progression along the way, and every screen you clear feels like a micro-accomplishment or like its own level that you bested.
So by the end of the game, it wasn’t so much that you’ve conquered an entire gauntlet of ridiculous tricks and traps, but rather completed increasingly harder tasks until the ending - it’s more manageable than you may initially think. But perhaps the most gratifying part is that if you were to start the entire game over, you would have a MUCH easier time going through it again than you did in your first run-through - parts that made you want to pull your hair out now are mere child’s play because you’ve grown as a player.
But now a new game has come along, a curious little title called Getting Over It, and it pretty much threw all of these concepts out the window, and yet it might be the pinnacle of what makes a rage game work. Today on Good Game Design, let’s talk about why. Bennett Foddy, whose name is in the title, is the creator of this game and many others you might recognize like Qwop and Grip, which are all known for their ridiculous control schemes and unforgiving difficulty. Foddy is not afraid to challenge you or to make it appear like it’s not your fault, and Getting Over It is no exception.
So by the end of the game, it wasn’t so much that you’ve conquered an entire gauntlet of ridiculous tricks and traps, but rather completed increasingly harder tasks until the ending - it’s more manageable than you may initially think. But perhaps the most gratifying part is that if you were to start the entire game over, you would have a MUCH easier time going through it again than you did in your first run-through - parts that made you want to pull your hair out now are mere child’s play because you’ve grown as a player.
But now a new game has come along, a curious little title called Getting Over It, and it pretty much threw all of these concepts out the window. Today on Good Game Design, let’s talk about why. Bennett Foddy, whose name is in the title, is the creator of this game and many others you might recognize like Qwop and Grip, which are all known for their ridiculous control schemes and unforgiving difficulty. Foddy is not afraid to challenge you or to make it appear like it’s not your fault, and Getting Over It is no exception.
A section that took me hours to complete now could simply be reached within a couple of minutes, and then I climbed to even newer heights with each consecutive pass. As I continued up the mountain, Foddy began to describe how we consume media as a society, and how we hastily discard something once we’ve seen it. We don’t take the time to appreciate creative works like we should because we’ve already moved on to the next big thing. Foddy purposefully uses throwaway, or “B” art as he calls it, to show how easy it would be to write off a game like this, but there’s a deeper message if you’re willing to let it simmer for awhile. I didn’t expect Getting Over It to become so meta, but I recognized how true the sentiment really is. As a Youtuber, this echoed my thoughts that have been forming over the last year or so - time moves incredibly fast on the internet and there’s a lot of pressure for us as creators to quickly move on and churn out another website because by the time we finally complete one, people are already talking about what’s coming next. I don’t have a chance to stop and smell the roses that many games have to offer, or truly appreciate them as works of art because as a tech-savvy people, we can only focus on one subject for so long. For example, I don’t think I’ve booted up Breath of the Wild to see what else I can find in its world since it first came out in March because there are too many other games that need to be covered. It’s a huge frustration I have, and in some aspects, it can take away from the enjoyment games provide, because it forces me to look at them as products to be consumed rather than a story that needs to be heard. So how do we fix this? Well, by starting over and taking our time. Since that huge devastating fall,
I took on my first attempt,
I have fallen down this mountain countless times, and from even higher heights, but each time it became less annoying, and more a moment to take in everything around me. I started to appreciate the intricate details of every shape and angle of the objects I was climbing, and I understood why Foddy said he just couldn’t bring himself to remove any aspect, despite how hard it was at first glance. Every hurdle became something I respected as I overcame it, and was much less of a threat afterward. You get to intimately know the specific maneuvers that work or don’t work and exactly how the game operates. You learn that the hammer isn’t as awkward as it seemed at first and that it can do some very intricate movement if you use it correctly. I mean, if you watch a speedrun of this game it can be completed in just a few minutes!
So why would people continue to play a game about falling down a mountain over and over again, if that seems to be the only point? It’s the same reason it felt so great when I beat I Wanna Be The Guy for the first time, or when you claim that Winner Winner Chicken Dinner in PUBG, heck it’s even the reason Markiplier can rage quit this game so hard that he throws a chair, but then comes back to play it a few days later. We all are seeking that accomplishment, the ability to conquer. But this time, it’s not just to beat a challenging game, but getting over the fear of failure itself. Hey there, I’m Snoman, thanks for watching another episode of Good Game Design, if you want to see more analytical content be sure to subscribe, and if ever want to help support the channel you can do so at patreon.com/snomangaming. I’ll see you guys next time, stay frosty my friends.
you can download this game in your movie so click hear
