An amazing thing happens every time I fail in Getting Over It. And I mean really fail, precious minutes and literal mountains of progress lost. Recoiling from the implications of my failure, I just barely take my hand off my mouse, and my half-man, half-cauldron avatar stands stock-still, his defeated, dumbfounded expression a perfect mirror of my own. I'd say I wonder what he's thinking, but then, I don't have to wonder. I know what he's thinking. It's what I'm thinking. Fuck.
Getting Over It is the latest game from Bennett Foddy, an evil, evil man. You may know him from such browser-based brutality as CLOP, GIRP and most famously, QWOP, all games with simple premises and madhouse controls. Getting Over It is in much the same vein. It's about climbing trees, mountains and piles of garbage using only a cursor-operated sledgehammer and what can charitably be described as physics. Foddy says he created it "for a certain kind of person, to hurt them," and he has outdone himself. I'm hurt.
On top of Foddy's obvious hatred of humanity, Getting Over It was born from the memory of Sexy Hiking, another browser-based game about sledgehammer-ing a weird character along. Truly, it was ahead of its time. Incidentally, Getting Over It is also a Humble Bundle original. It will be available to Humble Monthly subscribers on October 6. Everyone else will get it this December.
With that in mind, I've put together a GIF diary of my attempt to get over it, in the hopes of offering a taste of the experience to come. I call it The Chronicles of Cauldron Man. Please enjoy.
My first seconds with Getting Over It. I start as I mean to go on: flailing.
A tree, my first challenger. It does not go well.
I finally make my way to what I'm calling The Pit. I don't know it yet, but I'm going to spend a lot of time in The Pit. Around this time, the game's usual silence is slowly replaced by smooth jazz. I love jazz, but here it only serves as a reminder of the misery that surrounds me.
You don't know this, but I've given each of these GIFs a dramatic title. This is The Double, my worst fall yet.
And I thought the irony of the smooth jazz was bad. With this fall, the music changes again. To what? "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad" by Cliff Carlisle.
Accurate.
I'm normally not one for supernatural mumbo-jumbo, but I can only surmise that at this moment, the spirit of Jazzuo, creator of Sexy Hiking, possessed me. I have no other explanation for this display of skill.
I soon regain control of myself and wind up exactly where I belong: in the trash.
Tired of torturing me with music, the narrator starts throwing out 'motivational' quotes. "The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before," he says, quoting C.S. Lewis. I share some words of my own with the narrator, but thankfully they aren't audible here.
Fool me once, quote C.S. Lewis. Fool me twice, put on "Poor Me Blues" by Edna Hicks. I hate this game.
I claw my way up a slick, metal girder and bet everything on the timeless pogo maneuver. Miraculously, it works. Finally, after 40 minutes of failure, I can move on with the game. What glories await me above?
None. Instead, I fly too close to the sun and my wax wings melt. I come crashing back to earth, mere feet from the dreaded Pit, and my avatar's gaze droops along with my hopes.
This is the end. I give up. I can't. I cannot. I cannot get over it.
