Getting Over It

Review by eFreeware

Most climbing games want you to feel capable. Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy wants the opposite. You drag a man in a pot up a mountain with a single hammer, and the developer's own line about making it to cause someone pain tells you more about the design than any feature list could.

The game has been on Android since April 2018, and it has picked up over a million installs with a 3.4 average across 17,618 ratings. That split is telling: plenty of people bounce off it, and the ones who stay tend to stay for a long time. If you like the idea of a game that treats your patience as the real opponent, this is aimed at you. If you want a climbing game that meets you halfway, it is not.

One hammer, one input, no safety net

You move the hammer with the mouse, and that is the whole control scheme. There are no extra buttons. Everything you do on the mountain comes out of how you move that one object.

That simplicity is the point. With practice, the developer says you will be able to jump, swing, climb and fly, which means the skill ceiling is set by your own coordination rather than by anything the game hands you. The learning curve is the content. You are not collecting abilities; you are slowly teaching your hands what the hammer can do.

The pot is the other half of the joke. You are not a nimble climber, you are a man stuck in a vessel who has to lever himself upward. Every ledge becomes a small physics problem.

The mountain does not keep your progress

The developer promises great mysteries and a reward for the hikers who get there, and frames the climb as an homage to Jazzuo's 2002 B-game Sexy Hiking, which is where the hammer-and-pot setup comes from.

What makes the structure unusual is that losing ground is part of the design. Losing all your progress, over and over, is presented as a feature rather than a warning. A slip near the top can send you back down the slope, and the game does not soften that.

The developer also narrates as you play, offering philosophical observations about the problem in front of you. It is a strange pairing with the frustration, and it is clearly intentional: the commentary gives the climb a voice instead of leaving you alone with the physics.

Length is hard to pin down. The developer puts it between two hours and forever, and notes that his playtesters finished in a median of five hours while the mean ran closer to infinity. That range is a fair summary of what the game is: short for the lucky and the stubborn, endless for everyone else.

What you pay and what you get

Getting Over It costs $4.99 on Google Play. There are no ads and no in-app purchases, so the price is the whole transaction.

The recent update covers minor bug fixes and improvements, which suggests the game is being kept in working order rather than expanded. The content rating is Everyone, though the difficulty is the real gatekeeper here, not the subject matter.

The player this was built for

This is a game for people who enjoy the process of getting better at something awkward. If you have ever replayed a hard section of a platformer just to feel your timing tighten, the appeal here will be familiar, only stretched over a much longer climb.

It also suits players who like a game with a personality attached. The narration, the homage to an older browser game, and the developer's willingness to describe his own creation as a way to hurt a specific audience all give it a tone you do not get from a polished climbing sim.

What it does not suit is anyone who needs steady progress to stay motivated. The mountain takes back what you earn, and the median five-hour finish is a median, not a promise. A 3.4 average across a large number of ratings reflects how many people found that trade unacceptable.

I would also think about the setting. This is a game you play in one sitting or in short bursts of stubbornness, and it rewards a calm room more than a noisy one. The frustration is designed, but it is still frustration, and it lands differently depending on where you are.

Worth the $4.99 if you like losing on purpose

Getting Over It is a small, single-minded game that does one thing with unusual commitment. The hammer, the pot, the mountain and the narration all serve the same idea, and the $4.99 price with no ads or purchases fits.

My recommendation is for players who find repeated failure interesting rather than discouraging, and who want a game that respects their patience enough to test it properly. If that sounds like you, the mountain is waiting. If it sounds exhausting, believe the 3.4 average and spend your money on something gentler.

What's new in version 1.9.13

Minor bug fixes and improvements.