GAMES & CRITICISM
STARTING OVER, GETTING OVER IT
With Bennett Foddy, With Ryan Han: Frustration in a Digital Landfill
DECEMBER 13, 2022 — BY J.R. HAN
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a game about a man in a cauldron with a hammer, and about everything the internet throws away. You climb a mountain of digital debris — and when you fall, you fall all the way.
The frustration is the point. Foddy narrates your failures with philosophy and B-sides, and somewhere between the tenth fall and the hundredth, the game stops being about the mountain and starts being about you.
Is a frustrating game good to begin with? After weeks in this landscape of low-quality digital waste, I think the answer is: only when the frustration is honest — when the game never lies to you about whose fault the fall was.
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