This review will be more of an outline of my personal experience throughout my time with the game. I won’t be going into the game mechanics much or the way it plays because I’m sure most of you reading this are at least somewhat familiar with this game by now. If you don’t want to read my rambling, go ahead and jump to the bottom for my final opinion.

The underlying message in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, at least what I gathered from it, is that video games are not worth getting mad at. It strives to teach the player patience while challenging them to absolute herculean lengths, and that message is easy to ignore for the first run-through. Four and a half hours is about the time it took me to beat the game for the first time, and frustration was definitely at the forefront of my thoughts throughout the game. Any accomplishment I felt from completing an obstacle was normally dashed minutes later by an even more challenging objective. By the time I reached the top of the mountain, I felt relieved, but I also felt resentment towards Bennett Foddy for designing such a creation.

I had not learned my lesson

And yet the void called back to me and I played through the game once more during the same sitting. I beat the game right under two hours the second time around, honestly a quite huge improvement. This time, however, frustration was not as prevalent. I had already conquered the mountain and this is more of a victory lap so what do I have to worry about? I can already brag to my friends that I beat the game. Upon retrospection I have realized I was playing the game for prestige, not for a lesson in learning patience.

I still had a lot to learn.

Still, I could not put the game down. Over the course of many more runs, my time was getting faster and faster, I was learning new tricks, and any ounce of frustration was starting to slip away. At this point, I could consistently Get Over It in under 15 minutes, my best time coming in at 8:56. Even if I were to fall at some point, I KNEW that I could just get back in very little time. Anger and frustration had left me entirely, in my mind I had already become so good that I did not need to worry about trivial things like getting mad.

Lesson learned, right?

All of this went out the window on my 50th and potential last run. I love achievements and I love bragging rights even more, so when I saw there was an achievement for beating the game 50 times, I knew I would have to get it. When the time came to finally top the mountain at the half century mark, my expectations were high for how well the run would go.

“This could be my best time yet,” I would tell myself.

How wrong I was.

For some reason unbeknownst to me everything and anything was going wrong. Simple jumps became impossible, things I had mastered suddenly looked foreign to me.

I was losing.

And boy was I mad.

This was supposed to be the run that put my name down in the annals of history, why was I playing like such a novice? Well the answer to that question is just bad luck. Things were going wrong that hadn’t gone wrong in a while, and that’s just the nature of the game. But what I want you to take away from this is not that even after 49 runs mistakes are still possible, but that suddenly, after a golden age of peace, I had once again become the mad king. Frustrated, angry and honestly disappointed in myself. I felt like I fell so far.

I paused the game.

Had I not learned anything in the 27 hours I spent on this mountain of furniture and playground equipment? I suppose not. I was still just as angry as I was at the beginning of this journey just because things were not going my way. I had totally forgotten what Bennett Foddy was teaching me.

It really is not worth getting mad at.

It is a silly game with silly writing and a silly set. Yes it’s hard, but so are a lot of things. And nearly all of those things are more important than this game, and Bennett Foddy knows that and wants us, the players, to know that too.

So I sit at my desk, considering this, and continue my run with this new perspective that I had thought I already understood and, eventually, topped the mountain for the 50th time. How fast was it? 16 minutes. An honestly great time by most people’s standards. A little low for myself but that happens from time to time. I have a little grin and go tell my roommates of my accomplishment. We share high fives and snarky remarks and go to McDonald’s and continue on with life.

What is the point of this story and review?

It took me 50 run-throughs of this game to finally understand that I have problems with my patience and can also have problems taking responsibility when I’m at fault. This may come to others faster, or it may not come at all.

But the lesson it taught me will stick with me, even if it took so long to finally click.

Long story short, this is a great little game. It’s cheap, it’s silly, it’s absurd. But most importantly, it’s profound.

And the lesson that I took away from it will help me for the rest of my life, rather it be in video games or in my real problems.

Thanks, Mr. Foddy, I’m glad I came.