Recent reviews by Filthy casual

It's easier than Getting Over It. But more importantly, it lacks the soul of it.

This game has no monologue. No critique of contemporary social, cultural or existential topics. Not a single distraction or soothing background music. No quotes or quips. Unlike its predecessor, it is purely a game of difficulty and figuring out physics manipulation, and provokes no particular thoughts, evoking only reasons to change up your strategy in the face of failures. But so does any remotely challenging game.

What's worse, is that this game essentially has checkpoints that prevent utterly disastrous failure.

This sequel is therefore, naught but a game. It is no art piece, it conveys nothing. It would be difficult to build anything on top of Bennett's critique and insights, and so it might therefore be better to omit any unremarkable monologue at all. But this cannot be considered a true successor to the original.

Above all else, this game is timeless.

The monologue and the music (provided you do make progress), serves to bind this game into a gem of its own category. It's a philosophical and cultural critique, which has been relevant for the entirety of this century, and will continue to be.

Getting Over It should be frustating. It should tempt you to quit. Very little about it makes sense, in terms of gameplay; no amount of experience with other games, will help you with this, and that should frustrate you. It should frustrate you because you lose progress. Because it taunts you directly and indirectly. It does something no other game really does: it doesn't reward you with anything that can conceivably be called a reward, but makes you risk losing everything, and it hardly even taunts you over it, aside from the odd quip and song that plays when you suffer a setback.

But every climber who reached certain heights, found something. They find themselves able to climb certain obstacles, before hitting a new one. They might quit, or get to the top. Normally, the top brings a sense of relief. And then, for many, it's easy to climb the mountain again.

And the monologue, and the gentle music, combined with that slow, fruitless struggle, subtly reveals a universal fact known to all cultures across human history: that life has obstacles. That bad things happen. That we can lose anything and everything, and end up at start; with the added feeling of loss, to create a very real sense of loss.

You can lose your belongings. You could lose friendships. You might lose a romantic relationship, the best one you ever knew. Bad things can happen to you, even if you did not deserve anything bad. You could slip on accident and break something forever. Loss, in this game, is real. And what do you gain then, at the top of the mountain? For some, it's nothing worth noting. For others, relief; a sense of achivement; pride; simple, lasting satisfaction; the ability to confidently say "I did it, by my own will". And that last thing, is normally a profound feeling --- even if this is just a game. And that feeling stays with you.

That's what life is. That's what this game is.

That, is why this game is beautiful, in a way like none other.

Excellent game, and really relaxing. Quality product, especially considering the number of developers! More features coming in the future and they seem to listen to community feedback.

Try putting podcasts and such in the background. Works pretty nice.