nitro2k01 wrote:
I'm watching the interview/playthrough with Bennett Foddy on Kotaku, and Ben is quoting two inspirations for the game, Umihara Kawase and Sexy Hiking. He described as Getting over it with... is a game "about Sexy Hiking" and also that the pot was there to protect the character's legs. The mode of movement in SH is also by grabbing onto things with a hammer in a similar way, but with no pot over the character's legs. So it seems like it's probably just a happy coincidence.
I am also a
huge fan of the Umihara Kawase series, especially the third game Sayonara Umihara Kawase. They do have a slightly similar kind of climbing mechanic to Getting Over It, and an unrelenting but very fair and deep difficulty. It also has a similar aesthetic of levels made out of piles of mundane objects.
They also don't have pretentious philosophical ramblings or stupid jump scares or things otherwise clearly designed to demoralize you. (I like some of Foddy's commentary a lot, but it has diminishing value for me. It's at least better than The Witness' stupid motivational quotes which I thought were totally pointless.) Oh also it has some great music, and it's a much longer game.
All three were eventually ported to Windows and are currently available on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/85452/Sexy Hiking is still available on its author's website for free (Windows):
http://www.jazzuo.wz.cz/games/sexyhands/sexy_hiking/sexyhiking.htmYou can walk in Sexy Hiking though it's not really that useful for getting around its levels for the most part. The physics are very dodgy. I managed to complete the first level but I was very uninterested in continuing past there. The hammer climbing concept is neat but it's implemented so roughly, I can see why it was inspiring to Foddy, both by the fascinating climbing mechanic but also just by how badly it played probably made him want to do a "good" version of it. Getting Over It has really very well refined design IMO, a lot of the challenges were just perfectly on that edge of fair but hard to master. Sexy Hiking does not.
There's another version of Sexy Hiking on another website with very slightly different levels (or at least the first tree was a little harder, didn't go looking much past the first level).
As for the pot, it is a very functional part of gameplay. Gives a reason that you can't just walk along, of course, but also gives a sense of weight and friction (can't sit down on too much of a slant or you'll slide) and makes a nice round object to have to navigate collisions with. I think it's also slightly a reference to
Diogenes' tub?