Dev of new rage game, A Difficult Game About Climbing, details his process of pain

If you were on the internet in 2017, you would have been hard-pressed to avoid Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy. Players developed a love-hate relationship with the rage game, and now seven years later a developer has revealed how it inspired him to create a new one. 

A Difficult Game About Climbing, developed and published by developer Pontypants, was released on Steam on March 6 and has received a lot of hate-filled yet very positive reviews on the platform. Commenters say things like “10/10, I hate it”, “I hate this game so much”, and “I want to jump off a cliff” while still recommending the game, it can be a confusing prospect to those who have never encountered a rage game like it before. 

PontyPants has released a YouTube video documenting his journey while making the game and it was, in itself, not an easy process. 

Creating A Difficult Game About Climbing

After deciding that there was a gap in the market for a nearly impossible climbing game, PontyPants set to work making his work of art. The original intention was to make all limbs usable in a turn-based game, moving one limb at a time. Using Godot, PontyPants began the process and quickly realized that using all four limbs would quickly result in a cursed, clumsy, and all-around not much fun gaming experience. 

Choosing to simplify the game, he then moved on to how you’d control two hands with one mouse, and after hours of trying to figure it out, he decided to have each hand controlled by the left and right mouse buttons respectively. 

Moving the mouse around moves both arms at the same time and as you begin the game floating in the water, it makes for some really bizarre moments and swimming is a hilarious experience. 

It was around this point in the process when PontyPants switched from Godot to Unity, admitting in his video that he isn’t all that good at coding and Unity did most of the hard work for him. Most of the assets for the game were either found free online or by using default assets in Unity, which PontyPants assumes is why the game looks so similar to Getting Over It. 

The dev did spend some time making his own assets, which took him six months, as well as creating sound effects and visuals to make the game his own. 

The whole process took PontyPants a year to complete, ending up in a game with 1,000 lines of code and seven unique areas to complete, each with its own challenges to overcome. Players are still trying to beat the game despite their rage, but one player has already managed to speedrun the challenge in 7 minutes 55 seconds. 

A Difficult Game About Climbing is available on Steam, costing 9.99 USD.