Have you ever wanted to walk up to the clouds?

June 27, 2023 8:32 AM

Only Up! [Game Trailer] If you’re a gamer in any capacity, your cup likely runneth over with great games to play right now. There are hits like Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, to name a few. But many people, from big influencers to humble players, are choosing to spend their time on an unlikely candidate: Only Up! Only Up! is similar to Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, a surreal platformer that put the player in the role of a shirtless man crouched in a cauldron, using his mighty sledgehammer to climb a magnificent and surreal peak. Only Up!, which was developed by SC-KR games, is a 3D platformer with a similar premise. The player has to climb past giant disembodied feet, Shiba Inu balloons, and massive networks of oil tankers and scaffolding. The game took off in China and was eventually streamed by Ludwig Ahgren, which led to it exploding in popularity on Twitch and TikTok. [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz (43 comments total)

There are all kinds of platformer traps set in this game as evidenced by this vod. hehe.
posted by Fizz at 8:50 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't think I'd feel nourished by streamer tears but
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:24 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: nourished by streamer tears but
posted by Fizz at 9:25 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

try finger, tears but
posted by cortex at 9:26 AM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

Kirk?!
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:27 AM on June 27, 2023

The article is blocked for me at work. I became aware of this game after I saw GrandPooBear play it, I think his initial playthrough took him 9+ hours to beat? Eventually he got it down to about 56 minutes.

I don't know much about game design, what is the word that describes a game like this? The graphic elements all seem to be off-the-shelf, the assets are pre-existing, the physics is janky, there are probably some tradmarked brand logos incorporated without permission... was this a one-person operation?

That was definitely "Twilight Time" by The Platters, right? Haha, was any of this licensed?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:37 AM on June 27, 2023

I like how the game mechanic isn't that you take any damage or die or anything, you just get to watch in horror as so much of your progress unspool while you fall.
posted by hippybear at 9:55 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't know much about game design, what is the word that describes a game like this?

It's technically a platformer but there are a bunch of games in this space: Getting Over It, Alt-F4, Jump King, to name a few. I don't know if there's another term but alt-f4-likes is something I've heard NorthernLion (one of the streamers/vods I linked to up above has referred to this game in that way). There's not much info about SC-KR, this is the only game they've published/developed.
posted by Fizz at 9:57 AM on June 27, 2023

I don't know much about game design, what is the word that describes a game like this? The graphic elements all seem to be off-the-shelf, the assets are pre-existing, the physics is janky, there are probably some tradmarked brand logos incorporated without permission... was this a one-person operation?

I think the term you're looking for re: production quality and team size is 'indie' - it's created and published by SCKR Games, and as far as I can tell this might be the only thing they've published.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:02 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's definitely got that "every asset in the Unity store that has ever been free" aesthetic.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:11 AM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

sort of a GarrysMod.WAD vibe with that, yeah, surrealist cut up literature as indie gamedev vibe
posted by cortex at 10:15 AM on June 27, 2023

Has anyone actually played this? How does it feel? I don't mind the stock assets and random aesthetic, that's the charm. But it also looks like a stock set of animations for the character. With a really floaty jump.

For a game that's all about climbing and jumping I'd hope for highly tuned movement mechanics. That's what makes Getting Over It so brilliant, the wacky yet highly tuned and complex movement.

You know what classic game I think deserves revisiting? Crazy Climber, the 1980 arcade game. With a unique movement mechanic built around twin joysticks. There's been a bunch of sequels, remakes, and influenced-by games but there's something about the very original that still feels really vital and underexplored.
posted by Nelson at 10:24 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nelson, I've not played but I've heard from many streamers' remarks that the game play and jump mechanic feels good and appropriate for this type of game. That being said, ymmv based on your own gameplay mechanic tastes.
posted by Fizz at 10:30 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

That actually looks amazing.

Getting Over It, like Baba Is You and Tetris before it, felt more like a koan than a game, a discovered truth that feels like it's been with us forever that was somehow just out of sight.

Hippybear, your remark that "the game mechanic isn't that you take any damage or die or anything, you just get to watch in horror as so much of your progress unspools while you fall" makes me think that this might be in that same vein.

I don't know why, but I love the seemingly emergent, pupating-vaporwave aesthetic of games that seem to insist on growing way past the creator's ability to create novel game assets, with level structures evolving from internally consistent to hastily assembled to weird, increasingly surreal pirated-asset pastiche until they eventually devolve into "however the folders in the torrent were organized while the author stumbled through another stack of pirated models and grabbed whatever they had to hand."

Behind all that chaos you can see the shadow of a deeply creative, driven person whose creation has seized the wheel, and it's beautiful.
posted by mhoye at 10:33 AM on June 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

This looks good! No difficult movement, only falling.

I do not like Ludwig Ahlgren’s majestic hair
posted by Going To Maine at 10:38 AM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

I do not like Ludwig Ahlgren’s majestic hair

LMAO. Going to send this comment to QTCinderella.
posted by Fizz at 10:46 AM on June 27, 2023

That was definitely "Twilight Time" by The Platters, right? Haha, was any of this licensed?

The guitar music in the trailer? I'm pretty sure it's "Joy to the World".
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:46 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was coming in to ask why there's a jazzy Spanish-guitar-flavoured take on "Joy to the World" for the trailer music... [Edit window -- it's right there in the YouTube credits, "DJ Williams" is the performer, it is indeed Joy To The World.]
posted by Shepherd at 10:55 AM on June 27, 2023

No longer abusing the edit window: it looks like the trailer music is free to use / CC0.
posted by Shepherd at 10:57 AM on June 27, 2023

MetaFilter: sort of a GarrysMod.WAD vibe
posted by Fizz at 10:58 AM on June 27, 2023

nelson > You know what classic game I think deserves revisiting? Crazy Climber, the 1980 arcade game. With a unique movement mechanic built around twin joysticks.

Ubisoft's Grow Home really made me happy in the same way Crazy Climber did. Each stick maneuvers a hand. And you use the triggers to grab. It's very visceral, and largely pretty chill. There's a sequel that I really should get at some point; I think that point is now, given that "Only Up!" is Windows-only.
posted by egypturnash at 10:58 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you are interested in climbing games, Jusant is a upcoming one that looks like it might be really good, and it has a demo on Steam right now. (I think it's a limited time demo?) Combination climbing/exploration game that will be coming to, well, just about everything I think. Maybe not switch?
posted by aspo at 11:13 AM on June 27, 2023

if we're talking about Bennett Foddy and climbing games I would be remiss if I did not remind folks that GIRP exists
posted by cortex at 11:36 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

For anyone who is on a Switch and likes these types of game, Jump King is available. It's brutal but challenging and fun in the way that Souls-like games are.
posted by Fizz at 11:51 AM on June 27, 2023

I watched one of the linked streams for a while. After about ten minutes I upped the speed to 1.65x, then 2x. About ten minutes later, the guy streaming it got bored and typed "only up speedrun" into Youtube, and watched that.

After a while he started skipping ahead.

There sure is a lot to this game.
posted by egypturnash at 11:55 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There sure is a lot to this game.

The more there is, the further you get to fall if you screw up.
posted by hippybear at 11:57 AM on June 27, 2023

Not whimsical enough to overcome the nopeness of the heights involved.

The photo-realistic graphics make this pure nightmare fuel.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:58 AM on June 27, 2023

Now I'm imagining a first-person VR version and really noping out on that. This didn't bother my own height reluctance, but everyone is different.
posted by hippybear at 12:02 PM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh then you definitely don't want to play The Climb, one of the few Oculus games I played that really seemed pretty good. Absolutely "Crazy Climber but with VR goggles". I'm moderately nervous around heights but it didn't upset me. What I thought was interesting is the motions required for the climbing mechanics are (of course) very simple but I still acted somewhat like I was really climbing, albeit with my arms only.
posted by Nelson at 12:12 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

But can you pet the cat?
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:16 PM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't know much about game design, what is the word that describes a game like this? The graphic elements all seem to be off-the-shelf, the assets are pre-existing, the physics is janky, there are probably some tradmarked brand logos incorporated without permission... was this a one-person operation?

You're in luck, because Getting Over It is simultaneously a prominent example of the genre AND an explainer of the genre. The whole game is punctuated by narration from the creator, Bennett Foddy, and in one section he describes the inspiration for the game:

This game is a homage to a free game that came out in 2002, titled 'Sexy Hiking'. The author of that game was Jazzuo, a mysterious Czech designer who was known at the time as the father of B-games. B-Games are rough assemblages of found objects. Designers slap them together very quickly and freely, and they're often too rough and unfriendly to gain much of a following. They're built more for the joy of building them than as polished products.

In a certain way Sexy Hiking is the perfect embodiment of a B-game. It's built almost entirely out of found and recycled parts, and it's one of the most unusual and unfriendly games of its time.

That said, I'm actually having a really tough time finding anyone else who uses the term "B-game" in this particular manner—that is, to refer to a game compiled mostly from premade assets and built quickly. You can probably start to trace this lineage from the info in this PC Gamer article about Getting Over it and Sexy Hiking, though.

(also thanks to that article I now know the person behind Sexy Hiking is ALSO the person behind Hermies, a game I have never played but whose extremely crass and bizarre yet somehow joyful demo video has been stuck in my brain for over a decade. Content warning: as Foddy himself says, "be careful, some of his games are in extremely poor taste!" and this absolutely 100% qualifies.)
posted by chrominance at 1:41 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Addendum: oh never mind, B-Game is a term TIGSource used a bunch. So there's your etymology for the term.
posted by chrominance at 1:43 PM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I meant to say that in the gameplay I saw, everytime the character fell to the ground, an instrumental guitar version of "Twilight Time" seemed to kick in.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:30 PM on June 27, 2023

I just watched a 40+ minute speedrun of Only Up and let me tell you this is not the game for me, not least because your character does not cast a shadow which, for the way I see, means I cannot place them within 3D space at all. Much credit to the developers anyway.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:02 PM on June 27, 2023

How about a 20 minute speed run?
posted by hippybear at 4:46 PM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ubisoft's Grow Home really made me happy in the same way Crazy Climber did.

Thanks for this suggestion. I picked up the sequel Grow Up and the first hour it's really charming. A little janky, a lot satisfying.
posted by Nelson at 5:23 PM on June 27, 2023

I was more impressed with the 40 minute run because it didn't use beds and was more climbing and navigating.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:32 PM on June 27, 2023

So it’s a fancy version of doodlejump?
posted by blue_beetle at 11:04 PM on June 27, 2023

33 second speedrun
posted by Lorc at 12:23 AM on June 29, 2023

And now the duck has milkshaked itself?

Only Up! Pulled From Steam After Becoming A Twitch Sensation
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:45 PM on July 1, 2023

i'm not sure that's truly milkshake duck, so much as, like, a copies of a zine at a local bookstore being pulled off the shelf because someone objected to unlicensed use of a xeroxed photo. Which isn't to say don't pay for shit if you're using it commercially but this isn't a bald, overt ethical compromise so much as mild fuckery in the penumbral space of rando indie bullshit that wins the lottery.
posted by cortex at 3:49 PM on July 1, 2023

You may have missed the strange NFT connection mentioned in the Kotaku article.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:22 PM on July 1, 2023

oh noooo
posted by cortex at 4:28 PM on July 1, 2023