· By Staff
\nBennett Foddy—the designer behind QWOP, Getting Over It, and Baby Steps—builds physics-based games about Sisyphean struggle, but his own play habits lean toward chaotic 'friendslop' multiplayer and perpetually unfinished epics like Baldur's Gate 3.
\n\nThe assumption that Foddy must exclusively enjoy punishing, high-friction games is wrong. His actual library is split between social chaos and impossibly vast RPGs he admits he will never complete.
\n\nFrom ZX Spectrum to Ragdoll Physics
\n\nFoddy's entry into gaming started at age five on a ZX Spectrum, an experience he describes as making him 'ravenous for games on all platforms.' He graduated to the Commodore Amiga before encountering PC gaming through two specific formative titles: Zork, played on a loaner computer brought home by his parents, and NetHack, played with his sister.
\n\nNetHack left the deepest mark. His sister had printed out the game's FAQs on dot-matrix paper—a physical, cumbersome information layer required to decode an opaque digital system. That mechanism (obtuse system → external information dependency → iterative failure → gradual mastery) became the exact blueprint for his later work.
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The QWOP Mechanism: Why the Controls Fight Back
\n\nFoddy released QWOP in 2008, two years after teaching himself programming while pursuing an academic career. The game's mechanism is simple in description—four keys control the thighs and calves of a ragdoll runner—but the outcome is slapstick failure because the physics simulation refuses to map intuitively to player intent.
\n\nThis is not random difficulty. The control scheme forces a cognitive disconnect between what you want the runner to do and what your fingers must actually execute. GIRP (2011) applied the same principle to vertical climbing via keyboard inputs mapped to hold types. Getting Over It (2017) scaled the concept into a continuous, no-checkpoint ascent using a hammer in a cauldron, weaponizing the player's own progress against them during falls.
\n\nBaby Steps, released in 2024 and co-developed, shifted the framework from vertical punishment to open-world hiking, maintaining the awkward control signature across a broader traversal space. (PC Gamer awarded it an 85%.)
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The Baldur's Gate 3 Problem: Scale as a Roadblock
\n\nFoddy won't uninstall Baldur's Gate 3. He also admits he will probably never finish it. His explanation is blunt: 'It was too big and so I stopped.'
\n\nFor a designer whose games strip mechanics down to a single, agonizing core loop, Larian's massive RPG presents an inverse problem. The sheer volume of branching systems, dialogue trees, and tactical encounters doesn't create friction—it creates paralysis. Keeping it installed, unfinished, is a deliberate choice to preserve the possibility of returning without the commitment of actually doing so.
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What Is 'Friendslop' and Why Does It Matter?
\n\nFoddy's current playtime is dominated by what he calls 'friendslop' games. These are chaotic, low-barrier multiplayer experiences where the primary mechanic is social disruption rather than skill expression.
\n\nThis preference makes sense when viewed through his design lens. His single-player games isolate the player in a bubble of private failure. Friendslop inverts that dynamic: failure is public, communal, and funny specifically because the systems are breaking down around multiple people simultaneously. The mechanism shifts from (player → awkward controls → isolated setback) to (player group → chaotic systems → shared comedy). The outcome is the same—laughter derived from loss of control—but the emotional vector is completely different.
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Beginner Guidance: Approaching Foddy's Games
\n\nWhat is the most important thing to know before playing Getting Over It?
\n\nProgress is never permanently lost unless you quit. Falls are designed to feel catastrophic, but the muscle memory you build during an ascent stays intact. The game's hidden variable is that the climbing skill you develop compounds, even when your vertical position resets.
\n\nHow should a new player approach QWOP?
\n\nStop trying to run normally. The game does not reward conventional athletic timing. The quickest initial progress comes from finding a grotesque, stumbling rhythm—alternating thigh and calf inputs in a way that looks nothing like human running. Treat it as a physics puzzle, not a sports game.
\n\nIs Baby Steps easier than Getting Over It?
\n\nBaby Steps distributes its frustration across a wider space. The controls remain deliberately awkward, but the open-world structure means a single failure doesn't erase thirty minutes of vertical progress. It is a more forgiving entry point to Foddy's design sensibility, though it sacrifices the claustrophobic intensity that makes Getting Over It memorable.
\n\nShould you play Foddy's games if you easily get frustrated?
\n\nSkip them. These games are explicitly designed to test your tolerance for repeated, humiliating failure. If that cycle doesn't produce intrigue or dark humor for you, the mechanism offers no secondary reward—no narrative payoff, no loot loop, no progression system to soften the blow.
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