The concept of Only Up is extremely simple. You are a kid. There is a ridiculous trail of floating objects making a very precarious route up into the sky. With purposely quite jank controls, you must perform an outrageous amount of 3D platforming to climb across all manner of random objects to get higher and higher until you reach the very top. There are 0 save points or checkpoints and no fall damage. If you miss a jump you fall until you hit another platform, often way way down from where you were, requiring you to repeat the climb from there, even if that means the very bottom of the entire game. Rage ensues.

I'm not totally sure how to review this game. Honestly, I think the game is doing everything it's trying to do very well. It's almost like a social experiment when you look at the reviews on Steam and just about every "recommended" is someone who beat it (or is smugly noting they fell once and refunded it) and every "not recommended" is someone who rage quit with a rant about "jank bullshit controls" and the like. The jank is totally by design and yet despite that, still achieves the Soulslike effect where everyone who beats the boss will say it was easy and everyone who hasn't will complain about how it was a broken, stupid, awful game design boss, the studio should be ashamed they thought to make a boss, etc. (all of which mainly only true for the Fire Giant in Elden Ring, fuck that guy).

There was some novelty at first with falling off and realizing how far that one slip (which is sometimes more due to the janky grabbing mechanic than your mistake) just caused you to repeat the last 5-30 mins. It wasn't as frustrating as I expected but I'm sure audiences enjoy watching and wincing with the mis-timed jump button. Honestly, I don't think the game is that hard. If there were checkpoints—which of course would break the whole point of the game—it'd be quite easy. Even without them, it certainly doesn't feel impossible, which is part of what keeps the gameplay loop going. Still, I probably could've beaten it if I banged my head against it another couple hours, but the novelty was already wearing off and I wasn't really enjoying myself and called it at the 1.5 hour mark after making it maybe about 50% from what I can tell.

I think the game will have its fans and I'm not surprised it's been popular for streamers as I expect that makes for some amusing rage compilations and the like. It will also definitely draw in some folks with more of a speedrunner mindset given how difficult it can be comfortably running through parts without falling. But I'm happily done without finishing the game and give it 3 stars for what little I enjoyed of it, but being a little generous as I find it amusing that I think the game achieves pretty much exactly what it's trying to, despite looking like a project that started because someone realized they had 9,000 free city assets and wasn't sure what kind of game to make with them.