Like many people I learned about this game through Getting Over It, and it was in a time of my life when I was in the middle of college rethinking my future a bit. I had stars in my eyes thinking about abandoning the safe financial stability of a potential job in an industry I was increasingly seeing as unethical for overworking its employees, in favor of going indie. Nothing quite made me feel so swayed as games that were not very good on purpose, because they all had a sense of community and encouragement to them, trying to get their foot in the door to preach the good word about how games can simply be made for your own enjoyment without appealing to an audience. Getting Over It had this energy, but even more so did Sexy Hiking, an undeniable piece of GameMaker Studio garbaggio.

I was out here prototyping ideas in Twine, which I would later plan to execute into bigger projects. I would do more 3D work outside the context of the classroom, put more of a personal spin on it. Try to open things up in Unity and learn all of the nonsense of C#, a language so bad only Microsoft could've invented it. It didn't necessarily go anywhere serious, and I didn't need it to. At the time I was sharing space with other people making silly little shit games and having a good time. Delighting in the uncomfortable strangeness of games a lot like this one. It filled me with a lot of happiness, studying this game carefully with the same energy of dadaist art.

I had come in hot in my game design education in my very first quarter. It was definitely not a 100 class but they figured I should jump into it anyways, usually they start you off with more classes catered to general arts, then work you into 3D, then later into the actual game design theory which is a different beast entirely. So there I was completely out of my depth learning psychological models, prisoner's dilemmas, Conway's Game of Life, and all other sorts of systems math and sociological data as well as essays on the very nature of what play is even supposed to mean. Not just Homo Ludens, but all kinds of overwhelming information that put me through the wringer and gave me a very rigid understanding of what 'play' is even supposed to look like. I even had to develop prototypes in a group which if you know how fucking brutal and twisted that is to inflict on a college student in their first year... you know.

I am thankful now that I took those classes first, because in giving me a solid understanding of the fundamentals of games, it gave me everything I need to know about ways to twist and bend their boundaries while maintaining the intent of design and mechanics. They teach you this in many art fields, that you must learn the rules before you could break them. In my second and third years I would be introduced to my proper game design and high level 3D art classes, and the combination of this rigidity with the whimsical spirit of these shit games and their communities, here I was tracing the edges of possibility in the bliss and joy of creation. Only, I was a bit shit at it, and part of me took pride in this. My main teacher, my mentor, I hold him dear to my heart, he would love to oblige in breaking everything I made just to prove a point. It felt reactive to learn design and even the teachers were so on board with that creative energy I was seeking.

My life took on many exciting directions, I would eventually bunker down and focus entirely on my finals and graduation, put the silly little side projects aside. Suffocated by the notion I may be turned into a drone doing an unbearable amount of crunch work for people who may discriminate against me in a hostile workplace, and dealing with my own life troubles and needing to get into a better place in my life first, I graduated, and then I quit art for quite a bit to focus on my changing life. It took time but that creative potential and freeform desire to follow the passion of creation would eventually lead me exactly where I needed to be, but now a ways away from where I'd initially wanted to be.

I was no longer making game design demos and furthering my goals in participating in game jams and learning the capacity to wear every single game developer hat in the book possible. I was lost entirely in the world of art, leaving the design world pretty much entirely behind. Honing my painting, sculpting, anatomy, character, rigging, animation skills, and working on more stylized art up until the point where it would land me an independent lifestyle. It's genuinely a beautiful thing that I somehow got all the way back to one of my deepest desires born from my frustration with my education and the games industry that it's now a motivating factor within my life.

It's not the same as game design, and I have felt relatively starved, constantly talking about how I want to go back to game design in my free time as a hobby. Perhaps it's better this way that you have a passion you haven't turned into a job. I may not be ready for it now, but I know a game design hobby is always sitting for me there when I feel like it. And truthfully it doesn't help how much music I've been listening to, books and tv shows I promised to others I'd watch, and of course, many of you have seen me on this website logging all kinds of shit multiple times a week. I just can't help but be deeply fascinated by games and their design, so who has time to make them when there's things to learn from them, entertainment to find from them, I just love video games so dearly.

And I would not nearly love them as much if I didn't have Getting Over It and Sexy Hiking showing me what I really love about the process of creation. About a little bit of friction and mismatch of expectations applied to design. Something can be so indifferent and so whimsically approachable in that way. Maybe pissing you off was the byproduct of a silly and novel vision someone had, and they just wanted to have a good time and let their creativity flow. I deeply admire it, even if I find this game to just not be very good at all, deeply frustrating, and absolutely fucking hideous.

It all came back around to me recently when my friend Dilly had been showing me his run in FIVE minutes on Getting Over It, prompting me to reinstall the thing and play it again. Have my own little difficulties and moments of hilarity and pain whipping that thing around. It brings me back to when I'd play it between classes, watching Markiplier rage react to it, taking notes about what I could learn from such a strange little GameMaker game here. I can only look back at a game such as this so fondly, with a whole lot of love and admiration. It is among one of the dumbest things you could possibly play, and it's absolutely free if you don't consider it a tax on your spirits to flounder like a fish with a mallet.

If you're a student and a position to choose between programming, art, and design, I would definitely say leave design for later. Inevitably, programmers who seek to truly succeed in design will need to learn the fundamentals of 3D art and get competent in it. Just the same, 3D artists can't get by without understanding engines and the ways they work and at least being able to read and write basic code before hopping into design either. You can certainly learn while doing, but it won't feel nearly as natural and you'll find yourself going back to re-teach yourself things. Also yes you do need to learn how to draw and image manipulation too. Consider learning all of these in parallel with each other in bite sized pieces through the wonderful world of small games and shit games just like Sexy Hiking! Pick an engine, I recommend Godot or Lua Love, and just go absolutely nuts.

Reviewed on Feb 11, 2026