I Wanna Be the Guy is hard. It’s really really hard, and what’s shown in this screenshot is one of the easiest sections of the game. If anyone is curious there are 87 spikes on that one screen, and each will kill you if you even scratch it. Not even a simple death either; You will blow up in a shower of messtacular gibbination. And I love it.
IWBTG is a 2D-Platformer from hell, via Kayin Nasaki, where you play ‘The Kid’ on his Metroidvania-lite quest to become ‘The Guy’, eponymous hero of platformerdom. I say Metroidvania-lite, because unlike many exploratory platformers this lacks any kind of character upgrades, meaning you’re stuck the way you are for the entire game.
It’s actually pretty lengthy even without considering how often you’ll have to repeat screens over and over again. Save points are placed pretty generously throughout if you’re playing on ‘Medium’, but that doesn’t do much to alleviate the frustration. Everything will kill you; Spikes, Moons, Bullets, Fire (Naturally), Blanka, Celings, floors, walls, walls-with-wheels-AND-spikes, Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku (But no shoryuken? Yet..) and heat-seeking apples (Well, they’re more like giant cherries – Kayin).
It’s a game of madness, memorisation and hatred. And I love it. The deathtraps are often-times hilarious, and boss fights are the height of precision and persitence. It’s not perfect, but then it was never meant to be, and any glitches are encouraged to be exploited just for the game breaking the laws of common sense to blow your carcass across the screen in wonderous fury. I can’t guarantee you’ll enjoy it, but I can guarantee it’s something you wont be forgetting anytime soon.
There’s a few download mirrors on the site, and for the sake of saving their bandwidth it’s encouraged for you to download the demo version which is smaller (and most players won’t pass the demo area before they lose their minds probably), and saves are compatabile with both versions anyway.
PROTIP: Use ‘S’ to skip cutscenes. Provided you make it to a boss, it’ll save yourself a lot of manly tears.