Voice lines and music

While climbing the mountain, Bennett Foddy voices several different voice lines, and several pieces of music is played.

This article lists the lines verbatim as they're shown by the in-game subtitles and indicates where the voice deviates with brackets.

Reaching the top rock in the first pile of rocks
There's no feeling more intense than starting over.

If you've deleted your homework the day before it was due, as I have,

Or if you left your wallet at home and you have to go back, after spending an hour in the commute,

If you won some money at the casino and then put all your winnings on red, and it came up black,

If you got your best shirt dry-cleaned before a wedding and then immediately dropped food on it,

If you won an argument with a friend and then later discovered that they just returned to their original view,

Starting over is harder than starting up.

If you're not ready for that, like if you've already had a bad day

then what you're about to go through might be too much.

Feel free to go away and come back. I'll be here.

Reaching the oar
Alright, thanks for coming with me on this trip. I'll understand if you have to take a break at any point...

Just find a safe place to stop, and quit the game.

Don't worry, I'll save your progress, always. Even your mistakes.

Reaching the fallen tree next to the hut
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.

Reaching the pipe
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.

In it, your task is to simply drag yourself up a mountain with a hammer.

The act of climbing [That act of climbing in voice], in the digital world or in real life, has certain essential properties that gives the game it's flavor.

No amount of forward progress is guaranteed; some cliffs are to sheer or too slippery.

And the player is constantly, unremittingly in danger of falling and losing everything.

Reaching platforms above the coffee cup
Anyway when you start Sexy Hiking, you're standing next to a tree [you're standing next to this dead tree in voice], which blocks the way to the entire rest of the game.

It might take you an hour to get over that tree. A lot of people never got past it. You prod and poke at it, exploring the limits of your reach and [your] strength, trying to find a way up [and over].

There's a sense of truth in that lack of compromise [and there's a sense of truth in that lack of compromise in voice].

Most obstacles in videogames are fake—you can be completely confident in your ability to get through them, once you have the correct method or the correct equipment, or just by spending enough time.

In that sense, every pixellated obstacle in Sexy Hiking is real.

Reaching the platform below the red girder
The obstacles in Sexy Hiking are unyielding, and that makes the game uniquely frustrating.

But I'm not sure Jazzuo intended to make a frustrating game—the frustration is just essential to the act of climbing and it's authentic to the process of building a game about climbing.

A funny thing happened to me as I was building this mountain:

I'd have an idea for a new obstacle, and I'd build it, test it, and... it would usually turn out to be unreasonably hard. But I couldn't bring myself to make it easier.

It already felt like my inability to get past the new obstacle was my fault as a player, rather than as the builder.

Imaginary mountains build themselves from our efforts to climb them, and it's our repeated attempts to reach the summit that turns those mountains into something real.

Reaching the rock in the bottom of the narrow chute
When you're building a videogame world you're building with ideas,

And that can be like working with quick-set cement. You mold your ideas into a certain shape that can be played with,

and in the process of playing with them they begin to harden and set

until theyre immutable, like rock. At that point you can't change the world—not without breaking it into pieces and starting fresh with new ideas [And at that point you can't change the world—not without breaking it into pieces and starting fresh with new ideas in voice].

Reaching the platform above the narrow chute
For years now people have been predicting that games would soon be made out of prefabricated objects, bought in a store and assembled into a world.

For the most part [And for the most part in voice], that hasn't happened, because the objects in the stores are trash. I don't mean they look bad or [that] they're badly made,

although a lot of them are. I mean they're trash in the way that food becomes trash as soon as you put it in the sink.

Things are made to be consumed in a certain context [Things are made to be consumed and used in a certain context in voice], and once the moment is gone they transform into garbage. In the context of technology those moments pass by in seconds.

Reaching the top of the tall house
Over time we've poured more and more refuse into this vast digital landfill we call the internet. It now vastly outnumbers and outweighs the things that are fresh and untainted and unused.

When everything around us is cultural trash, trash becomes the new medium, the lingua franca of the digital age.

You can build culture out of trash [And you can build culture out of trash in voice], but only trash culture: B-games, B-movies, B-music, B-philosophy.

Reaching the end of the metal beam
Maybe this is what this digital culture is.

A monstrous mountain of trash,

the ash-heap of creativity's fountain.

A landfill with everything we ever thought of in it

Grand, infinite, and unsorted.

Reaching the barbecue
There's 3D models of breakfast

gen-xers' fanfic novels

scanned magazines

green-screen Shia leBoeuf

banned snuff scenes on liveleak

facebook's got lifelike bots

with unbranded adverts,

and candid shots of kanye

and taylor swift mashups

car crash epic fail gifs

Russian dash cam vids

discussions of McRibs

discarded, forgotten, unrecycled

muddled, rotten, and untitled

Reaching the umbrella
Everything's fresh for about six seconds

until some newer thing beckons

and we hit refresh.

And there's years of persevering

Dissapearing into the pile

Out of style

Out of sight

Reaching the top of the cardboard boxes
In this context it's tempting to make friendly content...

That's gentle, that lets you churn through it but not earn it.

Why make something demanding, if

it just gets piled up in the landfill

Filed in with the bland things?

Reaching the area where the security camera points
When games were new, they wanted a lot from you.

Daunting you, taunting you, resetting and delaying you.

Players played stoically. Now everyone's turned off by that.

They want to burn through it quickly, a quick fix for the fickle

Some tricks for the clicks of the feckless.

But that's not you, you're an acrobat

You could swallow a baseball bat.

Reaching the bed
Now I know, most likely you're watching on Youtube or Twitch

while some dude with 10 million views does it for you

Like a baby bird being fed chewed-up food.

That's culture too

Reaching the chair
But on the off-chance you're playing this, what I'm saying is:

Trash is disposable but maybe it doesn't have to be approachable

what's the feeling like? are you stressed

I guess you don't hate it if you got this far

feeling frustrated

it's underrated.

Reaching the oranges
An orange is sweet juicy fruit

Locked inside a bitter peel

That's not how I feel about a challenge.

I only want the bitterness

Its coffee, its grapefruit, its licorice.

Reaching the boulder before the rectory
It feels like we're closer now

Composer and climber

Designer and user

You could have refused but you didn't

There was something in you that was hidden

That chose to continue

Reaching the pillar next to the phone booth
It means a lot to me

That you've come this far

Endured this much

Every wisecrack, every insensitivity

Every setback you've forgiven me

Is a kingly gift you've given me [Is a kingly gift that you've given me in voice].

Reaching the bucket
We have the same taste, you and I

It's not ambition.

It's ambition's opposite.

An obdurate mission to taste defeat

You'll feel bad if you win

So I put this snake in for you

Reaching the small ledge on the ice cliff
Have you thought about who you are in this

Are you the man in the pot, Diogenes?

Are you his hand?

Are you the top of the hammer [Are you the top of his hammer in voice]?

I think not—

Where you hand moves, the hammer may not follow

nor the man, nor the man's hand.

In this you are his WILL. His intent.

The embodied resolve in his uphill ascent.

Reaching the first satellite dish
Now you've conquered the ice cliff,

The platforms the church and rectory,

The living room and the factory,

The playground and the construction site,

The granite rocks and the lakeside.

You've learned to hike.

There's no way left to go but up

And in a moment I'll shut up, but let me say

I'm glad you came.

Reaching the space around the second asteroid
I dedicate this game to you, the one who came this far.

I give it to you with all my love.

First fall
Oof, you lost a lot of progress. That's a deep frustration, a real punch in the gut.

Second fall
uff.... Sorry about that.

Third fall
Oh no, it happened again. Keep on trying, don't let it get to you.

Fourth fall
This thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

— Mary Pickford

Fifth fall
(Music) 'Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad' — Cliff Carlisle

Sixth fall
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

— John Vance Cheney

Seventh fall
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

— C.S. Lewis

Eighth fall
I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

— William Shakespeare

Ninth fall
You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again.

Knowing this [And knowing this in voice], truly believing it, will make you less miserable now.

— Abraham Lincoln

Tenth fall
(Music) 'Poor Me Blues' — Edna Hicks

Eleventh fall
Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there, I did not die.

— Mary Frye

Twelfth fall
To live is to suffer,

to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Thirteenth fall
Life is a mosaic of pleasure and pain—grief is an interval between two moments of joy.

Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower — Sathya Sai Baba

Fourteenth fall
Sorrow is my own yard / where the new grass / flames as it has flamed

often before but not / with the cold fire / that closes round me this year.

— William Carlos Williams

Fifteenth fall
(Music) 'Whoops a Doodle' — Buddy Weed and His Trio

Sixteenth fall
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been."

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Seventeenth fall
If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes,

it can only mean that you have no respect for them.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Eighteenth fall
Don't hate the player; hate the game.

— Ice T

Nineteenth fall
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing sought,

and with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

— William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXX​​

Twentieth fall
Patience is the foundation of eternal peace.

Make anger your enemy.

Harm comes to those who know only victory and do not know defeat.

Find fault with yourself and not with others. It is in falling short

of your own goals that you will surpass those who exceed theirs.

— Tokugawa Ieyasu

Twenty-first fall
She smiled in defeat,

With unconquerable eyes.

— Atticus

Twenty-second fall
Your failure here is a metaphor. To learn for what, please resume climbing.

— Rob Dubbin

Twenty-third fall
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

— Ella Weaver Wilcox

Twenty-fourth fall
Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

— Christina Rosetti

Twenty-fifth fall
Something filled up my heart with nothing, someone told me not to cry. Now that I'm older, my heart is colder, I can see that it's a lie.

— The Arcade Fire

Twenty-sixth fall
(Music) 'Going Down the Road Feeling Bad' — Gussie Ward Stone

Twenty-seventh fall
I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand.

How few! yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep- while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save one from the pitiless wave [Can I not save one from the pitiless wave in voice]?

Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

— Edgar Allen Poe

Twenty-eighth fall
Can I see another's woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another's grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

— William Blake

Twenty-ninth fall
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take.

— Lewis Carroll

Thirtierh fall
(Music) 'Easy Street' — The Pied Pipers with Axel Stordahl and his Orchestra

Thirty-first fall
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt

— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Thirty-second fall
There are no regrets in life,

Just lessons.

— Jennifer Aniston

Thirty-third fall
(Music) 'Six Cold Feet in the Ground' — Leroy Carr

Thirty-fourth fall
Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect when it began, or if there were

A day when it was not. It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain.

— Emily Dickinson

Thirty-fifth fall
Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.

— William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

Thirty-sixth fall
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its

heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the

daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem

less wondrous than your joy.

— Khalil Gibran

Thirty-seventh fall
(Music) 'Poor Boy A Long Ways from Home' — Barbecue Bob

Thirty-eighth fall
This is the Hour of Lead

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons recollect the Snow

First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.

— Emily Dickinson

Thirty-ninhth fall
I feel your pain: the pain in knowing this has

Happened to you. The pain in knowing what more

tears we have gained. But through all this I feel your pain.

— Octavia Hawkins-Richardson

Fortieth fall
I'm crushing your dreams and dashing your hopes

You're climbing a mountain with a hammer and no ropes.

Forty-first fall
The mountain seems no more a soulless thing,

But rather as a shape of ancient fear,

In darkness and the winds of Chaos born

Amid the lordless heavens' thundering—

A Presence crouched, enormous and austere,

Before whose feet the mighty waters mourn.

— George Sterling

Forty-second fall
(Music) 'Going Down the Road Feeling Bad' — Ruth Huber and Lois Judd

Forty-third fall
Whenever I climb, I'm followed by a dog called 'ego'.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Forty-fourth fall
I'm, uh. I'm going to let you be for a little bit.

Forty-fifth fall
(Music) 'I'm Going Down The Road Feeling Bad' — Forde Ward

Falling to the icy floating boulder area for the first time
You fell from above but I know you won't linger here. Your hammer's no longer, your jump is no stronger, but your hunger will tell.

Returning to the bucket many times
This gets more frightening each time you return.

Knuckles whitening, stomach tightening, once bitten, so many times burned.

Spending a lot of time at the ice cliff
The first time you got here you thought you were safe. A base camp for reaching the summit. That's how it seemed on its face, the first time, but your face can fall fast when you plummet.

Getting stuck in the radio tower
You got so close [Ah, you got so close in voice], but this is past mending. You got the bad ending.

Clicking 500 times
Listen, this is a little awkward, but

you've clicked the mouse button 500 times now.

I'm gonna say you're gripping the mouse a little hard [I'm gonna say you're gripping the mouse a little bit hard in voice].

Unknown criteria
(Music) 'Born To Lose' — Tedd Daffan's Texans

(Music) 'When I Grow Too Old To Dream' — Dick Haymes

You're back here again, showing patience and then attacking, scraping then flapping and snagging.

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