While climbing the mountain, Bennett Foddy voices several different voice lines. During Bennett's monologues, a jazzy piece, Soul & Mind by E's Jammy Jams, plays.
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 too 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[]
(Music) 'Born To Lose' — Tedd Daffan's Texans
Nineteenth fall[]
Don't hate the player; hate the game.
— Ice T
Twentieth 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
Twenty-first 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-second fall[]
She smiled in defeat,
With unconquerable eyes.
— Atticus
Twenty-third fall[]
Your failure here is a metaphor. To learn for what, please resume climbing.
— Rob Dubbin
Twenty-fourth 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-fifth fall[]
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
— Christina Rosetti
Twenty-sixth 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-seventh fall[]
(Music) 'Going Down the Road Feeling Bad' — Gussie Ward Stone
Twenty-eighth 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-ninth 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
Thirtieth fall[]
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take.
— Lewis Carroll
Thirty-first fall[]
(Music) 'Easy Street' — The Pied Pipers with Axel Stordahl and his Orchestra
Thirty-second 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-third fall[]
There are no regrets in life,
Just lessons.
— Jennifer Aniston
Thirty-fourth fall[]
(Music) 'Six Cold Feet in the Ground' — Leroy Carr
Thirty-fifth fall[]
(Music) 'When I Grow Too Old To Dream' — Dick Haymes
Thirty-sixth 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-seventh 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-eighth 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-ninth fall[]
(Music) 'Poor Boy A Long Ways from Home' — Barbecue Bob
Fortieth 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
Forty-first 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
Forty-second fall[]
I'm crushing your dreams and dashing your hopes
You're climbing a mountain with a hammer and no ropes.
Forty-third 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-fourth fall[]
(Music) 'Going Down the Road Feeling Bad' — Ruth Huber and Lois Judd
Forty-fifth fall[]
Whenever I climb, I'm followed by a dog called 'ego'.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Forty-sixth fall[]
I'm, uh. I'm going to let you be for a little bit.
Forty-seventh 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].
Going back to the slide after several tries[]
You're back here again, showing patience and then attacking, scraping then flapping and snagging.
Returning to other parts[]
You've done this part before, you know it's possible.
Just do it you did the first time.
Video[]
Getting Over It - Full Speech, All the Monologue, Full Commentary by Bennet Foddy
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy Voiceover