Ludography
GIRP cover

2011 · Bennett Foddy · Indie · Sports

GIRP

A spiritual successor of sorts to the developer's earlier QWOP, this one takes the physical feats out of the realm of organized sport and instead puts the player in control of a man desperately clinging to a rocky oceanside cliff at sea level. Numerous handholds are available with which to pull himself up, helpfully labeled with keyboard letters, and if a handhold proves out of reach the player can activate a muscle-tensing big push, really striving to get close enough to the handhold to grab it. The player's body is governed by ragdoll physics, meaning that sometimes some rocking or swinging motions are needed in order to get close enough to make use of a handhold. Additional challenge is provided by shore birds who have made their nests in the handholds, obscuring the relevant letter with their feathery little bodies, plus of course the gradually-rising tide.

Released
28 March 2011
Platforms
BrowserWindows
Genres
IndieSports
Developers
Bennett Foddy
Publishers
—
Perspective
Side view
Themes
Action
Engine
Adobe Flash

About

GIRP is a 2011 rock-climbing simulator Flash game by Australian game developer Bennett Foddy. It is a sequel to his 2008 game QWOP. GIRP was nominated for the Nuovo award for innovative games at the 2012 Independent Games Festival, but lost out to Daniel Benmergui's Storyteller.

Keywords

  • rock climbing
  • qwoplike

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In the game, the player presses keyboard keys assigned to rocks on a wall to flex and ascend its surface. All the while, the water level is rising higher by the second, and if it reaches over the player's head, they will drown and have to start over. Wired described the game as "masochistically difficult" and "maddeningly compulsive", with the effect of making the player's keyboard similar to the physical skill game of Twister. Foddy designed GIRP to hijack the neurological reward-system by allowing players to set their own achievable goals in the game.

A sanctioned multiplayer version of GIRP intended for festival use was released under the name Mega GIRP by game developer Douglas Wilson.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Windows28 March 2011Worldwide
Browser28 March 2011Worldwide

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.