IWBTG - Try not to break something.

[Serge]

Breaking things is a common frustration response to this game, thus the warning in the title.

I came across an awesome free indie game colloquially known as IWBTG, or I Wanna Be The Guy.

The site itself describes what the game's about better than I could, so I'll just copypasta what it says.

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game is a sardonic loveletter to the halcyon days of early American videogaming, packaged as a nail-rippingly difficult platform adventure. Players fill the role of The Kid, a youthful, vaguely Megaman-esque protagonist on a quest to become The Guy. This inscrutable plot, however, is just a vehicle for a wide variety of inventive, well-designed and frustrating jump-and-shoot challenges that pay homage to many of the games you loved as a child. The ever-fragile Kid explodes in a shower of red pixels at the slightest brush from the game's many obstacles, from traditional spikes and bottomless pits to more unconventional killers, such as plantlife and puzzle pieces.

Using a multiroute layout not unlike a Metroidvania, the game grants a degree of deadly exploration, without those extraneous upgades meant to make life easier. The game provides players with a choice in terms of their deathrate, thanks to a variable difficulty setting that changes the number of save points from frequent to nonexistent. IWBTG is open to all players; knowledge of videogaming history is optional, and may not help against the frequently ironic and always sadistic deathtraps located herein. And so, the question is left up to you...

Do YOU have what it takes to be The Guy?

Basically, if any of you played the NES classic games that seemed to be designed to be impossible, then this game will ring a lot of familiar bells. If you haven't had that glorious experience, however, you owe it to yourself to find out what you were missing. There's a reason that few, hallowed modern games earn the title of "Nintendo Hard".

This is why long-time gamers think modern games are too easy. This is why they ARE too easy. This is why I'm going to have a heart attack at 35. It's a good thing they designed those old NES controllers to be durable. I don't think my fancy logitech keyboard can take much more of my rage-induced punishment.

To give you an idea of how difficult this game is, there are 8 bosses in total, with seemingly short paths to each boss. In my first foray into the game, I died no less than 350 times before getting to the first boss, and I STILL DIDN'T BEAT HIM. I ended up starting over on a lower difficulty (don't let that fool you, it only increases the number of save points, doesn't make the areas easier to pass) and took a different route, and only recently killed Mike Tyson. He's the easiest of the 8 bosses.