The thing that made Getting Over It so successful was that it provided a tough but fair challenge. One that required meticulous and well thought-out strategy, combined with a mastery of the controls. Getting Over It achieved such an amazing balance in this regard, that it became one of the most popular games on Steam upon its release.
Bowling Over It does none of that, and that's why it fails. Not because it's a rip-off (it technically is, but that's neither here nor there), but because its challenge is tough and supremely unfair. It suffers from three major problems that Getting Over It avoided.
Problem 1: No Safety Nets
Getting Over It occasionally threatened to erase chunks of your progress, but let's be real here. The truth of the matter is that 90% of the time you had layers upon layers of platforms beneath you that, at the very least, prevented you from going all the way back to the beginning.
Bowling Over It never provides that safety net. Most of the time you are in peril of falling all the way down to the beginning of the game, and no matter how far you progress that danger is always there. This makes the game far more difficult than Getting Over It; a game that, in and of itself, was already considered highly challenging.
Problem 2: No Reactionary Defense Mechanism
In Getting Over It you could mess up badly, and (if your skills were great enough) still save yourself with the flick of your wrist. This added a sense of embattlement; one where you felt you always had a chance, up until that last fleeting fall, to save yourself.
Bowling Over It completely fails to provide this and, instead, forces you to watch hopelessly as your bowling ball rolls off hills and your progress is erased over and over again. This is because as soon as your ball hits a surface, your control over it is nullified until it comes to rest. This, you are required to put all of your effort and skill into how you launch the ball, and are then left powerless to determine how the ball lands.
This creates a fundamental lack of control, which severely hampers your ability to find success in this game. It merely becomes a matter of knowing exactly where to aim your strikes and then hoping for a little luck on the receiving end. And that is a far less entertaining challenge than what Getting Over It provided.
Problem 3: Thematic Apathy
Getting Over It was a supreme masterpiece in terms of creating bizarre and memorable environments during your ascent up the mountain. From the junkyard, to the devil's chimney, to orange hell; Getting Over It never failed to dazzle with its creepily cluttered and abstract craziness.
Bowling Over It, on the other hand, just feels like an assortment of random objects, haplessly floating about in pointless disarray. There's no identifiable themes, nor is there any feeling of environmental change as you progress, which is a failing of the creators creativity, something that cannot be in short supply especially when you're being accused of plagiarism to begin with.
So, in conclusion, what we have here is an articulation of what Getting Over It would have looked like had it been terrible. Truly, Bowling Over It is a version of Bennett Foddy's original vision that has become obscured, botched, neglected, and haphazardly vomited into existence for no reason other than making a quick buck. It's unfortunate, to be sure, but at least it's cheap.
Don't thing that i wrote that myself i just copied it, sorry....
