Only Up! is a game where “you have to climb as high as possible”. And no, not like that – it’s a low-budget indie platformer about climbing to the top of a weird floating structure made of train tracks, giant slices of fruit, floating islands and more strange than that. And right now, nearly 150,000 people are watching it on Twitch.
The best channel on Only Up! currently owned by xQc (and yes, This xQc, the guy who got $100 million to stream on Twitch competitor Kick less than a week ago), which at the time of writing has 71,000 people watching him play. But as you can see on the category’s homepage, it’s far from the only one:
The concept of Only Up! is simple: you are Jackie, desperately trying to escape the poverty of the slum in which you live. To do this, you embark on a journey inspired by the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, climbing ever higher into the unknown.
“The world has definitely gone mad, although it’s never been normal, but now might be your chance,” the Steam page reads. “Crisis is a moment of action and decisive steps… except it’s scary because every step can set you back a long way.
“Sometimes it’s hard to choose the right path, but don’t be afraid, you can always repeat, we learn from our mistakes.”
Mechanically, Only Up! is quite simple. It’s played from a third-person perspective, you can walk, run, jump, or straddle things, and you can’t die: even if you fall several miles into the sky, you’ll lose your progress but not your life when you land. Predictably, it’s a bit janky: there are some fairly obvious editing errors, and the voice acting is repetitive and decidedly not great.
As suggested by the Steam store page, I could feel the game reaching a certain level of depth, but it mostly felt weird. At one point, for example, I reached a disembodied train platform in the sky: Jackie said, “My grandfather worked here for 60 years and then he died. Later, after meeting a friendly dog, he said, “What a nice dog. Your master isn’t coming back. Go find a new one.” It seems clear that English isn’t developer SCKR Games’ primary language, but even so, some in-game commentary struck me as odd.
The reaction on Steam is also “mixed”, with only 65% positive user reviews. One of the main complaints (which I fully agree with) is the lack of a save function: if you quit the game or crash, you have to start over from the beginning in a new session.
There’s also some displeasure with Only Up’s closeness to NFTs. You don’t buy NFTs in-game (as far as I’ve seen, anyway), but various images from the Goblintown NFT series, for example, can be seen in places throughout the game. The game’s title also appears to be a play on “Up Only,” a fairly well-known phrase in the NFT world that, among other things, was the title of a once-popular title. NFT related podcast. The NFT Floor app also recently launched a new feature called – you guessed it –High mode only.
More overtly, the player character’s jacket has the Goblintown logo on the back (and the name inscribed on the front, although it’s hard to see), and there’s actually a Goblintown mask you can put on at the start of the game. .
There’s no visible disclosure of a connection, so most of this will likely go unnoticed by most players, but there is clearly some sort of connection, with Goblintown also selling Only Up! hoodies and t-shirts, at ridiculously inflated prices. I contacted Goblintown and SCKR Games to ask about the nature of their relationship.
ᵢₜₛ dₐ gₒbbᵢₑ ₕₒₒdᵢₑ fᵣₒₘ @SCKRgames #onlyup!https://t.co/AU60qSeIK0 pic.twitter.com/mbB8EITAzlJune 21, 2023
It sounds sketchy, and yet there’s something about the game that’s also oddly alluring. I absolutely hate games that are designed only to make me mad, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or the upcoming sequel Baby Steps – I think I played Getting Over It for about five minutes before I hit my dog and to format my hard drive — and let there be no doubt, that’s absolutely what Only Up! Is all about.
But it’s also quite beautiful in its strangeness and simplicity. There are many times when the way forward is unclear, so I had to stop and examine my surroundings quite closely, and maybe I see something that isn’t. isn’t really there, but I felt a powerful childish fantasy vibe that really gave me that “let’s just see what’s around the next corner”. Falling down is incredibly frustrating, although it’s not too difficult to catch yourself on the way down if a structure is nearby, but I’ve also found that with a bit of care (Only Up! also has “slow walking” options ” and “slowed down”, so you can really crawl if you need to), I didn’t fall much at all.
I don’t think it’s a good game, and I have my doubts about its continued popularity on Twitch, and there’s an undeniable hesitation in the NFT aspect. Despite all that, I can see why people watch (and play) it. If you like streamers who get mad and yell and yell and freak out, Only Up! definitely has the potential to trigger some of them; and if you’re in the mood for a calm, simple, “what happens next?” trip that may or may not make sense when it’s all over, it could be that too.
For the record, there is an end to Only Up! : Newly crowned King of Twitch Kai Cenat played it from start to finish last week – a stream that TwitchTrakcer says is what sparked Only Up’s sudden surge in popularity.
Kai Cenat beat Only Up in only their third game😤🔥🔥 *VOLUME WARNING* pic.twitter.com/sshtZqybg1June 16, 2023
