I Wanna Be the Guy

I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game is a 2D platform indie freeware video game created by independent developer Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly for Microsoft Windows using Multimedia Fusion 2. First released in October 2007, the game is not in active development despite being listed as a beta, though the source code for the game was released by Kayin in November 2011. IWBTG is most famous for its difficulty. Most of the landscape is engineered specifically to kill the player character. Alongside a traditional range of recognizable dangers, such as spikes and pits, there are many less obvious threats as well, most of which are all but impossible to avoid without either previous knowledge or trial and error.

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 thoseextraneous 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?