Top 15 Most Frustrating Games About Climbing, Falling, and Losing All Your Progress

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - October 1st 2025, 15:30 GMT+2

Baby Steps – 2025

You know a game’s going to be a trauma when the act of walking feels like defusing a bomb. In *Baby Steps*, you micro-manage every leg, inching forward against gravity, terrain, and your own sense of dignity. It’s equal parts comedy, torture, and existential commentary: you’ll laugh when Nate flails off a cliff, then quietly weep when you have to replay the same rocky slope again. The lack of fast travel or map forces you to face each slope, each fall, each micro-adjustment of weight. If you’re the kind of gamer who shouts at inanimate rocks and reassesses life choices mid-climb, this one was built for you. And yes – it’s essentially a walking simulator that refuses to let you walk. | © Devolver Digital

Try To Drive – 2025

This takes the “falling” genre and gives it wheels. In *Try To Drive*, two players share control of one bike – one steers, the other controls throttle – and the road to the peak is littered with traps, jumps, and terrain that wants to murder you. Fail as a team, and you crash spectacularly; succeed, and you cling to each other’s competence. The co-op design means your failure drags your partner down (literally), making blame a built-in feature. Yet somehow, navigating those nerve-shredding jumps together becomes its own bittersweet glue. | © Red Core Game

Chained Together – 2024

Imagine being shackled to your friends and told “go climb,” then watching them drag you into the void at the first misstep. That’s *Chained Together* in a nutshell. The twist: you’re physically linked by a chain, so every jump, swing, or miscalculation can yank your teammates into disaster. It’s coop chaos, where communication becomes as critical as precision. The replay loop is merciless – fall badly, and you might be back to the bottom, cursing your friend who “moved too early.” Yet somehow, amidst the profanity-laced laughter and collective failure, cooperation emerges. You survive by trusting one another, or else you all go tumbling. | © Anegar Games

A Difficult Game About Climbing – 2024

You know those games where “a little progress” is a lie? *A Difficult Game About Climbing* delivers that in spades. Here, your only tools are two arms, and every move is a physics puzzle of torque, tension, and shaky resolve. One wrong vector input and gravity cheers as you fall back down, thinking “nice try, buddy.” But the game softens its cruelty a bit: instead of always resetting all the way, it uses bodies of water as checkpoints so you don’t scream into the void from zero. It’s a fresh take on “rage game,” emphasizing smart momentum, risk, and that ironic pride when you inch forward just enough to feel alive. | © Pontypants

Peaks of Yore – 2024

At first glance, *Peaks of Yore* seduces you with its vintage climbing aesthetic and slow pace. But once your fingers tingle from overgripping, you realize this is a tortoise race to nowhere – until you lose progress and curse the whole thing. The first-person, physics-based climb-em-up style drills into you the shame of every slip. Each new route demands mastery of handholds, weight shifts, gear unlocks, and one wrong tug can cost dearly. The world and writing try to lull you into tranquility, but the moment your grip fails, you’re reminded this game is not here to be nice. Many have lost hours wondering how one curved rock could ruin them. | © TraipseWare

PEAK – 2025

Climbing through a mountain in *PEAK* feels like hiking with your friends – if those friends were constantly sabotaging you. The catch: it’s coop (or solo) climbing with survival elements thrown in. You’re not just scaling; you’re managing stamina, searching for helpful items, and trying not to let the mountain itself mock your efforts. The map rotates, the biomes change, and every climb demands you adapt – so your strategy on Peak Day 1 might fail on Peak Day 2. Missteps are punished in dramatic fashion, but cooperation (if you have teammates) can turn a disaster run into a triumphant summit. If you thought falling alone was bad, try dragging two others with you. | © Aggro Crab & Landfall

Get To Work – 2023

Oh yes, you’re strapped into rollerblades and climbing the corporate ladder one lethal jump at a time. *Get To Work* takes that metaphor literally: your limbs are wobbling, momentum is fickle, and the narrator is constantly side-eyeing your life choices. You’ll barrel through ramps, gaps, and absurd obstacles, cursed by the fact that misplacing a jump sets you back further than you can stomach. Despite its cruelty, there’s a sneaky sweetness in how it weaves satire about modern work culture into the madness of brutal platforming. When you finally edge forward, even by a few inches, the sense of triumph tastes like bitter coffee – but you’ll take it. | © Isto Inc.

The Game of Sisyphus – 2023

Pushing a boulder uphill sounds quaint until you realize the game expects you to maintain grip, momentum, and morale all at once. *The Game of Sisyphus* turns that myth into an emotional assault: one slip, one buff from the ground, and gravity gleefully drags your progress downhill. There are no firm checkpoints, so you constantly play catch-up with your own earlier failures. Yet oddly, the act of coaxing the boulder inch by inch is satisfying, especially when physics conflicts force you to stare at your hands and curse your own hubris. The despair when the rock veers off path? That’s part of the contract. | © cream

Yet Another Climbing Game – 2023

So you thought you could just “climb and chill”? Nope. In *Yet Another Climbing Game*, you control a climber with exactly one mechanic: grapple and swing. The twist is that this single motion feels maddeningly imprecise, as if your hands are made of butter. Slip up – or even misjudge momentum by the tiniest bit – and gravity drags you into a replay spiral. There are no checkpoints, so losing progress is simply baked in. Somehow, despite all of this, you’ll find yourself drawn back to that next reach, that next grasp, convinced “this time I’ll make it.” The game wears its cruelty with pride, but also with a poetic kind of aesthetic minimalism. | © RAZE GAMES

Only Up With Friends — Only Up: With Friends – 2023

Welcome to the multiplayer version of the “one wrong move ruins everything” genre. *Only Up: With Friends* pits you and your pals in a vertigo-driven parkour race. Every jump, every ledge grab, every slight lag can send you spiraling downward – and often into your own hubris. You’re not just fighting gravity now, you’re fighting your friends (or yourself) for the summit. The collaborative disaster aspect raises stakes: your failure drags everyone down, your success feels like a group miracle. It’s a cruel, joyful mess, and the kind of game that makes you regret ever calling your friends “competitive.” | © NoGlyph Games

Bread Fred — Bread & Fred – 2023

Imagine two penguins bound by rope, racing each other – or themselves – up a snow-tipped mountain. That’s *Bread & Fred*. Every jump, swing, or misstep pulls one of you into oblivion, dragging the other along. It’s cooperative in theory, but in practice it’s constant terror that your buddy’s slip will doom you both. The solo mode substitutes a rock as your partner, but trust me: it’s still just you cursing physics. The charm? Despite the rage, you’ll keep returning, laughing at your falls, bonding over shared agony, and plotting your next summit attempt. | © Sand Castles Studio

Diamond Hands To The Moon — Diamond Hands: To The Moon – 2022

You’d think a leap to the moon is metaphorical – *Diamond Hands: To The Moon* makes it literal, and merciless. The game gives you just left, right, and jump, yet expects you to choreograph gravity with surgical precision. One tiny miscalculation, and you’re cast into the void, forced to reattempt the same gruesome climb. Its levels mock stock market bulls and apes alike with meme-infused backdrops, making you feel simultaneously clever and cursed. Co-op mode adds salt: seeing your partner overshoot a platform and yank you both down is a uniquely shared trauma. But when you finally land “just so,” the rush is savage. | © Terror Dog Studio

Cropped ALTF4 — ALTF4 – 2021

Picture a knight running into traps so cunning they border on art. That’s *ALTF4*. There’s no save system, so each death is permanent and monumental. Your reflexes must be surgical, your patience infinite. You’ll learn to dread spikes, windmills, disappearing floors – and curse the designers who placed them. The absurdity lies in how the traps escalate: just when you think you’ve seen all the cruelty, it invents something new. Dying feels inevitable, but clearing a section feels like cheating. And you’ll go back for more. | © PUMPKIM

Cropped Jump King — Jump King – 2019

In *Jump King*, every jump is a high-stakes negotiation with physics. There’s no midair correction, no crutches: you decide the angle, the strength – and hope the laws of motion are in your favor. Slip, mistime, or misjudge, and you plummet, losing precious height. Anyone who finishes will tell you the sense of victory is bottled pain, refined over hundreds of fails. The game is blunt in its cruelty, but also pure: it has no gimmicks, no powerups, just you and a vertical gauntlet. Somehow, that makes each inch you reclaim feel bone-deep victorious. | © Nexile

Getting Over It – 2017

*Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy* is the granddaddy of progress-obliterating climbs. You swing a hammer to heave a pot-bound man upward. The entire design is a philosophical insult: every fall humbles you, every triumph is temporary. People talk about it as if it’s a zen test – but trust me, it’s more trauma therapy. Whenever you think you’ve “made it,” the game whispers, “Try again.” And sometimes, via bizarre bugs or save glitches, it “forgets” your progress entirely. The emotional rollercoaster here is the point. | © Bennett Foddy

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There’s a special category of games designed not to comfort you, but to break you. These are the climbing and falling challenges that laugh in the face of checkpoints, punish hesitation, and wipe away hours of progress with one wrong move. They look simple on the surface – just jump, climb, or swing your way upward – but beneath that simplicity hides an evil genius: a design that makes every fall feel like a personal betrayal.

What makes them so addictive? Maybe it’s the thrill of mastering impossible physics, or the stubborn belief that “this time I won’t fall.” Either way, players keep coming back for more, ready to rage, retry, and (eventually) triumph. In this list, we’re counting down 15 of the most frustrating climbing and falling games that will push your patience to the absolute limit – and make victory taste all the sweeter when you finally reach the top.