Only for those looking to punish and frustrate themselves | Review - Dumb Ways to Climb

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Dumb Ways to Climb, developed by PlaySide Studios Ltd, attempts to combine the charm of the Dumb Ways to Die franchise with the viral gameplay of the popular vertical platformer PC game Only Up!.

🟩Pros

+Nice graphics

+Nerve-racking platforming experience

🟥Cons

-Clunky and unresponsive control scheme

-Primitive touch controls

-No menu, no settings, no options

-Levels that felt uninspired

-Feels like an asset flip, if it isn’t actually one

-Awful performance

Dumb Ways to Climb is a platforming game where the only goal is to go upwards. As a bean-like character ripped straight from the cartoon series Dumb Ways to Die, you must climb up a random mishmash contraption of worldly objects, with the sole objective being to reach higher heights, similar to the recent popular game Only Up!. It’s quite obvious that the gameplay concept has been shamelessly borrowed from the aforementioned game, only this time, Dumb Ways to Climb was made specifically for Android and iOS platform.

Dumb Ways to Climb features no main menus, no settings, and just straight up starts the platforming run right upon launch. One might consider this a no-nonsense approach, but that didn’t feel right because this game is actually full of nonsense, for better or for worse.

The graphics in Dumb Ways to Climb are actually quite impressive for a mobile game, and could potentially rival the original PC game Only Up! in terms of visual fidelity. However, similar to Only Up!, most of the content in this game feels like asset flips. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that the game being an asset flip doesn't really matter if the gameplay is good.

However, while Only Up! still has some semblance of playability, Dumb Ways to Climb is much more buggy and the control scheme is clunky and unresponsive, making the game considerably harder and more frustrating to play. The touch control implementation felt primitive to use and exacerbated the problem. the performance just outright sucks, there isn’t even a graphics options settings so you can tweak the performance.

As a platformer, I cannot deny that Dumb Ways to Climb does provide a nerve-racking experience. The slow ascent through the nonsensical contraptions can be exhilarating, as a single misstep can send you tumbling back to the bottom, requiring a restart. The levels overall, while in the same ballpark as Only Up! with terms of being an insane random collection of objects and structures, felt significantly more uninspired and lack creativity. It felt like this game was hastily created to capitalize on the viral popularity of Only Up!.

Interestingly, Dumb Ways to Climb was developed by PlaySide Studios Ltd, the same developers who created the official Dumb Ways to Die mobile games and hold the rights to the franchise. Despite being the owners of the intellectual property and actually coming out with some pretty cool mobile games previously, this particular game may not live up to the quality and creativity expected from the series.

Conclusion:

Dumb Ways to Climb suffers from uninspired level design, clunky controls, and poor performance. While it attempts to replicate the challenging and somewhat frustrating gameplay found in Only Up!, I find it hard to recommend Dumb Ways to Climb to anyone other than the literal die-hard fans (emphasis on the word die) of the Dumb Ways to Die series or individuals looking to punish and frustrate themselves.