Oh Bennett Foddy, look at the legacy you’ve left on the industry. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy wasn’t the first, for the lack of a better tag, “ragequit-inducing game meant to evoke a reaction from Youtubers”, but it was the one that popularized it. Thanks to it, we got other titles like Driving is Hard, A Difficult Game About Climbing, and Foddy’s own Baby Steps. Granted, titles that are a lot better than Getting Over It, but all of them run on the same premise of frustrating you beyond belief. With the exception of Driving is Hard, all of them also featured confusing controls that made the gameplay even more frustrating. But what happens when a game like this features a single button to be pressed, and all of its difficulty and frustration comes solely from its level design? You (literally) get A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad.

Lovely, totally non-sarcastic remarks.

Welp, the title says it all. A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad is a lengthy pinball game where you can do is press a button to activate the level’s many flippers. Your objective is to guide a ball to the end of the confusing table, which requires a diabolical amount of luck and precision, as the level design and physics are doing their utmost best to make you fail with every attempt. Furthermore, a dry, witty, sarcastic British narrator will constantly taunt you for not being able to succeed, in a way that should have irritated me way more than it did. I guess that, when a game isn’t trying to act overly condescending and smug towards you, you don’t feel as irritated. I actually got the joke, and I chuckled at the game… at times.

There isn’t a particularly consistent art style in this game. It’s just a bunch of stuff thrown onscreen, logic be damned.

It’s still an incredibly irritating game meant to taunt me towards the not-so-subtly-named Rage Quit button, but oddly enough, there are some quality of life features. If you spend too much time stuck in the same section, you can actually skip it with the press of a button. The game will make fun of your skill issue, as to be expected, but it won’t stop you from accessing further areas of a level. It’s almost commendable, but it will also lead to even bigger bouts of frustration, as the game’s difficulty ramps up in borderline masochistic levels pretty quickly. Again, as to be expected from a title literally called A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad.

The occasional checkpoint feels like a godsend. And yes, I do understand it. Subtle.

I can’t say I felt fooled playing a game that is literally called A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad. It’s exactly what its title implies. With controls that work well enough, its nonsensical level of challenge stems entirely from its ludicrous level design. It is beatable, but not without a lot of trial, error, and cursing. And if you’re not able to beat a section, you can still skip to the next one without any sort of punishment, besides some snarky remarks from an excessively British narrator. Considering its premise and subgenre, it wasn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, but recommending it is a tough thing. Are you into these sort of utterly frustrating ragebait games? If so, go for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB and Asus ROG Ally.

A copy of A Pinball Game That Makes You Mad was provided by the publisher.