The Game of Sisyphus
Roll the boulder to the top.
The Game of Sisyphus is a action, difficult and psychological horror game
developed and published by cream.
Released on April 11th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 17 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Spanish - Latin America, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese - Brazil, Portuguese - Portugal, Polish, Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Thai.
It has received 605 reviews of which 492 were positive and 113 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.7 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 3.44€ on Steam and has a 50% discount.
The Steam community has classified The Game of Sisyphus into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: windows/7/8/10
- Processor: Intel Core i5-10400 @ 2.90GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
- Storage: 8 GB available space
- Sound Card: Realtek
- Additional Notes: HD 60FPS
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
When I first heard of this most unusual game and its development several weeks back, I was quite intrigued as to what kind of experience one would have when going into what appears to be a retelling of the ancient Greek mythology of Sisyphus in his quest to atone for his misdeeds against the gods for having both cheated death as well as extreme cruelty towards his guests by means of rolling a boulder up atop the mountain Tartarus as part of his divine punishment. Though unlike the Greek tale, where he never did quite make it to the top (due to some form of 'enchantment' that I assume would make for an unsatisfying 'non-ending' of sorts in game form) alongside the landscape not being nearly as hellish, The Game of Sisyphus allows the player to relive that Greek myth by slowly pushing a 20 ton rock boulder through 30 different stages as you progressively get higher up into the hills, mountains and the sky beyond, seeing how (thankfully, unlike the hellish underworld the original tale is based in!) each stage is presented in not just a unique setting but also the challenges presented to the player start off gentle enough as is, with the introduction stage simply plopping a bunch of idle obstacles strewn across the first path upwards to teach the player that this is one 'mountain' that is going to demand both focus and persistence to succeed in! Before delving too far into the gameplay and stage design of this game though, the first thing that should be mentioned here is how the controls actually work, seeing how easy it is to get a false impression of the controls if you base the movement entirely on Sisyphus himself since simply pushing him against the boulder to move it upwards will only get you so far as mastering the pushing of the boulder requires the use of the mouse buttons to turn the boulder from one side to the other or to prevent it from falling out of your grasp and back down the long trail you worked so hard to climb up. Speaking further on the 'weight' of the controls here as it were, the level design of each stage tests your competency and confidence in this as even the very second level will require you to avoid and maneuver your way across moving obstacles that, despite what some may think, a boulder can NOT push them asides as this will simply result in you losing control of the big rock as it smoothly brushes its way past you and making its way down below, putting the emphasis not so much on taking risks as one might do with the usual 'ultra-hard' challenging games of Jump King and Getting Over It among others but rather taking your time and using what you have learnt to prevent any setbacks that can be easily avoided with some patience and perception. Other ways that the later levels test you are, to name a few, Level 3's Stone Pathway which introduces 'explosives' that will send your boulder FLYING when hit and is a serious threat to progress made that can be lost so easily, Level 5's Swamp brings slippery ground into the equation where the boulder can move around more erratically and easier to lose a grip on and Level 9's Sandstone throws bumpy and uneven terrain to further add to the complexity of pushing the boulder further uphill, since The Game of Sisyphus is not what I would personally call a game of 'challenge' in my honest personal opinion here. Rather, as the ancient myth itself highlights, this is a test of one's endurance as there will likely be many hardships of one simple mistake causing the boulder to not just make its way back down once escaping your grasp but, depending on how lady luck favours you, can either be ease its speed down to a point that a suitable obstacle not far down will halt it and keep it safe for you to resume (this includes those two stone circular barriers you see at the end of each stage that act as 'safeguards' of a sort) or find that simply nothing can stop its rapid descent down multiple stages or each obstacle simply further guides it down the hill as you rush towards it in the hopes of preventing further lost progress. One piece of advice I will give, which some may not consider, is the ability Sisyphus has to run and sprint across places, which affects not just his movement in general but also how fast he can push the boulder upwards and sideways. Seeing as some places require a slow and methodical approach to carefully moving your boulder across to ensure you keep a firm grip on it (Level 13's Ice and Level 21's Ash comes to mind) whilst others demand a fast and rapid-pacing of both yourself and the giant stone to ensure that neither end up being pushed, blown about or flipped high into the sky by various obstacles that require good timing to dodge! (Level 7's Pyramid and Level 19's Farm are the most demanding about this in particular) Though with all said and done, where is the 'game' part about this that makes The Game of Sisyphus potentially fun to go back to? Seeing how a fun retelling of this historical Greek legend (with some liberties taken on account of being a video game) is all well and good, however what is there to compel gamers to come back and give it another shot or two after they do, eventually, reach to the very peak and do what the Sisyphus of the mythic tale could not? Well for those who do accomplish the great feat, you are awarded an amount of gold that varies depending on your overall performance (how long it took, how many times the boulder went 'out of bounds' and overall distance travelled alongside the type of 'boulder' used) alongside a single coin as acknowledgment of your one victory, in which both the gold and coin(s) can be spent on various boulders that were locked at the start of the game to give a second run either a new fancy flair to your boulder or, for the sadistic, to add even further challenge to an already arduous test of one's stoicism! In conclusion, I wouldn't exactly recommend this to those who prefer the traditional 'challenge games' of sorts, as I believe the developer and publisher behind this game, cream, to have designed this game not for those who fancy speedrunning a game in usual skill-based manners, as such games allow those to take massive risks for shortcuts that lend itself nicely to such popular material, rather it is for those who want to achieve something that takes a lot of time and dedication, bizarre as a concept as it may make to base a whole video game on, simply because they believe they can and want to take the challenge head on. After all, what is the human spirit if not full of determination and faith? TLDR Version: • A unique retelling of the ancient Greek myth in video game format that puts the player in the shoes of Sisyphus to atone for his punishment by pushing a giant boulder atop the mountain of Tarturus (+) • 30 unique stages that gradually become more difficult to navigate and push the boulder upwards, testing the player's ability to both move the giant stone with skilled hands and maneuver across dangerous obstacles (+) • The weight of the physics add to the tension that encourages a patient, more careful approach to navigation rather than the usual skill-based actions of most challenge games (+) • Further replayability is added for those who seek to make the trip once more as gold and coins earned from overall performance and each hike to the top can be used to buy a variety of new 'boulders' with different visuals and effects (+) • The slow-paced gameplay of The Game of Sisyphus will likely put off players who are not into games that demand a careful approach with plenty to lose with a mere slip of focus (-) • One stage, Rock Mountain, is repeated three times with little differences to terrain and gameplay, which simple graphical changes would easily reduce the repetition (-) • The physics would sometimes result in situations where the boulder is in an awkward place that is hard to move it out of alongside not doing much to discourage 'wall-hugging' until near the end of the game (-)
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Three things make this better, in my opinion, than Getting Over It: 1) Bennet Foddy isn't here getting pretentious at me about how his game is greater than any other game ever made. 2) It took me only 10 minutes to feel comfortable with the controls, whereas I NEVER felt comfortable in Getting Over It. 3) The slower pace of the game makes it nigh impossible to "flail" when raging. To me, it felt impossible to RAGE at all. No matter how much I failed, I just felt like I needed to learn from it, try not to repeat mistakes. Sisyphus is... relaxing, to me. Is that strange? I suspect it's not MEANT to be relaxing. I suspect a LOT of things in Sisyphus were the result of unintentional design. I wonder if the developers really knew what they were doing. Well, if they didn't, then they've fumbled their way to a pretty solid game somehow. I had a lot of fun with Sisyphus.
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I pride myself in completing all these sorts of test of will/masochism games. Something about losing progress that took you 20 minutes, or 30 minutes or sometimes hours, taken away from you because of a split second mistake. Something about that feeling calls to me. The developer and the game seems to want me to quit, to get angry and stop trying, but there's a strange sense of power I feel picking myself back up and trying again despite knowing I will fall again. And as you pick yourself up over and over and over, in most of these games you can feel your skill increase incrementally, until you're at the end of the game, and your abilities are almost unrecognisable from where they were at the start of the game. All of those highs I chase by buying and completing these painful experiences. This game however is lacking in a lot of what makes other games of the genre so good. There is very minimal increase in skill from start to finish. You will get better at handling the boulder sure, but it doesn't take much to master. This game isn't about getting incrementally better until you overcome all the obstacles, it's more of a very large test of patience. The game is so boring at times that you will make mistakes simply because you are so painfully bored of staring at the rock that you stop to scratch your nose. You could view these faults as fundamental to the game's experience. And in a way I would agree with you, but at the end of the day I hope anyone who buys this and attempts the challenge knows that you are getting yourself into 5-12 hours of a boring grind. Sure the excitement of summiting the mountain feels sweet as it does with all these games, but the journey is far from entertaining. I will however still recommend this game to any who are fans of the masochistic Getting Over It inspired genre. It may not be very fun, but it does do what it seeks to do, and that is to create a painful experience that most will fail to complete.
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I don't usually touch these rage style games, but this one's kind of fun somehow. I appreciate their being multiple balls to unlock and some of them being easier, but it'd be neat if more of them had differing stats and if the default wasn't such a nightmare to control when it starts to move to the side. Will say it would be nice if we could run downhill a bit faster or something. It's irritating when the ball gets slightly out your grip and you have no hope of catching it before losing 5-30 minutes of progress. ... Also I didn't buy the game because Hololive played it. >.> <.<
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Wow, what a game. The premise is simple, but there is such a profound feeling from playing it. Pushing the boulder puts you in a certain state of mind. I thought to myself, who is Sisyphus? Did anyone ever love him? Does anyone still think about him while he pushes the boulder for eternity? The real Sisyphus had to push the boulder while crows ate his insides. I think that is probably the worst job that no one in the world would probably want to do. I found the best way to play this game wasn't to lock in, but rather achieve a certain meditative state. I thought about a lot of things that happened in my life. I thought about friends I'd made and great accomplishments I would never have thought I could achieve. By being in this state of mind, let me tell you, I pushed the boulder quite far. Even in the face of failure, I think there was beauty to be found. In a way, I think all of us are Sisyphus and we are pushing our own boulders. As long as we stay positive and never give up, I think the human spirit can truly be indomitable. I hope everyone can gain some insight into life with this game too.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 18 November 2024 16:13 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 17 December 2024 12:50 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:51 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 13:46 |
Online players
10
Developer
cream
Publisher
cream
Release
11 Apr 2024
Platforms