Only Up!

Only Up! drops you into a vertical obstacle course built from a chaotic jumble of floating platforms, giant everyday objects, and surreal geometry. The goal is simple: climb from the ground to the sky without falling. There are no weapons, no classes, no build paths, and no meaningful systems to speak of. As someone who spends most of his time modeling supply chains in grand-strategy titles, I can confirm this game has roughly the same strategic depth as a coin toss. The online multiplayer angle is the one hook here. You share the climbing space with other players, which can produce genuinely funny moments when someone above you knocks you off a ledge you spent ten minutes reaching. That emergent chaos is the game's only real selling point, and it wears thin within an hour. There is no structured co-op mode, no competitive framework, no progression system to give those interactions meaning. It is chaos for chaos's sake, which appeals to exactly one narrow mood. Performance and control feel are where things collapse entirely. The jump physics are inconsistent in a way that is not charming - missing a platform because the character clipped through geometry or launched at an unexpected angle is not a skill gap, it is a bug. The 12% positive review score on Steam is a signal worth taking seriously. A game can have rough edges and still be worth your time if the core loop is solid. This one does not have a solid core loop. There is no tutorial to speak of, which for a game this mechanically unreliable is actively hostile to new players. For the audience that watches streamers suffer through fall-based punishment games on stream, there is a thin slice of appeal here as a spectator product. As something you actually sit down and play for more than a session, the lack of progression, the poor physics fidelity, and the absence of any depth make it a hard sell at virtually any price point. If you want a vertical platformer with real challenge design, look elsewhere. If you want multiplayer chaos with friends, there are titles that deliver that with actual systems underneath.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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