Just some months in the past, the indie climbing sport “Solely Up” gained a large Twitch viewers, with streamers like xQC, Ninja, and Pokimane broadcasting the clumsy, clunky expertise to over 279,000 simultaneous viewers. Now the sport’s developer has abruptly eliminated it from the PC sport retailer Stream, citing months of “stress.”
In a Steam patch be aware connected to the now-removed sport, Solely Up’s creator—who goes by the title Indiesolodev—defined why the once-viral sport has since gone darkish through the main market.
“I am a solo developer and this sport is my first expertise in sport dev—a sport I did for creativity, to check myself, and the place I made plenty of errors,” they wrote. “The sport has saved me below plenty of stress all these months. Now I need to put the sport behind me.”
“The sport will not be obtainable within the Steam retailer quickly, that is what I made a decision myself,” Indiesolodev added. “What I want now’s peace of thoughts and therapeutic.”
The developer defined that as sport design scholar, they don’t need to fear about supporting Solely Up anymore. As a substitute, they need to “take a pause” after which proceed their schooling.
Solely Up’s developer additionally stated that they need to give attention to creating their subsequent sport as an alternative—one with “realism, a very completely different style and setting, and the emphasis is on cinematography.”
And regardless of the solo pseudonym, the developer plans to create their subsequent sport, tentatively titled Kith, with a crew.
Solely Up obtained almost 13,000 Steam evaluations since its launch in Might 2023. It garnered a “Largely Constructive” rating with 71% of the sport’s reviewers marking it as a constructive expertise.
In Solely Up, gamers took on the function of an adolescent named Jackie, who should climb his approach to the highest of the sport’s world in an effort to “get out of poverty and embark on a journey of studying in regards to the world and your self.”
The sport additionally enticed crypto followers with its number of references to Goblintown NFTs, however many different players complained about Solely Up’s use of NFT artwork. Followers of the sport have speculated on-line that Solely Up’s developer might have eliminated the sport partly resulting from its use of copyrighted materials, reporting that Solely Up additionally contained music from current anime reveals and video video games like Remaining Fantasy.