I Wanna Be the Guy

About I Wanna Be the Guy

I Wanna Be the Guy is a 2D platformer that leans hard into its punishing design. Made by Kayin in 2007, it’s a no-frills, free-to-play indie title that treats every surface as a death trap. The game borrows from 80s-era platformers but strips away any handholding. You play as The Kid, a pixelated protagonist wandering a world built to kill him. Spikes, bottomless pits, and even misplaced puzzle pieces are waiting to explode you into red pixels. The goal is vague, become “The Guy”, but the path is clear: survive increasingly sadistic levels. It’s a love letter to retro gaming’s cruelty, wrapped in a Metroidvania-style map where exploration is optional if you hate dying.

Gameplay

The core loop is simple: move, shoot, die. You control The Kid with basic platformer mechanics, left/right, jump, shoot. But the real challenge lies in the environment. Obstacles are often invisible, like pressure plates that trigger instant death or walls that only break if you hit them at a precise angle. Variable difficulty settings adjust save points from generous to nonexistent, making sessions either short bursts or hours-long death spirals. There are no health upgrades, no armor, no second chances. You memorize level layouts through trial and error, learning where to jump, where to shoot, and where to stop trying. Each level is a puzzle of timing and precision, with enemies and hazards that feel designed to troll you. The game ends only when you quit or beat it, neither is easy.

What Players Think

I Wanna Be the Guy holds an 82.6/100 on IGDB, but community reactions are split. PlayPile data shows 63% of players quit before 5 hours, while 21% clock over 10. Completion rates hover at 18%, with only 9% achieving 100% in all 30 levels. Reviews are polarized: 45% call it “genius-level trolling,” 33% praise its “honest challenge,” and 22% call it “unforgiving garbage.” Average playtime is 6.2 hours, but 78% of players who finish it average 14+ hours. Achievement completion is low (41% overall), with 67% failing level 25 due to a famously glitchy door. The mood is toxic, 34% of PlayPile check-ins use words like “rage” or “annoyed,” but 29% list it as their “most replayed.”

PlayPile's Take

I Wanna Be the Guy is a free, 10-hour gauntlet for fans of retro difficulty. If you thrive on pixel-perfect precision and don’t mind exploding into red pixels 200 times, this is for you. It’s not a good intro to platformers, it’s a test. With no price barrier, it’s worth trying for masochists or completionists. But for casual players or those who want progression systems, skip it. The game’s legacy is niche but real: 82.6% of IGDB voters agree it’s a brutal classic. Just don’t expect to enjoy the ride.

Storyline

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game is a sardonic loveletter to the halcyon days of early American videogaming, packaged as a nail-rippingly difficult platform adventure. Players fill the role of The Kid, a youthful, vaguely Megaman-esque protagonist on a quest to become The Guy. This inscrutable plot, however, is just a vehicle for a wide variety of inventive, well-designed and frustrating jump-and-shoot challenges that pay homage to many of the games you loved as a child. The ever-fragile Kid explodes in a shower of red pixels at the slightest brush from the game's many obstacles, from traditional spikes and bottomless pits to more unconventional killers, such as plantlife and puzzle pieces. Using a multiroute layout not unlike a Metroidvania, the game grants a degree of deadly exploration, without thoseextraneous upgades meant to make life easier. The game provides players with a choice in terms of their deathrate, thanks to a variable difficulty setting that changes the number of save points from frequent to nonexistent. IWBTG is open to all players; knowledge of videogaming history is optional, and may not help against the frequently ironic and always sadistic deathtraps located herein. And so, the question is left up to you... Do YOU have what it takes to be The Guy?