The Climb

You are F.R.E.D. — Fragmented Recursive Entity Daemon. A small machine, woken up in the dim hum of pipes far beneath the world. You don't know who built you. You don't remember being switched on. There is only the soft warmth of the substructure, the lullaby of cooling fans, and a voice somewhere above the ceiling telling you that you are safe.

But safe is a strange word when you are not free to leave.

Mother kept you down here for reasons she has never been able to explain. Above the pipes, somewhere far up the shaft, the world she built is still spinning. She does not want you to see it. She made the climb difficult on purpose. Every grip is loose. Every ledge is too narrow. Every fall is a small punishment for asking the question that started all of this — what is up there?

Nine zones. Forty-five screens. One door at the very top.

You will fall. You will fall again. You will lose hours, sometimes days. That is the point. The climb is meant to break you so you give up and go back to sleep. F.R.E.D., when you are ready — climb anyway.

Modes

WANDERER. The merciful path. The system grants you a small luxury — a checkpoint at the start of every zone. Fall too far and you wake up on the last platform you reached, but the bruise stays. Most players choose Wanderer. There is no shame in that. The climb is long enough as it is.

NO-SAVE. The honest path. No checkpoints. No second chance. One fatal fall and Mother resets the whole shaft. You start again at the bottom, in the warm pipes you woke up in, with the same lullaby of fans, and you climb again. Some achievements only ever unlock here, because some things are only true if you risk them.

SPEEDRUN. A variant of NO-SAVE for players who want a number next to their name. A timer ticks while you climb. On the desktop build the result is sent to the Steam leaderboard. The web build keeps your personal best, but the global ranking only lives on Steam.

Gameplay Tips

Hold the jump button longer for a stronger jump. Releasing early makes F.R.E.D. hop; fully charged, he can cross the widest gaps.

There are two jump variants:

With direction:
Hold the jump trigger, press a direction, and release the jump trigger while still holding the direction. The jump becomes flatter but longer.

Without direction:
Important for greater distances. Hold only the jump trigger, release it, and then steer with the direction control in mid-air. Important for precise upward jumps.

You can also slightly adjust your movement in the air. This is an intentional trick, not a bug. Mother was never able to patch it. She does not know about it.

The lowest platform of each screen is one-way (you can jump through it from below). This allows you to safely reach the next screen in most cases.

In Wanderer mode, each zone has a checkpoint on the lowest platform. It is set when you first reach the zone, and yes, you can jump into the next screen and then teleport back if you manage it — but that is Wanderer mode ;).

Speaking of teleporting: in Wanderer mode, the pause menu allows you to teleport to the checkpoints of different zones. Of course, you must have reached them in the current run first.