Nintendo Switch climbing game OnlyUP! appears, but seems to be unrelated to original Only Up!  

Elusor Games released OnlyUP! for the Nintendo Switch on November 9. Although its gameplay is strikingly similar, it seems to be unrelated to Only Up! by SCKR Games. 

OnlyUP! is a 3D action game in which you climb up high in the sky. The game is set on an island where the soothing sound of ocean waves can be heard. You play as a young man in a Hawaiian shirt and pursue a gaping “black hole” that has opened up in the sky for some reason. You climb up ceaselessly using random objects and if you fall, you have to climb back up as much as you fell all over again. However, judging from the menu screen, the game seems to include checkpoints as well. 

Both the title and the gameplay seem to be heavily based on SCKR Games’ climbing game Only Up!, which released in May this year and went viral worldwide, but was later terminated by its creator and can no longer be purchased (Related Article). 

Ever since the original Only Up! was discontinued, games referencing and/or imitating it have been popping up one after the other, and some have even hijacked the game’s title as it is, causing confusion (Related article). The new Nintendo Switch climbing game this time around also adopts an almost identical title, but seems to be unrelated to the original Only Up! and its developer SCKR Games. 

According to the Nintendo eShop, the developer of OnlyUP! is Elusor Games, which has released titles such as Monster Destroyer and Avia Corporation previously. On the other hand, the in-game description credits Plitka Games as the developer. 

As an aside, OnlyUP! deems to include a wider variety of actions than the original game, allowing you to crawl, crouch, latch onto cliffs and move along them as well as jump off from them backwards. 

With that said, the game is still a clone, and its use of the name OnlyUP! is likely an attempt to borrow from the original game’s popularity. 

Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-11-09 09:05 JST)