Upon finishing the game, there is a small reflection where the obstacles you went through are mentioned, implying that this was a somewhat harsh journey, that reaching this place was earned.

It’s quite hard to measure how much a game really wants to push you against the wall, since there will usually be a reasonably obvious way to get through anything (although, it’s very interesting to observe the situations where, for whatever reason, the possibility of completion is gone). Hatch’s resistance falls weak. It’s not only that the way to continue up feels calculated for you to pass through, again, a reasonable conclusion, even if the game didn’t even try to give the illusion of the contrary. Where it falls is in the ignorance of friction and momentum. All the journey is a mere hide and seek of surfaces, when they are hidden, inclined more than 90 degrees.

The only obstacles and their remedies seem to recognize the fundamental problem that is running up any slope always at max speed. The sun like figure is added as a look to avoid in order to not take the easy (geographical) way, making the more open first half feel again constrained, not resistant, looking for the designed angle where you can climb in safety. Falling down, the most evident frustrating experience in climbing, gravity, the ultimate inescapable force, is toned down with a checkpoint system, probably in recognition that repeating the climb, and in consequence the act of climbing, lacked enough substance. “Don’t forget where you came from” says at the end, hard to remember a road where the obstacles are a paved way.