Raised in Australia and trained as a moral philosopher on topics of drug addiction, Foddy was a bassist in the electronic music group Cut Copy and a hobbyist game designer while he finished his dissertation.

[2] He studied philosophy in college and was working as a research assistant in the field when his childhood friend, Dan Whitford, started the Australian electronic group Cut Copy.

Foddy enrolled in a doctoral degree in philosophy in late 2003 at the University of Melbourne with an interest in cognitive science and human addiction and left Cut Copy in 2004.

He taught himself to program and design games starting in 2006 from online tutorials while working on his philosophy dissertation.

It was a modest success at release but became an Internet sensation and one of his most recognizable titles following its popularisation on burgeoning websites Stumbleupon, Reddit, and YouTube in late 2010.

[3] Kill Screen included the title in its 2011 Museum of Modern Art event and it appeared on the American television show The Office in 2012.

Foddy's childhood gaming experiences became touchstones for the themes he would develop in QWOP which would recur throughout his next titles.

Foddy sought to recreate the vexing difficulty of games from his youth and the range of emotions they pique.

GIRP is designed for players to set their own goals, such as their maximum height, or once they reach the top, their own fastest score, rather than publicly comparing against an online leaderboard.

A colleague highlighted Foddy's expertise on "game feel": his use of in-game physics to create tension.

The game was exhibited at XOXO and Fantastic Arcade, and will not receive a public release to avoid legal issues.