Many elements such as bosses, playable characters and npcs are tributes/parodies of popular video games, such as Super Mario, Kirby and Street Fighter while other elements are references to obscure games such as The Cheetahmen or originally made. It is known for being extremely difficult often including unforeseeable traps, random chance, intentionally poor hitboxes and very hard platforming. The creation was inspired by a game streamer known as BoshyTime whom Solgryn enjoyed watching.
The game is a fangame of I Wanna Be the Guy with the title being a reference to it and many other fangames with similar titles. I Wanna Be the Boshy is a free, notoriously difficult 2D platform game created by Danish game developer Jesper 'Solgryn' Erlandsen.
