Fall Guys

Fall Guys (formerly known as Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a free-to-play platform battle royale game developed by Mediatonic and published by Epic Games. The standard "Classic" and "Knockout" modes involve up to 32 players who control bean-shaped characters and compete against each other in a series of randomly selected mini-games such as obstacle courses and survival challenges. Players are eliminated as the rounds progress until, eventually, the last remaining player or team is crowned the winner. There are also many other modes, such as Explore, with different game rules and player counts. The game draws inspiration from game shows like Takeshi's Castle, It's a Knockout, Wipeout, and playground games like tag and British Bulldog.

The game was released by Devolver Digital for PlayStation 4 and Windows on 4 August 2020. Following their acquisition of Mediatonic, the publishing rights were transferred to Epic Games. Subsequently, the game was made free-to-play on 21 June 2022 and released on additional platforms including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, with full cross-platform play support among all platforms. As part of the transition, the game adopted a paid battle pass system for its monetization, with a new "Show-Bucks" premium currency - comparable to the way that Fortnite's V-Bucks work, and with the same pricing.

Fall Guys received positive reviews from critics for its chaotic gameplay and visual appearance. The game was a commercial success, selling more than 10 million copies and attracting more than 50 million players after the game went free-to-play. Since launching in 2020, Mediatonic has continued to release consistent updates containing new features, cosmetics and levels.

Gameplay
In the standard "Classic" and "Knockout" modes, up to 32 players compete in matches with battle royale-style gameplay. Players, represented as jellybean-like figures, move around in a three-dimensional playing field, with abilities such as jumping, diving, and grabbing/mantling. The aim is to qualify for subsequent rounds by successfully completing each of the randomly selected mini-games, many of which have randomly selected variations. There are currently seven different types of levels in Fall Guys. Courses, which involve navigating obstacles to reach a finish line; Survivals, which involve outlasting either a timer or certain number of other players; Hunts, which usually require you to score points by collecting items, jumping through hoops, or staying in a scoring zone; Teams, which are currently exclusive to Duos and Squads modes, require you to work together with other players in a Hunt-style level; Logics, which involve memorising fruits or solving puzzles; Invisibeans, uneven Team levels that only appear for limited times in the Game Selector; and Finals, which end a match, involving either being the last player standing or the first player to finish an obstacle course. The winner of the Final level is usually the winner of the match, except in Duos and Squads modes where the winning player scores the victory for their whole team.

Using an in-game currency, "Kudos", players can purchase single cosmetics, nameplates, nametags, patterns, faceplates, and colours, for their character to show off in-game. Players obtain Kudos by completing the fame pass, or in events. Players receive crowns by winning a match. Crowns were a premium currency until 21 June 2022, whereas they now only count towards Crown Rank. Any Crowns that users did not spend before the game went free to play were converted into Kudos.

Gameplay history
Season 2 added banners, nicknames, and the ability to choose different shows with a different selection with Show Selector.

Season 3 added the Crown Rank system, which allows the user to get cosmetic items by reaching a certain number of crowns per tier.

The same season added Prime Gaming (formerly known as Twitch Prime) exclusive rewards which only accessible if the user had an Amazon Prime subscription.

Season 4 added a basic daily challenge system, which allowed the user to get rewards for completing tasks in the game. It also added the "Crown Shards" currency, earned by playing in Squads Mode, where a team of four other players cooperates to earn points to progress to the next round, or by completing daily challenges. 60 Crown Shards are automatically converted into 1 Crown. In a mid-season update, they added to ability to host custom shows.

Season 5 added limited time events, where players need to do certain challenges to earn exclusive costumes and other types of cosmetics. In game events usually last between one and seven days and can sometimes be based on different franchises.

The same season added a Duos and Trios mode and a lobby redesign.

Season 6 added a game mode called Sweet Thieves, where one team is invisible (only being visible when moving fast) while the other team is not. The invisible team (Thieves) needs to bring sweets to the goals while the other team (Guardians) tries to prevent them by using the grabbing mechanic to capture the Thieves and put them in a jail. A button can be pressed every 30 seconds to remove the jail barrier.

Season 1: Free for All added a premium in-game currency called Show-Bucks, that can be used to purchase full costumes, premium colours, patterns, faceplates, emotes, and the current paid fame pass. Players are only able to obtain Show-Bucks through the fame pass or by purchasing them via microtransactions.

The same season added Bean Hill Zone, the first collaboration round, with Sonic the Hedgehog. The round came with a limited time event and its own show. In Season 3: Sunken Secrets the round was added to Solo Show, and it was removed from it the season after, but came back in the "Summer Breeze" update. On 5 March 2024 the round was removed from the game, including 'The Vault' show, due to unknown reasons.

Season 2: Satellite Scramble added a Halloween-exclusive gamemode called Treat Thieves, a Halloween themed version of Sweet Thieves which had new gimmicks. The round is exclusive to the Halloween event that comes every year.

Season 3: Sunken Secrets added a dive sliding feature, where if the player presses the dive button while approaching a slime or ice path, the user will slide on it. It added a Time Attack show, where players were given 5 minutes to try and speedrun one round the fastest and was given the option to retry for a better time under those 5 minutes. The show was removed in December 2022 and can only be played in Custom Lobbies. The maximum lobby size was shrunk from 60 to 40 players for faster queue time.

The same season also added two shows, one called 'The Vault', which features all rounds regardless of vaulted status in one show, which is only available in Custom Lobbies, and another called "Xtreme Party", which is a single player version of the show "Xtreme Solo Show", both rounds have the rule that you cannot respawn. Both shows were removed from Customs on 7 May 2024.

Season 4: Creative Construction added a level editor called Creative. Creative allows users to create rounds with various obstacles and objects. Players can choose between making Race or Survival rounds. There is a budget that limits how many objects a round can contain. Players can submit their rounds and can share their rounds to others via share codes. Creative made rounds can appear in the Discovery tab.

The Power Party update introduced powerups, a feature that was teased back in the announcement livestream for Season 4: Creative Construction. Powerups can give the player unique abilities for either a limited amount of time or until the round ends depending on the rounds settings. As of February 2024 there are three powerups: Bean Ball which allows players to curl up into a ball, Invisibility (taken from Sweet Thieves), and Party Crasher which allows beans to send a rhino shaped bomb in a straight line before detonating.

The same update also added the Discovery tab, a new tab in the Show Selector that shows Creative rounds. Every few hours it refreshes with new rounds.

The Fall Forever update added the 'Piggyback', an ability that lets players assist others via picking them up and carrying them for as long as needed. The update also added a social wheel which allows players to pick between short dialog options in game to communicate with other players.

The same update also added the show Explore, a show that allows up to 10 players to play back to back creative rounds for as long as they want. Players are able to skip rounds and go to the next round once qualified.

New costumes are regularly added, usually for a limited time. Some are of characters from different video games and media franchises, such as Half-Life, Portal, Godzilla, Team Fortress 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Doom, Hotline Miami, Ratchet & Clank, Cuphead, Among Us, Little Big Planet, Astro's Playroom, Assassin's Creed, Hatsune Miku, Doctor Who, SpongeBob SquarePants, Hello Kitty, Tomb Raider, Death Stranding, Pac-Man, Yooka-Laylee, The Jungle Book, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Incredibles, Marvel, etc.

Fame Pass
The Fame Pass is an optional purchase that gives players extra cosmetics, and in-game currencies. Before Season 1: Free for All the fame pass (known as the fame path) only had 40 tiers and was completely free. Season 4 increased the path to 50.

Starting in Season 1: Free for All, the renamed 'season pass' was extended to 100 tiers with half of them being free and the other half being paid. Season 2: Satellite Scramble added 100 extra tiers to the season pass, offering mostly crown shards and 3 bonus costumes.

Season 4: Creative Construction changed the model offering multiple 'fame passes' over the course of the season. These passes would have 40 main tiers with the rest of the 100 tier pass consisting of bonus costumes and crown shards. The same season also introduced the first collaboration Fame Pass with the game Final Fantasy XIV, featuring tiers themed around the Warriors of Light.

After the discontinuation of seasons, future passes would stay the same however it was extended from 100 to 160. For The Survival update, the fame pass was extended to 300 tiers but only 70 would consist of proper rewards. The Fall Forever fame pass onwards decreased the pass to just 70 tiers.

Seasons
Fall Guys used to host new seasons approximately every 4 to 6 months, hosting a new theme and additional content every season. The game had 6 seasons from its release in 2020 to 2022, but on 21 June 2022, it was reset to Season 1. After that, it went on to have 3 more seasons before 16 August 2023, where it was announced that Seasons would be phased out in favor of more frequent updates.

Development
The conception of what became Fall Guys began when Mediatonic was discussing another project in January 2018. Lead designer Joe Walsh said that it reminded him of game shows such as Takeshi's Castle and Total Wipeout. He drew from that inspiration to create a pitch document for what would become Fall Guys. Originally titled Fools' Gauntlet, (also later under development using the name "Stumble Chums"), Walsh's pitch featured 100 players competing in a battle royale composed of physical challenges. Creative director Jeff Tanton, while initially skeptical that creating another battle royale game would be successful, was quickly convinced of the game's potential, and forwarded Walsh's pitch to Mediatonic's founders.

Tanton and Walsh worked on a pitch deck, and principal concept artist Dan Hoang created images featuring colourful, bean-shaped characters racing on an obstacle course in the sky. Tanton explained that Hoang's character designs helped shift the focus of the game away from the obstacle course itself, to the characters. With the pitch deck completed, Tanton pitched the game to 10 different publishers at the 2018 Game Developers Conference. Six months after Devolver Digital agreed to publish the game, development began.

Fall Guys began its initial prototyping process with a small team, growing to 30 people during development. Initial progress on individual minigames was slow which caused the team to worry that there would not be enough content for launch. A turning point came when the team made a group of pillars that "Took the opinions of people out of the occasion" and allowed the developers to "kill ideas faster". Such pillars include ensuring a minigame was "50-50 chaos and skill" and that a level had to be "different every time". Inspired by game shows, and differentiating from first-person shooter battle royale games, Mediatonic focused on gameplay variety. By presenting the player with several, randomized rounds of game modes, Mediatonic hoped to recreate the experience of being on a game show. To help keep the "spirit of playground games and game shows", Mediatonic created an internal rule that game modes needed to be explained in three words. Over time, the game underwent numerous other changes. The player count was decreased from 100 to 60, because overpopulated games "stopped being readable or fun". In testing, Mediatonic noted that players overestimated the number of players, stating "we didn't need as many players as we thought to create the crowds we wanted the gameplay to include."

It's a Knockout, a game show forcing contestants to dress up in oversized costumes, inspired the idea that the characters should "have that element of being completely uniquely, badly designed for the task that we were gonna put them through". The ragdoll physics is deliberate, to avoid "hyper athletic Ninja Warrior characters" and because "falling over is funny". According to Walsh, striking the right balance between funny ragdoll collisions and game performance was critical, because "as soon as you lose the ragdoll-ness of the character, you lose the comedy". The character designs were inspired by the look of vinyl toys.

Mediatonic began working on Season 2 before the game's release with level designer Joseph Juson, noting that it was more of an "expansion" compared to Season 3 where the team tried to bring new ideas.

Release
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was announced at E3 in June 2019 and was released on 4 August 2020 for PlayStation 4 and Windows. Several updates ensued for the first season and on 8 October 2020, the medieval-themed second season was released. The success prompted more hiring.

The Chinese company Bilibili announced in August 2020 that it would develop a mobile version for Android and iOS that would be exclusive to China. The deal expired in 2022 and Fall Guys announced that their exclusive content and accounts on Bilibili would be run by Epic from now on.

In February 2021, Fall Guys was announced for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, scheduled for Summer 2021. However, in April 2021, these versions of the game were delayed to late 2021, citing greater focus on cross-compatibility among all versions of the game. On 30 November 2021, the release was delayed again to 2022.

In March 2021, Mediatonic and its parent company, Tonic Games Group, were bought by Epic Games. Epic Games later announced that they will focus on adding cross-platform compatibility for all versions of Fall Guys, utilizing resources from games such as Fortnite that became available after acquisition by Epic Games.

On 18 November 2021, Mediatonic announced that Epic Games accounts will be required in season 6 allowing cross-platform progression between PS4 and Steam and the ability to have custom names for Steam players. On 22 February 2022, Mediatonic released an update adding Lobbies and Friends lists. This uses the Epic Overlay system that games like Fortnite or Rocket League have to invite anyone on any platform via Epic Games Accounts.

On 15 March 2022, Mediatonic announced that starting on 5 April 2022 there would be a new launcher that all PlayStation players would need to download to keep playing the game. On 9 May 2022, the old PlayStation launcher shut down and became unusable. Both launchers were the same besides the new one being published by Epic Games instead of Devolver Digital. People who downloaded the new launcher would be able to redeem a free DLC Pink Shark costume that was able to be redeemed until the end of season 6. Mediatonic and Epic Games transitioned Fall Guys to a free-to-play system alongside its 21 June release on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. Additionally, a dedicated PlayStation 5 version also released, featuring enhanced visuals and DualSense effects. The game was also rebranded as Fall Guys, without the Ultimate Knockout subtitle. The free-to-play version eliminated the need for players to have console subscription services like PlayStation Plus to be able to play. To support the free-to-play model, the game included a new season pass system with both a free and premium tier of rewards, the latter available to those that purchase the premium pass with real-world funds. For Windows, the game was removed from the Steam storefront and made available on Epic Games Store, though the Steam version will continue to be updated in sync with the Epic Games Store version. The free-to-play versions of Fall Guys also added support for cross-platform play with other platforms. Players who had purchased Fall Guys before this transition were given a "Legacy Pack" that includes cosmetics, costumes, and the Season 1: Free for All premium season pass for free.

In July 2022, a bug was discovered that unintentionally purchased items from the in-game store instead of previewing them. Initially deemed by Mediatonic as "not an issue", they later acknowledged it as a bug after complaints mounted. On 1 November 2022 an update was issued to include a hold-to-purchase mechanic for all in-game purchases similar to the mechanic in Fortnite.

On 11 October 2022, the hashtag #savefallguys started trending on Twitter. This was to elicit Mediatonic's attention to address and resolve numerous problems that players have had with the game including lack of round variety, bugs, sub par events, prices in the in-game shop, implementation of skill based matchmaking, and more. On 15 November 2022, the Fall Guys Twitter account stated that in order for the game to stay stable, some rounds will be "vaulted" and rounds will be rotated in and out of the vault. This meant that some rounds will be temporarily removed to increase stability across all platforms. Players criticised this move citing how removing pre existing rounds causes the game to lose its replay value. Starting with the Fall Forever update the "vault" was discontinued with rounds being cycled through the Knockout show consistently regardless of its "vaulted" status.

On 21 February 2023, Mediatonic announced in a blogpost that Seasons will be longer than 2–3 months for future seasons to allow for more time to work on future seasons. They also limited Solo Show from 60 players to 40 and announced a level editor which was originally teased in 2022 called Creative. Creative launched on 10 May 2023.

Since Season 3: Sunken Secrets, Jukio Kallio no longer composes the game's music.

On 17 July 2023, Fall Guys' show-bucks prices were increased in the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Canada due to inflation. On 17 September 2023 Fall Guys announced that the price for show-bucks would also be increasing in Czech Republic, Denmark, Eurozone countries, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey and the United States for similar reasons.

On 16 August 2023, it was announced that Seasons would be phased out in favor of more frequent updates, Fame Passes will remain however.

Tim Sweeney has said that Fall Guys and Rocket League will not be discontinued despite mass layoffs and Epic will continue to invest in them.

Reception
Fall Guys received "generally favourable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. A clone game called Stumble Guys was released for mobile devices in 2022 and became popular.

Tom Wiggins of Stuff magazine praised the game, calling it "Super Monkey Ball for the Fortnite generation". Mercury News praised the "controlled chaos" gameplay of Fall Guys, stating it to be utilising a combination of the elements from the battle royale game Fortnite and the party game Mario Party in such a way that made it "tailored to the coronavirus age". Ollie Toms from Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised Fall Guys for its creative approach as a battle royale game incorporating family-friendly elements rather than resorting to violent themes. He praised the simplicity of the game and the diversity of content added with each season. He argues that the ragdoll physics can be both exciting and frustrating to play: "What really makes and breaks this game is the imprecision of your actions. It's not something many competitive games can get away with in the way Fall Guys does."

The weekend before release during a closed beta, Fall Guys briefly became the most-watched game on Twitch as well as the sixth-best-selling Steam game where it was available for pre-order.

Fall Guys has been frequently compared to Among Us, in that both are online games which grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both also have similar characters, commonly called "Beans" by both communities.

The addition of Squad Mode in Season 4 has been positively received. Kotaku says it evokes a new perspective on intense gameplay, indicating the importance of teamwork. The addition of Sweet Thieves has been positively received. The website Destructoid says "This is the most fun I've had with Fall Guys in forever." and "If you care about trophies, Sweet Thieves is worth checking out. But it stands on its own, too."

Sales
Within 24 hours of release, the game had an active player base of more than 1.5 million players. On 10 August 2020, Devolver Digital announced 2 million copies sold on Steam. During the first day of release, the servers for Fall Guys were unexpectedly overloaded due to popularity.

The game's popularity brought several brand collaborations for custom content. Shortly after release Mediatonic announced a fundraiser by which the brand that donated the most money to the charity SpecialEffect would have their custom skin featured in the game.

By 26 August 2020, more than 7 million copies of Fall Guys had been sold on Steam, and it was the most downloaded monthly PS Plus game of all time. By November 2020, the game had reached more than 10 million sales on Steam. According to firm Superdata the game's online revenue for PC in its first month was US$185 million from 8.2 million players, making it the biggest launch on that platform since Overwatch by those metrics. Multiple outlets described the game's popularity as a "phenomenon". In December 2020, Mediatonic confirmed sales of more than 11 million copies on PC.

In June 2022, within two weeks of going free-to-play and its release on multiple consoles, Fall Guys' player count rose to over 50 million.