Ludography
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout cover

2020 · Season · Mediatonic · Platformer · Sports

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Season

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout brings its Season 3 with seven new levels and 30 more costumes in a winter-wonderland themed battle royale.

Released
15 December 2020
Platforms
Nintendo SwitchPlayStation 4WindowsXbox Series X/S
Genres
PlatformerSportsIndie
Developers
Mediatonic
Publishers
Devolver Digital
Modes
Battle royaleMultiplayer
Perspective
Third person
Themes
ActionComedyParty
Age ratings
ESRB E

About

Fall Guys (formerly known as Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout) is a 2020 free-to-play platform battle royale game developed by Mediatonic and originally published by Devolver Digital for the PlayStation 4 and Windows. It was acquired by Epic Games and subsequently 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 monetisation. On 16 August 2024, the game was released on mobile via the Epic Games Store, worldwide on Android and only in the European Union on iOS.

The main game involves 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, Total Wipeout, and playground games like tag and British Bulldog.

Keywords

  • season winter

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

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, dive sliding, piggybacking, and grabbing. Players can also use power-ups in select levels, which grant players unique abilities for either a limited amount of time or until the round ends. 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; Course, Survival, Points, Team, Logic, Invisibeans, and Final.

The winner of the Final level is usually the winner of the match, except in Squads based modes where the winning player scores the victory for their whole team.

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 sceptical 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.

Reception

Fall Guys received "generally favourable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. A clone game called Stumble Guys was released for mobile devices on 23 September 2020, 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.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Windows15 December 2020Worldwide
PlayStation 415 December 2020Worldwide

Editions and related releases

Part of
Fall Guys

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.