Fall Guys Is The Most Fun I’ve Had Being Nervous

Fall Guys is the newest take on the Battle Royale genre, but only at a skin deep level. Sure, you start out with 100 players all competing to be the last standing and players are eliminated along the way, but that’s about the only similarity to the massively popular genre that you’ll find.

Fall Guys is being developed by Mediatonic and Devolver Digital will likely publish the quirky game in 2010. Think of Fall Guys as a game show with a massive elimination component displayed through multiple rounds of cute and addictive mini-games. 

In our E3 demo we were welcomed into an air-conditioned trailer with four stations. The first inclination that Fall Guys was going to be something unique and special was when I was asked to take my shoes off before entering the unassuming building in the Devolver parking lot. Inside, I saw nothing buy foam padding and soft, colorful objects lining the floors and walls. It was like stepping into a daycare center with less, but only slightly, screaming and tantrums happening.

In the first stage of Fall Guys I was set against 100 other players, 3 of whom were in the room with me and the other 96 were computer generated AI. The goal was to move as quickly through the obstacles ahead – rows of doors where some could be broken through and others would block your progression. Some strategy was in order, of course. Barreling ahead and being the first to try a door has its obvious advantages if you are successful in selecting correct entrance. If you fail, you not only take a hit of a few seconds, but you also allow all of those behind you to eliminate one door from their options and try a different one. At the end of this course a number of the slowest players were eliminated, while the rest moved on to a different challenge.

Tail Tag came up next and involved even more strategy and a bit of griefing other players for fun was hard to resist. Half of the players start the round with a tail stuck to their back. The goal is to finish the round with a tail or be eliminated. If you don’t have a tail, your goal is to steal it from someone else. Here, you are once again forced to pick a strategy… pick a tail and run for your life, hiding away from the horde of tailless competitors, or get a tail and pick on those who don’t have one. The most likely end result is that you would get a tail, have a little fun, get your tail taken from you, and then scramble for the last ten seconds to try and regain it.

Assuming you move on to the next round, you’ll enter a Ninja Warrior-esque environment in which the remaining players have to race uphill towards the end goal. There are rotating beams, tumbling boulders, and tons of other obstacles to slow you down and curtail your attempts to move on to the next round.

Fall Guys promises to be something special. It will also likely have you cursing at the top of your lungs as a competitor steals your tail and pushes you off of high obstacles. 

Expect Fall Guys in 2020 on PlayStation 4 and PC.