ARTICLES

The Fall Guys Phenomenon: How a Game for Five-Year-Olds Became the Best Battle Royale of the Year

Denys Artemiev 24 August 2020, 19:23

2 million copies sold in a week after release.

A battle royale game about jelly characters called Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout went live on August 4 on PC and PS4. In August, Sony is offering the game for free to all PS Plus subscribers. On PC, the game can be purchased on Steam for UAH 279.

Unexpectedly for the entire gaming industry, the arcade battle royale, which at first seems like a silly children's game, has gained enormous popularity. Just six days after release, publisher Devolver Digital reported on Twitter that 2 million copies had been sold on Steam and 23 million hours of Twitch streams had been watched.

On the evening of August 8, Fall Guys took fourth place by online players on Steam. At that time, nearly 125,000 players were in it, with only CS:GO, Dota 2 and PUBG having more. Today, August 24, Fall Guys continues to hold fourth place in Steam's online rankings with 170,000 players.

Steam online statistics for August 8. Photo: store.steampowered.com/stats

According to estimates from Gamstat, by August 24 around 15.6 million players had played Fall Guys, including PS Plus subscribers who got the game for free.

But not everything could be good. The developers did not expect such popularity, and the servers, unprepared for the influx of players, began to 'crash.' In the first week after release, players could not connect, so they began mass-downvoting the game on Steam.

Fall Guys developers complained on social media about so-called 'review bombing' and urged players not to lower ratings over technical issues, promising to fix the problem and provide compensation.

Surprisingly, it worked!

As promised, already on August 13 the developers gave all players compensation in the form of an exclusive cactus costume and 5,000 in-game coins. Server problems were completely fixed several days before the compensation was issued.

Why Fall Guys is so popular

Each game involves 60 players across 3-5 rounds. With each round, there are fewer and fewer of them. Players must go through various mini-games, of which there are more than 20. Among them are obstacle races (the last ones eliminated), team games (the weakest team is eliminated), survival (the round ends after a certain number of players are eliminated) and finals (only one wins).

Each round is accompanied by cheerful music and the clumsiness of the jelly characters. Moreover, players constantly get in each other's way, both accidentally and on purpose. Most rounds are run by a crowd, so get ready for either fun or a serious test for your nervous system.

The Fall Guys phenomenon lies in its primitiveness. It is a game in the fundamental sense. Gameplay is literally based on two buttons: run and jump. There are only two additional ones: grab-push (players and objects) and dive (jumping headfirst).

The goal is always obvious and understandable even to children on an intuitive level: run first, get past obstacles, don't fall into the slime, steal a tail, score a goal. Among the mini-games are chasing games, football and hopscotch, familiar to everyone from childhood.

The easiest way to explain the game is through the crazy TV shows of the 2000s in the style of Big Race or Wipe Out.

Visually, it is the competitive element that makes the children's game cruel, since players can seriously get in each other's way. The main goal of every jelly character is the crown in the final round, which only one will take.

Watch how streamer TimTheTatman rejoices over his first crown, whose stream was being watched by 250,000 viewers at that moment.

I was lucky enough to take my first crown after about 18-20 hours of play. But some need many more attempts and much more patience. Below is a compilation of the best fails by the same TimTheTatman streamer from Twitch.

It's cool that Fall Guys has no serious player progression that you need to strive for daily. You can play 20 minutes a day or only an hour on weekends. Of course, there are levels and experience, but they give you nothing except new costumes and achievements.

By the way, character customization is an inevitable element of such games. In Fall Guys you can change face color, body color and pattern, emotes and costumes. This is an excellent marketing move: the game already has costumes of Jacket from Hotline Miami, the Scout from Team Fortress 2 and even Gordon Freeman from Half-Life 2.

Jacket costume from Hotline Miami. Photo: twitter.com/devolverdigital

Scout costume from Team Fortress 2. Photo: twitter.com/devolverdigital

Gordon Freeman costume from Half-Life 2. Photo: twitter.com/devolverdigital

At the same time, players suggest the most diverse collaborations. Even Russia's Sberbank got involved with its Sberkot. Fall Guys' SMM manager was among those who appreciated it.

The work of their SMM manager deserves a separate article. His sparkling humor, responsiveness and friendliness were so loved by players that by August 19, 15 days after the game's release, more than a million people had subscribed to the Fall Guys Twitter account.

The developers congratulated players with a funny video: a map of one of the mini-games is completely covered with yellow characters. The joke is that players are convinced the yellow team magically loses more often than others.

The battle royale for five-year-olds evokes childlike emotions: joy, laughter, anxiety, indignation, fear. During play, palms really sweat, and getting through another round is equivalent to scoring a goal in backyard football.

Unfortunately, Fall Guys is unlikely to withstand the test of time and retain its popularity even for a year. But the game will certainly go down in history and be remembered as one of the most high-profile projects of the strange 2020.