Synopsis: Fall Guys is a massively multiplayer party game with up to 60 players online in a free-for-all struggle through round after round of escalating chaos until one victor remains!

Publisher: Devolver Digital
Reviewed on: PS4 (Pro unit)
Also available for: PC

Developer: Mediatonic
Lead Designer: Joseph Walsh
Lead Level Designer: Meg Ralph
Lead Artist: Rob Jackson

If you’ve watched Wipeout or Takeshi’s Castle, you know what Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is all about. It’s five rounds of ridiculous mini-games where there can only be one winner at the end. The rounds can include running up a mountain full of slime with ridiculously large fruit flying towards you or attempting to platform across see-saws where every player is your worst nightmare. It’s absolute nonsense at times and can be equally frustrating and exhilarating. Fall Guys will be the party game of 2020 and there’s no competition.

You control what is basically a jelly bear stuffed with potatoes. I’m not sure if you have proper limbs. It can grab onto ledges, dive and jump. But the Fall Guys never looked coordinated doing anything. I’m not sure they care too.

Each round starts with 60 players and their jelly-bodies at the starting line. Through each round, the player count will drop until there’s around 5–10 left for the final round who fight it out in a free-for-all.

Pre-release coverage and press coverage has described the game as a battle royale. I personally don’t think it fits the genre. Yes, the player count drops between rounds. But they do in trivia games as well and Trivia Royale isn’t a thing (yet.) [Editor’s note: It is a thing. Now.]

There’s an ease-of-play to Fall Guys that most multiplayer games don’t have. The controls are simple to pick up and play. Being able to jump and move is the basics. Learning to press an additional button to dive can help a lot, but isn’t necessary. There’s a grab button but it’s mostly used by players for griefing. And that’s all of the controls, besides some buttons designated for emotes, but unless you’re teaching nan to dab on these haters, she can probably skip those.

To get to the final round you’ll have to rely on yourself for the majority of the rounds. Platforming rounds are entirely based around knowing when and how to jump over obstacles and gaps, but an understanding of how gravity affects your jellybean body will make all of that much easier.

With the single-player rounds, there’s a bit of chaotic fun that can make being first the worst place to be until just before crossing the finish line. In a race, players will often hurdle towards tight gaps and many will end up tumbling and falling, causing a pile-up that looks like an accident occurred on aisle four. It’s all part of the charm of the game however and although getting knocked from first to fifteenth in a race does happen, you’re never knocked back far enough from the lead that’ll cause you to get knocked from the round. Plus the more you play the better you become at being aware of choke points in races, or other hazards.

Some modes like Tip-Toe are much better suited to being somewhere in the middle of the pack as the leader attempts to find a safe route across a gap. In Jump Club, you have to jump over a log that’s rotating around a circular platform but again, if too many players pile up together one can send you flying if they fall into you as you jump.

I mentioned the grab button — it sucks. It’s basically only used in one game that involves grabbing a tail from other players, but I’ve mostly seen it being used for griefing. Which you may call part of the fun, but I call bullshit. Unless there’s a referee being added to red-card the players pulling me towards gaps or grabbing me right while I jump, I’d much prefer to see the grab button not work in some game modes.

There are team-based rounds in Fall Guys that lean more on the RNG side than chaotic fun. Sometimes the team-based rounds separate players into three teams and in those, it feels a bit more balanced, but as soon as you’re placed in any of the team-based activities with just two teams, it rocks in one direction. You either get squashed by the enemy team or do the squashing. Unlike most other multiplayer games there isn’t a way to carry your team. So no matter how good you are are the soccer mini-game, if your other three players are bad, you’ll lose.

At launch, there are twenty-four games inside Fall Guys but at least during launch week, the game has had trouble rotating between them all at a moderate rate.

Developer Mediatonic plan on adding new games and content for free into the future. The game does include micro-transactions but only for cosmetic items that don’t affect gameplay but dressing up your jellybean is half the game IMO. You can unlock costumes by playing and earning kudos and crowns. There’s a rotating selection of stock every twenty-four hours in the game and a handful of costume packs available as DLC including a Collectors Edition pack. You can buy kudos straight-up but I’m glad the highest value you can buy currently is only $37.95 AUD and not hundreds of dollars like most games.

There’s an in-game free battle pass that gives you kudos and costume parts as you level up. It currently max’s out at rank forty, which doesn’t seem too high, but it’ll reset with new stuff every in-game season. I do wish the game feature daily missions on top of the battle pass, however. An added incentive to try and win in certain ways, or win in certain costumes to earn kudos would be great.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knock Out is can be frustrating, especially in the team-based modes, but it’s mostly a chaotic mess in all the right ways and a lot of fun to play. I’m not sure how much longevity it’ll have compared to other multiplayer games, but the fact it’s so enjoyable to watch and easy to learn means it’ll at least be the go-to party game for the rest of the year.