Lang’s World: Looking for something good about 2020? Try Fall Guys
Lang WhitakerNot everything in 2020 has been an abject disaster. I mean, sure, yeah, there have been plenty of things that were intensely disappointing and abjectly disastrous. But there’s also been Fall Guys.
Fall Guys is a video game that was released at the beginning of August for the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. The game is $20 to download and only uses three buttons: allowing you to jump, dive, or grab. It’s simple enough that my wife and seven-year-old recently sat down in front of the game for the first time, and within minutes had mastered the controls and were screaming at the television like a Fall Guys veteran.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if the Minions competed on an obstacle course in the sky, Fall Guys is your answer. Drawing from shows like “Wipeout!” and “Takeshi’s Castle,” Fall Guys is essentially a race for a crown interrupted by occasional ridiculous cartoon violence. Each game, or “show,” starts with 60 competitors, people logged in from all over the world. The game starts with all the competitors thrown in against each other on one of 11 different randomly selected challenges. About a dozen competitors are eliminated per level, and after four or five challenges, you’ll reach what is basically a championship round, with the last player standing crowned the winner.
Fall Guys is already wildly popular. According to CNN, it’s one of the biggest indie game launches of all-time, and streamers are getting hundreds of thousands of viewers. Which is probably because Fall Guys is so simple to understand, to figure out, and play. The characters are weird little jelly bean-looking things that get knocked down, but they get up again. You can customize your character’s color scheme and outfit—I’ve been wearing the bottom half of a hot dog costume lately—but nothing about the way your character looks can improve the way they perform: every player has the same speed, leaping ability, etc.
So how do you win? There’s luck involved, sure, but skill and the choices you make as to how you want to play also have something to do with it. On a recent final level, we had to run Fall Mountain, an relatively straightforward obstacle course where you navigate a series of whirling obstacles until you reach the summit, and then the first competitor to grab a giant floating crown wins the game. I got relatively lucky early, avoiding all the spinning hammers and hitting a few rotating gates perfectly. As I neared the end, I knew my competitors must be close behind me, but I couldn’t spare a moment to stop and check. I was the first to get to the top of the board, but as I arrived, I saw that the crown was at that moment likely out of reach. Should I jump for the crown anyway, hoping I could get there and score a win? Or should I wait a second longer to make sure I could reach the crown, but also potentially allowing my opponents to catch up?
I only had a split second to decide, but I decided to go for it. I leaped immediately. And I missed the crown, which dropped me down to the bottom of the ramp. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw another character above me grab the crown and take the win. I lost, but I felt good about it, because at least I’d gone for it.
During another recent game, I again made it to the final challenge, which turned out to be Jump Club, where your character has to jump over a swinging arm that slowly picks up speed. There’s also a higher arm rotating at a different speed, which makes timing the jumps crucial. And in the final round, floor panels drop out as the challenge timer ticks down, making it increasingly difficult to find a safe landing space.
The level started with about nine contestants, but eventually that number was whittled down to two, myself and another person. As the swinging arm came toward us and I prepared to jump, suddenly the other dude grabbed me, holding me just long enough to screw up my timing, and the swing arm hit me square and dumped me into the pink slime below, eliminating me from the game.
Initially I was furious. This was poor sportsmanship, after all, and it seemed to go against the spirit of the game—do your best and hope to be the best opponent you can be.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was the one who had screwed up. I should have been the aggressor. I should have grabbed first, and if it felt like it went against the spirit of the game, well, maybe it did. But I lost, so I couldn’t really complain about it.
Considering the current popularity of Fall Guys, it’s wild to think that two months ago this game didn’t exist. Having such a low barrier of entry makes it accessible to a wide audience, and it will likely only continue to grow in popularity. It’s also a perfect game for the world we live in today—I may or may not have played dozens of games while on Zoom calls, as each level only requires your attention for about 90 seconds at a time.
I’ve played the game relentlessly for weeks now and have never actually won a game. I’ve finished in the top five a ton of times and made it to the final two a few times. But as for actually getting a crown? Nope.
Yet I am undaunted. Fall Guys is one of those situations where it really is not whether you win or lose, and it’s not even really how you play the game. The fun of Fall Guys is really just playing the game.
Published on Sep 21, 2020
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