On August 4, “Fall Guys” exploded in popularity within the gaming community. Being released virtually on both Playstation 4 and Steam, I bought the Steam version of the game, albeit late, to see what made it so special. Even with the initial excitement gone, the game still has a large number of players on both platforms.

With that being said, I am going to review Fall Guys and see if it still fares well. Without a storyline to consider, this review is going to be based on the gameplay as well as the visual presentation of the game.

Gameplay

Fall Guys is a battle royale game, where you face off against 59 other players in attempts to be the one who wins a crown. The game subtracts the number of players based on performance in minigames, normally lasting five rounds. 

The controls are simple, with only running, moving the camera, jumping, grabbing and using emotes as options. 

The types of minigames are divided into six different categories: race, team, survival, logic, hunt and final. Every minigame has its own strengths and weaknesses. I will examine each category of minigame based on how much fun they are as well as design.

Race Minigames

This is undoubtedly the best type of minigame in Fall Guys. The minigames that are considered races are as follows: Dizzy Heights, See Saw, Door Dash, Fruit Chute, Hit Parade, Gate Crash, Slime Climb, The Whirlygig and Tip Toe. 

Comparing them to both team games and survival games, I will say, some races are easily more knowledge-based when it comes to understanding the courses and getting to the end before others. 

Most of these games are often first and sometimes second-round games, so you revisit them quite often. Because of this, it’s easier to get better at these games than the others.

I’d say a majority of the race games are great, except See Saw and Tip Toe, which are games you have to try to work with the other players, which is hard to do so when you have to beat enough players to qualify. Score: 8/10

Team Minigames

To me, the enjoyment of a team minigame heavily relies on who you’re working with and how good they, and you, are. The team minigames include Egg Scramble, Jinxed, Hoarders, Hoopsie Daisy, Rock ‘N’ Roll, Fall Ball, and Team Tail Tag.

Team minigames can have as few as two teams face off to up to four teams, and this depends on which minigame is chosen. There are usually two strategies to win, either work together as a team to outperform the opponents or sabotage one team enough so they don’t have a chance to win.

The team minigames have good execution, but you’re at the mercy of who you get to work with and this affects how much enjoyment you’ll have. When your goal is to be the last one standing, you don’t really want teammates who won’t do their share of the work. When you have a good team, this may be some of the most fun. When I play the game, usually, I lose most team games because I feel like the other teams are teaming up or are just so much better. Score: 5/10

Survival Minigames

Survival minigames are everyone for themselves to see if you can avoid obstacles or get knocked down trying. The survival minigames consist of Jump Club, Block Party, and Roll Out.

All of these games are fairly different from one another and are all good minigames to get. Sometimes the games can be slow when it’s required to wait for a certain number of players to fall before the round ends. 

Usually, the obstacles aren’t enough for players to be eliminated. Most times, players try to sabotage one another by trying to grab them and pushing them rather than wait for the obstacles to knock people off. Score: 7/10

Final Minigames

This is where all your hard work pays off, to see whether you can win a crown or fall flat against the few remaining. There are four minigames that could be your final round: Fall Mountain, Hex-A-Gone, Jump Showdown, and Royal Fumble.

The games here are either entirely unique games that are their own, or more extreme versions of other games. Hex-A-Gone is a fan favorite minigame, for being both an entirely unique minigame as well as having multiple strategies for how you can win.

These games are easily the most challenging and exhilarating when it comes to who you’re facing off against. Winning these minigames is the most rewarding feeling you’ll get when playing Fall Guys. Rating: 9/10

Other Minigames

Now, you might be wondering what happened to the logic and hunt minigames. These categories are not getting their own separate section because they each only contain one game for their respective category; Perfect Match for logic and Tail Tag for hunt.

Perfect Match is a memory game, where you memorize the different fruits on the tiles and stand on the selected fruit to not fall. It has players go through three rounds of memorizing. It’s a simple minigame overall, but it isn’t as exciting as other minigames and doesn’t feel as rewarding.

To avoid starting an entire article about how much I dislike Tail Tag, I’ll only say that it depends heavily on how good the internet connection of the other players is. In my experience, whenever I need to grab a tail from one of the other players, I usually can’t grab even when I’m right next to them. If you’re someone without a tail by the end, you lose. People with enough lag to have an advantage, but not enough to disconnect, have the capability to grab tails from abnormal distances that just make the game unfun. Rating: 2/10

Presentation

Fall Guys doesn’t have high-quality graphics unlike multi-million dollar companies, but the simplicity is a part of the charm. With everyone playing as bean-shaped characters with no overly defining features, the costumes you can wear can be just about anything and still fit well with the design. There are several ways a player can look, whether it’s a can or monkey costume or mixing and matching to be things like a dinosaur with jeans or a pineapple parrot.

The maps for each minigame are very colorful and are made of mainly geometric shapes. The background of each map is simply a bright blue sky with mountains.

With only 11 soundtracks in the game, and with more than half of them being less than a minute long. The songs that do last more than a few minutes are surprisingly catchy. All of the themes are really upbeat and invigorating. Score: 9/10

Overall

Fall Guys was definitely a slow burn when I first started playing. All that happened to me was loss after loss, which wasn’t fun at all. When I got a better understanding of what I should do and how to do it well, the game was addictive to say the least, even when I was losing.

Even with the game not being as popular as it was at release, the game is still enjoyable and receiving updates. 

On September 15, they added an update for mid-season one of the game, where they added round variance which gives he game more unique playability and anti-cheating measures. The update also included a new obstacle, a spinning hammer that can give you a huge lead if used correctly, “Big Yeetus.” Yes, I am serious, that’s its name.

For a price of $20, Fall Guys is a game I would recommend for people who are interested in the competitiveness and the different styles of play within the minigames. It’s an incredibly wacky and fun game to play.

With season two of Fall Guys planned to release on October 6, featuring new medieval-themed minigames and costumes. I’m very much looking forward to the future of Fall Guys. 

Overall Score: 8/10