Fall Guys: failed several times before the great success

Fall Guys, the battle royale party game in which the goal is precisely not to fall, turned out to be the great success of summer 2020. Within just one week of launch, publisher Devolver Digital confirmed that the game had sold over 2 million copies on Steam and had been downloaded more than 8 million times on PlayStation 4. Still, the rise to popularity didn't benefit from an accommodating debut for Fall Guys.

Initially, when the Fall Guys developers looked for funding, publishers weren't too keen on this battle royale. While it proved to be a blatant success - as PC sales are performing exceptionally well, coupled with the ingenious idea of ​​gifting it to PlayStation Plus members - not everyone had the foresight to call it "brilliant" at first glance.

In a long Twitter thread, Mediatonic creative director Jeff Tanton recounted the events surrounding the game's early development and the difficulty in convincing publishers to finance it. Jeff Tanton explains that the idea was born from the insight of lead game designer, Joe Walsh, who thought of combining the physical challenges typical of battle royale inspired by the Japanese game show, Takeshi's Castle. The idea had fully convinced Jeff Tanton, who continued to work on the design and aspect of the game. To this end, the contribution of the main concept artist, Dan Hoang, who came up with the design of the characters, similar to funny beans - incredibly, the strength of the game was also important.