Ever since the release of the first ever gaming console, console designers and game developers have ventured on a journey of perpetual improvement. The Playstation One release of 1994 began the war between Sony and Microsoft that would result in both companies pushing each other to the brink for the next 2 decades and more. Nintendo has had a say in the industry but has mostly derived profits of their exclusive rights over favourites like The Legend of Zelda, Mario and the Pokemon series.
Nintendo has continued to milk these franchises with multiple game installments through the years with minor graphics and game-play improvements. The major learning point here is, instead of focusing on making games where the characters slowly looked more and more realistic, they stuck to the cartoon-ish, lovable blueprint. The release of the Nintendo Switch in 2017 marked a one-of-a-kind device that not only combined portable gaming with a gaming-rig setup, but also began the era where traditional flagships from PC, Xbox and Playstation also became playable on this Nintendo. Suddenly, hits like The Witcher 3, Overwatch and FIFA were all playable on a Nintendo device. This however did not dampen their resolve to steam ahead with more releases on their exclusives and why is that?
For starters, Nintendo understands that by being one of the first companies to enter the industry in the ’90s, they managed to set the stage of what story-lines and characters would be like. Thus, they immediately endeared characters and games from their exclusives to the hearts of gamers everywhere when video gaming was just becoming a phenomenon. As a result, Nintendo understands that the market runs on a certain amount of nostalgia and they have stood by their exclusives all these years and have made profits out of them simply due to the fact that the average gamer was willing to buy the latest Nintendo along with their primary gaming device just so that they can enjoy playing games that bring back memories of a happier time.
In 2020, a company named Mediatonic decided to take a page out of their book and aim to make a game that was fun without the burden of forcing designers to ensure a characters had unique moles, coloured eyes and other high-detail aspects to their appearance. Thus came Fall Guys. The game is made of lovable jelly-like people that don’t converse in any language but just make “coo”-ing sounds while hopping about.
The game is like a digital version of Takeshi’s Castle(or Wipeout for those not familiar with this) where 60 players begin playing different rounds of obstacle courses, team building exercises and more with eliminations taking place in each round until there is just a rag-tag bunch of few survivors who compete in a final obstacle course to capture a Crown to be declared as the winner.
The game employs basic physics, frustratingly competitive tasks that seem easy and the most minimalist controls to ensure the game is just fun for everyone. Of course the game does become oddly toxic at times, which is common with multiplayer games, it still has an addictive nature to it that will keep you playing despite repeatedly dying or being pushed off a ledge by a chaotically evil competitor.
Mediatonic has surely hit a home run by steering towards a flagship that is based on just joyous game-play instead of overly-complicated story-lines. To put this into perspective, Fall Guys got 1.5 million players in the first 24 hours of its release. They even sold 7 million copies on the game library Steam as of August and have smashed the record to become the most downloaded Playstation Plus game ever.
Fall Guys has surely worked its way into the history books and they have done this by working well with the basics to keep players entertained, something more developers should understand is the need of the hour.
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