How Fall Guys makers were almost Fail Guys: the changing fortunes of hit game’s studio
- British studio Mediatonic was close to disaster in 2016 when all four big games it was working on got cancelled by its partners
- Now its biggest problem is ensuring enough server capacity to serve the millions of players jumping into its breakout hit
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is one of the most popular games in the world right now, and its maker isn’t a multibillion-dollar games conglomerate but an indie British studio that, its chief executive said, veered close to disaster in 2016.
Mediatonic is the 250-person, London-headquartered studio behind the game, and its main problem right now is ensuring enough server capacity to serve the millions of players jumping into its breakout hit.
Fall Guys was an instant success when it went live on August 4, and within a month, it became the all-time most downloaded title on Sony’s PlayStation Plus service. It was also bought 7 million times on online PC gaming storefront Steam.
The battle-royale-style online game is in a similar vein to Fortnite or PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds (PUBG), in that each round thins out a large group of players until one champion remains – but with cartoonish jelly-bean characters and a colourful, childlike aesthetic modelled on obstacle course game shows such as Takeshi’s Castle.
Sixty players navigate their clumsy jelly-bean characters through different levels, with each course serving as a knockout round until one winner remains to claim the crown.