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Fall Guys heads to mobile in China; datamine hints at Nintendo Switch version

Aaron Mamiit
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The massively popular Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is currently only available for the PlayStation 4 and PC, but it appears that the colorful battle royale may be making its way to more platforms soon.

The official Fall Guys account on Twitter recently issued a warning that ads for a mobile version of the game are scams. However, it appears that a legitimate mobile version is on the way, according to video game analyst Daniel Ahmad.

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Chinese games and entertainment company Bilibili has secured the rights to publish a mobile version of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout in China.

The game released for PC and PS4 on August 4, 2020 and has become a viral hit.#FallGuys https://t.co/BjElzemUGr pic.twitter.com/EBgYq3pck5

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 22, 2020

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There is no official announcement that the mobile version of Fall Guys will also launch in the U.S., though.

Meanwhile, dataminer OatmealDome found a file named NintendoSDKPlugin.dll in Fall Guys‘ Steam version.

Interestingly, Fall Guys has the "NintendoSDKPlugin.dll" file in its game files on Steam.

This means that the Fall Guys Unity project has support for the Nintendo Switch's SDK (not necessarily that it *will* come to Switch). It's also been there since the first version.

— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) August 19, 2020

The presence of the software development kit means that developer Mediatonic has the coding in place for a Nintendo Switch version of Fall Guys. However, this does not mean that a port to the hybrid console is imminent. As OatmealDome explains in a follow-up tweet, the developer may even have just accidentally added the Switch support.

“We can confirm [that Chinese company] Bilibili have secured publishing rights to a mobile version in China. As you can imagine, we’ve had a lot of questions about platforms since launch, and of course we’d love to release on more platforms in the future, but for now we’re focusing our efforts on PC and PS4,” Mediatonic co-founder Paul Croft said in a statement to Digital Trends in response to questions about Fall Guys‘ expansion to other platforms.

Fall Guys success

Mediatonic hoped that by launching Fall Guys as a free download for PlayStation Plus subscribers, the game would find the same success as Psyonix’s Rocket League.

Fall Guys turned out to be a breakthrough hit despite server issues caused by massive player counts, with the game surging in popularity on Steam rankings and Twitch viewerships.

Updated August 24, 2020: Added a statement from Mediatonic co-founder Paul Croft.

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Aaron Mamiit
Aaron Mamiit
Contributor
Aaron received a NES and a copy of Super Mario Bros. for Christmas when he was 4 years old, and he has been fascinated with…
How Fall Guys went from playground whimsy to the summer’s smash hit
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Inspiration for one of the summer’s hottest games came from the simplest of places: The playground.
While spending time with his children in parks and playgrounds, Rob Jackson, the lead artist on Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, imagined the silly chaos of hordes of kids bouncing off slides and through monkey bars.
The thought helped him craft the game’s colorful levels and its unathletic but try-hard bean characters, a term the game’s creators did not coin but acknowledge. The Fall Guys model is simple but gripping. The player controls the "bean," which is designed to look like sweets, through a vivid obstacle course, trying to make it through to the next round. The last bean standing wins.
“The character is specifically designed to be the least appropriate to be participating in the game he’s in,” Jackson told Digital Trends. “They have maximum motivation but minimum physical capabilities, but they never give up. They always keep going.”
There are other inspirational touchstones as well. Ice cream, candy, stickers, vinyl characters, and even course-driven game shows like Takeshi’s Castle and Wipeout all played a part in forming the game’s aesthetic.
There wasn’t an aha moment at developer Mediatonic’s headquarters when pitching the game, but the team did have a sense of what they wanted to create, Jackson says.
They wanted it to feel bright and colorful, safe and silly, but also chaotic and loose. They wanted the contrast of a game where a player needed to have some skill but also knew that at any moment something could go wrong.

Making it to the finish line
To meet the game’s deadline, there were crunch issues, the developers said, complicated by quarantines. Launch day was especially chaotic. Too many people wanted to play, and the servers couldn’t keep up. The team of 48 scrambled. The game’s official Twitter account pleaded for patience, and unruly gamers took to Steam to review-bomb the game. Other gamers positive-bombed it back.
“Everyone watched the numbers with stunned amazement," Jackson says.
A week after its launch, it sold 2 million copies on Steam and accrued 23 million hours watched on Twitch, according to numbers provided by Mediatonic. For the week of August 17, Fall Guys was the No. 1 overall game throughout Twitch and YouTube, beating goliaths like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Call of Duty.
The game was featured as a free game for PS Plus members, and although Mediatonic won’t discuss sales on that platform, all signs point to a successful launch there as well.
Piers Harding-Rolls, a gaming analyst at Ampere Analysis, says it’s the way the game expertly joins chaos and color. The team at Mediatonic took the playground and candy inspiration and gave players of all age a real change behind the fun visuals.
“It combines many elements of the most popular games that are available today in a unique package. It is both familiar, drawing on other types of entertainment, for example, Wipeout. [It's] social, easy to play, and competitive,” Harding-Rolls says.
A big part of the appeal is character customization. Players can change outfits, patterns, colors, and gestures. Options include versions of popular video game characters like Gordon from Half-Life, or seemingly random costumes like a pineapple. Gamers use in-game currency, Kudos and Crowns, to purchase these aesthetics. Therein lies another draw. Kudos is awarded after each playthrough, or show, based on how well you competed. Crowns, however, are only given to winners with a few thrown in as leveling-up rewards. This also keeps the player coming back for more rounds.
“The gameplay has some depth and strategy to it, so longer-term players will continue to find it engaging,” Harding-Rolls says.

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