4 New Things I Want From Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

I’ve been enjoying playing Fall Guys with fellow staff members for the past week or so, and whilst the game is addictive and fun, there are some things I’d like to see from it in future. Longevity is something a lot of games (especially battle-royale style games) struggle with, so I have a few suggestions that might resonate with some of the playerbase and prevent the game from running out of steam quickly.

1. Frequent Updates

This should be a no-brainer, but many games of late that start strong bleed players quickly because of slow updates or patches. Apex Legends, for example, lost much of its initial wave of players because the stream of new content compared to Fortnite just wasn’t quick enough. Fall Guys’ skill ceiling isn’t very large at all, which is absolutely fine, but it also means that without new game modes or content the game will definitely begin to stagnate. A consistent and steady amount of new modes and maps should help to ensure that Fall Guys continues to be a fun party game.

2. Improve Team Balancing

This one is a genuine problem that should be fixed as soon as possible. There have been several occasions where during the tail end of a game, I’ve been put into a team game with only a certain amount of players left. What this can lead to is having uneven teams, which, in games like “Fall Ball”, is a complete death sentence. There is really no reason for this to happen, it isn’t just unfair, it’s not even fun. Even if you’re on the winning side, it’s likely you’ll just feel a bit empathetic for the unlucky sods that got put in the losing colours. Of all the issues on this list, this is definitely the most important.

3. Private Modes

Private matches might take some work, but will absolutely be worth it in the long run. The addition of private lobbies would not only allow for friends to duke it out between each other, but also allow for tournaments and the like which would boost the game’s viewership on YouTube and Twitch if streamed or recorded. Private lobbies have been implemented successfully in games such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or even Rainbow Six: Siege, and I think it would also be a good middle ground for players that want eight player squads (since the addition of that might lead to the abundance of griefing to win).

4. Custom Map Editor

A level editor would also take a large amount of effort, but it is impossible to stress just how good it would be for the game’s future. To give you an idea, I’ve played Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number for 236 hours (according to my Steam statistics). At least 200 of said hours were spent on the custom map editor, and the game’s community still churns out new fan made content on the Steam Workshop to this day, having been released in 2015. Considering that Fall Guys is a multiplayer game, it would be even more beneficial for the developers to implement a map editor, as it could also keep the game alive once Mediatronic inevitably stops supporting it. The undertaking would be infinitely worth the long term benefits, so I hope Mediatronic finds a way to do it.

Update: Lead game designer, Joe Walsh, has acknowledged the popular demand for a level editor in an interview with Inside Gaming: “There are a whole bunch of other things that come with that. Firstly, we use Unity so we don’t have a level editor internally, we can’t just publish it and have people start making levels instantly. But also, we have to think about what the ecosystem looks like in Fall Guys because it’s very different to, uh, Starcraft, right, where you just build a map, you just...find a friend and you play. There’s only a couple of people. In Fall Guys you’ve got to find 59 other people to play this obstacle course with you. And so we have a responsibility as the developer of the game to make sure that that experience is of a certain level of quality…”

He continues to say that although the team has the feature in mind for a possibility in the future, they’re not dedicating their time to it just yet. This is understandable, given the limitations he’s explained, but I still think that the time spent would be worth the long term benefits.

With all these ideas in mind in the future, I think Fall Guys might satisfy a similar place in the market as Rocket League, and consistently loved for possibly years to come. Do you have any of your own suggestions? Leave them in the comments below, as I’d love to hear them.