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This is the chaos that characterizes the battle royale game Fall Guys. It’s a bizarre online party game in which 60 players compete against each other in a kind of game show, similar to Takeshi’s Castle of Wipeout. Each round you play a different minigame and participants drop out until you reach the final and only one brave Fall Guy is crowned the winner.

Almost every minigame ends in anarchy, but is simple enough to explain in one sentence. Think of assignments such as “run first across the finish line” or “survive as long as possible”. Immediately you understand what the intention is and you throw yourself fully into the fight. The outcome depends more on luck than on pure skill, but that’s what makes it so much fun: you never know what’s going to happen.

The obstacle courses are especially fun, where you race across colorful courses avoiding rolling balls, swinging beams and yawning chasms. Even more important is to stay out of the way of other players as they are the most unpredictable. Before you know it, you’ll be knocking off a competitor and into the abyss, or one grabbing you just before the finish line to push you into a sea of ​​purple slime. In other laps you mainly have to survive, for example on large, rolling discs full of obstacles or a circle where a few bars swing around faster and faster.

Especially the finals are incredibly exciting, because it really comes down to that. Because as with any competition, only one can be the winner. The most exciting final game is Hex-a-Gone, where everyone walks on a pile of platforms that disappear under them. Whoever is last on a platform while the rest has fallen into the abyss has won. Your sense of total control can suddenly turn to horror when you accidentally tumble down a few floors.

Another final game, where one person has a tail and the rest has to take it, is very frustrating. The hit detection is inconsistent, sometimes causing someone to snatch your tail from a great distance. It also does not matter how long you have owned that tail in total. Only the one who has it when the endless timer is up wins. It ensures that only the last seconds are really exciting.

There are more mini games where you especially sigh when they come by again. A memory game where pieces of fruit appear on platforms and you have to remember which one is where is completely useless. Usually no one is eliminated at all in this game, because even if you have a memory like a sieve, you can just stand close to the other participants and piggyback on their success.

Especially the team games, where the remaining participants suddenly have to work together, are generally of a less high level. The imprecise controls that cause delicious chaos in other games often causes frustration here. In Egg Hoarders, for example, you have to bring eggs to your own camp, but the controls to grab things are not very precise.

Moreover, the team games are often extremely unfair. These are the rounds where you have the least influence over the outcome, because you also depend on the commitment of your teammates. But beyond that, the teams are often not distributed fairly. A game of Rocket League-like football is great fun, but not if you have to compete with five people against six others. It is unimaginable that a team game will be selected when there are an odd number of participants left.

Fall Guys is a huge hit, and it shows in the buzy servers. The game regularly cannot be played because maintenance is being carried out, is of course acceptable. It is a lot more frustrating when your game is roughly interrupted while you have already survived a few rounds. This will no doubt be fixed in the future, but is a problem that players still face.

The game is at its best, like almost any online game, when you play it with a group of friends. You can form a party of four, which guarantees that you are in the same game and in team games on the same team. It is wonderful to encourage each other, laugh at each other’s blunders and shout someone for victory.

However, a number of important options are also missing. You don’t get many good tools to enjoy the game as a group. At this point, it’s not even possible to see which of your friends is still alive, so each round ends with the question, “Are you all still in it?” When you are eliminated, you have no choice but to watch your teammates continue to compete. It is of course logical that you no longer have any influence on the game, but you can also make watching more interesting. For example, by seeing all your teammates in split screen, or following their progress with statistics.

There are a lot of features missing anyway that could make the life of a Fall Guys player more enjoyable. The main menu is still quite empty. There are no stats telling you how many times you have won, or which minigame you lose most often

All that can still change and it probably will. Fall Guys has been a great success and the developer has already shown that they want to support it well. For example, a new minigame has now been added, just the kind of support that can keep this game interesting for a long time. With the current list of minigames the game can become monotonous fairly quickly, but by constantly bringing new games into circulation that feeling is greatly reduced.

There’s plenty of reason to keep playing, too, as the comical cosmetics are a real delight. With a free Battle Pass you earn a few things, but the real gems can be found in the daily changing in-game shop. Who doesn’t want a pineapple head? You can buy currency for that with real money, but the game is generous enough with rewards to unlock enough items without paying extra. Every match is therefore a colorful mess, because everyone dresses up his or her Fall Guy in a unique way.

And even without rewards, it is wonderful to see all those happy bean men fall, bounce, get up again and eventually conquer. This game may not be for everyone, especially if you think you should always win when you are the best at something. Fall Guys relies on chaos and luck as much as on sheer skills. Of course you can get good at the game, but that doesn’t mean you are immune to a ball that is suddenly shot at you from close range. If you can accept that and indulge in sheer randomness, Fall Guys is a perfect way to put a smile on your face.