This week marked the one year anniversary of the release of Fall Guys, and what a year it’s been! Developed by Mediatonic, the charming assault course royale has cemented itself as a party classic, serving us countless moments of laughter and frustration.
Fall Guys recently entered its fifth season, bringing with it all new jungle themed levels and items. The team also teases that a few special surprises will appear in the game to celebrate its first birthday.
It’s certainly been quite the journey since the game first released last summer. Let’s take this opportunity to revisit some of the best Fall Guys moments of the last year.
Launch period buzz
Us here at GameByte had a sneaking suspicion that Fall Guys would be something good, but we could never estimate just how much it would blow up at launch. Partly because it offers excellent dumb fun in the best way possible, and partly because it launched for free on PlayStation Plus, Fall Guys launched with an exceptionally large player base.
The studio revealed that Fall Guys had sold over 2 million copies in its first week, and that was just on Steam! Alongside those playing it religiously, millions were watching along at home. Twitch saw over 23 million hours of gameplay watched, also with the first week of release.
Those are huge numbers for a team of Mediatonic’s size, and it was fantastic to see the game garner such success early on. Stumbling around with everyone else in those first few weeks was joyous as we all learned the strategies for each game mode. It didn’t really matter if you were able to earn wins or not – going along for the ride was fun in itself.
Pour one ouT for the yellow team
Not long after the game launched, a conspiracy theory quickly surfaced that one of the teams was less capable than the others. Bue, Green, and Red teams were all perceived as equal, but statistics released by Mediatonic seemed to suggest that the Yellow team was more likely to be knocked out than the others.
Whether this was true or not to begin with is up for debate, but it became a meme that if you were on the yellow team you were destined to lose. If the odds weren’t stacked in the yellow team’s favour before, they almost certainly weren’t after the news broke.
Teams began to force the narrative that team yellow should be the ones to take the fall. Team games would resort to the other three groups ganging up on yellow. Sure, it was frustrating as hell for those who were unlucky enough to land on the wrong team. But it’s undeniable that the shared meme knowledge offered comedic value for everyone else involved.
TimTheTatman’s first crown
Perhaps the most dramatic story in esports to ever surface, who can forget TimTheTatman’s first crown? You’ll have surely heard of this popular streamer for his big personality on camera. He began playing Fall Guys at launch alongside his other co-streamers, but for whatever reason seemed completely incapable of winning a match.
It became a huge deal online that Tim would play Fall Guys for hours a day without seeing a single win under his belt. This continued for two weeks after the game launched with even the developers getting involved in the chat around it. Players who managed to get into the same lobby as Tim even tried sabotaging his game to prolong his suffering.
The meme culminated on August 19th when the streamer finally managed to earn a coveted crown on a round of ‘Hex-a-gone’. The hype was so palpable that ESPN even produced a short documentary following Tim’s journey to earning his first win. Truly a tale for the grandkids.
Impeccable Twitter interactions
One of the reasons that Fall Guys remained so popular for so long was because of the game’s excellent online community management. The official Fall Guys Twitter account was constantly trending thanks to the witty management of Oliver ‘Age 24’, the Community Director at Mediatonic.
The account was constantly in touch with the antics going on inside the game and would always seem to have a hilarious meme to hand. Alongside getting involved with streamer journeys, like TimTheTatman, the account would also regularly interact with its community in the best way possible.
Scrolling back through the account’s replies makes for excellent reading. The tone tied in perfectly with the ridiculous nature of the game itself, and it was refreshing to see that approach extended to the game’s community management.
Crossovers galore!
Can you even call yourself a live service game these days if you haven’t got crossover content from other titles? Well Fall Guys was sure to jump on the Fortnite train with several crossover items appearing in the store throughout the last year.
The game first launched with an excellent Gordon Freeman skin to celebrate the release on PC. Since then, we’ve also had items relating to Portal, Sonic, Untitled Goose Game, DOOM, Among Us, Shovel Knight, and most recently, Ratchet and Clank.
It adds very little to the actual gameplay of Fall Guys (that comes with the frequent seasonal updates), but it sure does add to the comedic value when you get to watch Sonic stumble his way through a ridiculous obstacle course. He gets what he deserves.
Those are some of our favourite things from the last year of playing Fall Guys. Now that the game has been released across the Xbox and Nintendo Switch platforms, here’s hoping that we’ll be able to celebrate even more ridiculous moments in the months to come.
What are some of your favourite Fall Guys memories from the last year? Let us know across our social channels.
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Featured Image Credit: Mediatonic