Fall Guys is not exactly a battle royale, but it does begin each round with a huge crowd of players, and only one of them can ultimately win. But developers Mediatonic say 100 players was too much for their unique Takeshi’s Castle spin on battle royale, and they’ve settled on what they feel is the magic number – 60.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was revealed at last year’s E3, and the trailer is delightfully chaotic: a horde of little jelly bean people waddle their way through a brightly coloured but increasingly hazardous obstacle course, with a few falling to each subsequent hazard. Only one of them will survive to the very end.
In a new update on the official Fall Guys website, developer Mediatonic explains why it has pulled back from 100 players per round and opted for the reduced player count of 60. It turns out that once you have a certain critical mass of waddling jelly beans on screen, players can’t really tell exactly how many there are.
“Regularly we’d ask players ‘how many Fall Guys did that feel like you were playing with?'” Mediatonic writes. “And their response was often twice as high as the actual number that were in-game with them. It turned out that we didn’t need as many players as we though to create the crowds we wanted the gameplay to include.”
Here’s the delightful Fall Guys reveal trailer, in case you forgot about it:
From the development perspective, though, 100 players is a lot more than 60 players.
“We also began to find that 100 players made even our simplest levels too crowded and ultimately less fun,” the developers said. “Players would lose their Fall Guy in giant bundles trying to fit through small gaps, and if we made our levels bigger they were too large and cavernous to feel cohesive.”
Sixty players struck the balance between craziness and manageability, so when Fall Guys heads into closed beta and eventually launches, that’ll be the number we’re playing with.
“We believe it’s going to create the best experience for players when they get their hands on the game during closed beta, and ultimately when the game goes live this summer,” Mediatonic says.