Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is taking the gaming world by storm. The party platformer battle royale, out this week for PC and PlayStation 4, pits dozens of players against each other in a series of mad-dash mini-games. It’s largely uncomplicated; most of the mini-games require running forward and jumping at the right time. But there are still some tricks. Here’s how to earn your first (or fifth) Crown.
You don’t need to come in first — at first.
Most Fall Guys games are broken up into five rounds. Each match starts with up to 60 players. At the end of each round, losing players are cut, battle royale-style, until a handful progress to a final showdown. If you only go into Fall Guys with one piece of advice, it’s this: Don’t try to win — at least not at first.
Impetuous behaviour at the start can, and likely will, result in careless mistakes, which in turn will result in you getting trampled by 59 anthropomorphic beans. For the early races, focus less on winning and more on “qualifying” for the next round by being above the elimination threshold. Save your first place urges for the final round, when only one player can win. You’re better off trying to finish the early rounds in an aggressively average place. For advice on that front, check out our guide to winning — or, well, passably surviving — some of Fall Guys’ toughest mini-games:
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/08/how-to-survive-fall-guys-toughest-mini-games/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/08/06/xbhp8du4zt6dcziukrdt-300×169.jpg” title=”How To Survive Fall Guys’ Toughest Mini-Games” excerpt=”Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout released yesterday on PC and PlayStation 4. Thanks to Twitch hype and inclusion in August’s game with PS Plus, Fall Guys landed with a splash — such a big splash, in fact, that server issues persisted throughout much of yesterday, preventing eager players from testing out…”]
Purposefully screwing up can help you qualify.
Let’s say you’re in a race that, on paper, requires you to leap over rotating bars. Letting yourself get thwacked by the bar might launch you to the next section of the course. Or let’s say you need to leap across a series of spinning platforms. Jumping off the side at the right point might trigger a checkpoint that respawns you closer to the ending than you originally were. (You can see where checkpoints will spawn you by keeping an eye out for blue, curved flags.) Think creatively about these stages. Don’t always take Fall Guys’ stated instructions at face value.
Matches aren’t always five rounds.
About a third of the player base gets culled at the end of the first round. Over the next three rounds, anywhere from zero to a dozen or more players will eat slime, until just a handful are left for the final round. But if enough people are eliminated after the third round — during, say, an especially brutal game of Block Party — the match will jump straight to the final. Be prepared to switch back to a medal-chasing mindset.
By the way, there are only three possible mini-games during the final round: Fall Mountain (a footrace up and through a sloped obstacle course), Hex-A-Gone (a survival game where floor tiles incessantly fall away), and Royal Fumble (basically Reverse Tag).
There are two ways to leave a game.
You don’t get automatically kicked out of a match when you lose. Instead, you get filtered into a spectator mode. When you’re spectating, just tap Circle (on PS4) or Esc on keyboard and you’ll get taken straight to the post-game lobby, where you can watch those sweet, sweet Kudos pour in. Who wants to watch Fall Guys fall over each other in a game of Tip Toe when you could spend that time queuing up your own game of Tip Toe?
At the time of this writing, Fall Guys is still experiencing some growing pains, so trying to leave might cause the game to freeze, crash, stall, or replace your screen with an endless screensaver of a Fall Guy falling into a bottomless abyss. If you’re having trouble quitting out, just tap Options. (PC players, hit whatever keys do those things for you.) You can almost always leave from there.
You can steal tails from your teammates in Team Tail Tag.
Hey, now it’s their fault if you lose. Three cheers for shifting responsibility! Or maybe you’re just better at running than you are at chasing. Whatever your motivation, know that you can steal tails from your teammates.
Don’t forget to dive.
It’s easy to forget that Fall Guys have a skillset that consists of more than just jumping, tripping, and falling. They can also dive. This has three benefits:
- You can use it to dodge moving obstacles, like the walls in Gate Crash or the fans in The Whirlygig.
- Diving off a ledge makes it less likely that you’ll eat it upon landing. You’ll still fall all the time (it’s in the name), but diving tends to result in a smooth landing, rather than an awkward stumble.
- Few moves in gaming feel better than diving across the finish line in a Fall Guys footrace. Try it!
Check out the store every day.
Like many battle royales, Fall Guys showers you with cosmetic options. Tab your way over to the shop, and you’ll see two tiers. The top tier features three expensive items — right now, it’s an emote plus two costume pieces — and refreshes every three days. The bottom tier, however, has space for six items. It refreshes once a day, so be sure to check it regularly. Who knows when that snazzy tartan pattern will make a comeback.
If there’s something you mildly enjoy that costs Kudos, go for it. Kudos are fairly easy to come by. It’s the stuff that costs Crowns that you need to be careful with.
You only get Crowns for winning a game — which, unless you’re one of those fabled individuals who made a deal with the devil and earned the trophy for winning five games in a row, is more or less a game of chance. You can’t count on having Crowns in the bank. So if something catches your eye, see how it holds up against the personal shopper’s barometer: Can you think of three outfits you’d match it with? Has it been six hours since you first saw it? Are you still dreaming of it? Spend away.
Don’t grab people when they’re about to cross the finish line, toss an egg in a basket, grab a tail in Tail Tag, dodge the bar in Jump Club, avoid a woodblock in Block Party, or leap for the crown in Fall Mountain.
Super rude. Don’t get any ideas.
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