Fall Guys looks easy until you try it. Then you realise that it’s not about claiming glorious victory over noodle-legged nobodies. Instead, your one and only goal is to avoid accidentally discovering innovative new ways to eat shit. Winning one match is tough. Winning five in a row is darn near impossible. And yet, mere days after the game’s official release, people are already doing it.
Fall Guys contains an achievement (or trophy, on PS4) called “Infallible.” To earn it, you’ve got to win five matches in a row. Prior to the battle royale party game’s launch, lead developer Joe Walsh said in a Reddit AMA that he thought one of the game’s achievements was “so insanely hard I don’t think anyone will ever unlock it.” Many assumed he was referring to “Infallible,” and a representative of Mediatonic, the studio that made Fall Guys, confirmed to Kotaku that fans were correct in their assessment. (The rep added in a DM that Walsh didn’t necessarily think it would be “literally impossible,” but instead just “really hard.”)
Some players also believe that Mediatonic might be asking too much. If you look at replies to the official Fall Guys Twitter account, you’ll find quite a few would-be trophy hunters pleading with the developer to change “Infallible’s” requirements so it’s not functionally un-earnable for them. In light of these sorts of complaints, the Mediatonic rep told Kotaku that “we’ll have new ways to win coming in the future that might just make this slightly easier.”
Yesterday, however, a mere 24 hours after the game’s release, a small trickle of players began to report on Twitter and Reddit that they’d actually pulled it off. According to third-party site PSNProfiles, 33 players have managed the feat on PS4, while the number of PC players who’ve proven themselves un-toppleable is still small enough that Steam’s tally remains at zero per cent. That’s not an enormous number of people no matter how you slice it — especially not in the face of Fall Guys’ 1.5 million-strong player base. But it’s also not zero.
While most who’ve earned the achievement have just posted screenshots, one player, Reed “SlothyJrr” Raposo pulled off his miraculous streak while on a stream hosted by his friend, Casey Meow. At first, he told Kotaku in an email, he didn’t even know he was within spitting distance of a highly coveted achievement.
“[That’s] the funny thing,” Raposo said. “I had no clue that this was even an achievement. I won four games in a row on my friend’s stream, and then people in chat started to mention the achievement and how hard it was to get. Going into the fifth game, I knew about the achievement and started really trying for it.”
After a nail-biter of a match, he narrowly succeeded. He did, however, have a couple factors working in his favour. For one, he had beta experience. During these first few days, where it’s likely that the majority of your competition will have never touched the game, that extra bit of experience is crucial.
“I played about 20 hours before earning the achievement, nine hours of that during the beta,” Raposo said. “I definitely think playing the beta gave me a huge upper hand against people that were new to the game and were playing maps for the first time.”
Another player who managed to nab the “Infallible” achievement, GewehrOle56, did not play in the beta, but similarly recognised that there’s a big gap between players with even some experience and total neophytes right now. GewehrOle56 struggled to string together wins initially, briefly giving into outright hopelessness, but decided to power through on account of the fact that it was now or possibly never.
“At first I [thought it was impossible], since I was struggling to even win two episodes in a row, but I also had the thought that, if I should grind it out, it should be now before most [players] learn the stages, and it becomes much harder than now,” GewehrOle56 told Kotaku in a DM.
Raposo had friends in his corner, though they only really made a concerted effort to get him over the finish line in the last match. “The fifth game, all three of my friends made it to the last round and helped me keep the tail against two other players to get the win,” he said, referring to a tail-grabbing minigame that’s meant to be a free-for-all, but in which he functionally had a team.
Still, Raposo believes that skill was a major contributing factor to his success.
“I don’t think [the developers] have overestimated the difficulty of winning five game shows in a row,” he said. “On the last round, there are a lot of things that could not go your way, and the odds of being first out of 60 people five times in a row is very slim… The hardest part comes at the last round, and getting to that point for me is usually easy. I think RNG is a smaller part of the game than the devs had intended. If you spend the time and get good at the game, you can earn a lot of wins.”
Unlike Raposo, GewehrOle56 flew entirely solo, or so they say. “I did follow a forum post about this trophy/achievement on PSNProfiles, where people said it could be a little bit easier to play with a group of players, but I played it solo,” they said. They found that randomness actually was a pretty big stumbling block, both with regards to occasional team games — where you can have all the individual skill in the world, but if your teammates still play like jelly-footed toddlers, you’re in trouble — and starting line placement in later minigames.
Regardless of how they got there, both Raposo and GewehrOle56 now find themselves in lofty company. Now they’re enjoying watching other players fall all over themselves to try and unlock the achievement.
“It feels good to have this achievement because only 0.01% of players have it right now,” Raposo said. “It’s also fun watching big streamers grinding for the achievement.”
Recommended Stories
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/08/everyone-is-friends-in-fall-guys-until-you-want-to-murder-each-other/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/08/05/qnm4twykqc9ns5e7nrwq-300×169.jpg” title=”Everyone Is Friends In Fall Guys, Until You Want To Murder Each Other” excerpt=”There’s a lot to love about Fall Guys, the new battle royale game out on PS4 and PC this week, but I’m here today to talk about all the friends I’ve made playing the game who are now no longer my friends.”]
[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…”]
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/an-unreleased-indie-game-took-over-twitch-but-it-didnt-come-out-of-nowhere/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/07/28/m36hya3mmdd94sdetepr-300×168.png” title=”An Unreleased Indie Game Took Over Twitch, But It Didn’t Come Out Of Nowhere” excerpt=”You might have had a good weekend — maybe played a video game and then moved to a different part of your home and played another game, because that’s quarantine, baby — but you probably didn’t have as good of a weekend as the developers of Fall Guys. The battle…”]
Leave a Reply