Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is one of the more creative games of the year. The last-man-standing game is looking to be a big online success, and thanks to the over-the-top fun and crazy courses, so far Fall Guys has been well-received.
There are so many mini-games in Fall Guys, each with their own unique gameplay. There are racing games that ask players to make it through dizzying obstacle courses. Survival based levels have players competing to be the last alive. And the team-based games are a chaotic mix of scoring points, playing tag, and playing keep-away.
One of the absolute hardest minigames in Fall Guys is Slimeclimb. The obstacle course is a race to the top of a mountain, but with deadly slime that continually rises. One slip-up off the edge, or not quite climbing fast enough, means instant elimination. Minigames like this are part of the reason Fall Guys has had good reviews since its release.
Recently some of the members of the development team (Mediatonic), Joe Walsh, lead game designer, and Joseph “JJ” Juson, junior level designer, talked with IGN about how the minigame Slimeclimb was created, start to finish. Each level was meticulously crafted for fun, chaos, and hilarious moments (like a Fall Guys player failing with seconds to spare in what would have been a win). Slimeclimb is no different, and the creation process is very interesting.
The minigame started out as a concept on the floor is lava, the game many video gamers grew up playing in their living room or on playgrounds. Fallcano was the name of the game before it was changed to Slimeclimb. The team experimented with a spiral style, an actual volcano, and more. In the end, the style that made it into the final game, something the team called a "switchback" design (not to be confused with the Nintendo Switch, although a Switch and Xbox One version of Fall Guys could be on the way), was what was used because it allowed players to still see the slime rising as players turned the corner of each section of the course.
JJ said in the interview that generally, the team has a rule for each course, "roughly 50% chaos and 50% skill from the game." When it comes to Slimeclimb, the skill required to finish is rather high, but the chaos of trying to avoid the slime is certainly a part of the hilarity. The creation of and playtesting of levels like Slimeclimb seems to have been a success, as Fall Guys is the most successful launch in developer Devolver Digital's history.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is available for PC and PS4.
Source: IGN