How Mediatonic made the Takeshi's Castle of video games in Fall Guys
pcgamesinsider.bizAt this year's E3, Mediatonic's brand new title Fall Guys was unveiled during Devolver's press conference.
The trailer can most accurately described as colourful chaos, with lead game designer Joe Walsh telling PCGamesInsider.biz that part of the pitch was to create a multiplayer experience reminiscent of knock-out TV shows like Takeshi's Castle and Total Wipeout.
"We were sat around talking about cool games we could make where we could have loads of people against some sort of system," he explains.
"We knew we wanted it to be the people versus the game and we were throwing around a couple of different ideas - maybe it was going to be dungeon, maybe it was going to be monsters. But we felt that no-one has ever made a game where it's the players versus the obstacle course. We all loved Takeshi's Castle and Total Wipeout back in the day and all agreed that someone needs to make this game and it might as well be us. That's where it started. The first design document we did was something like four gifs on a page of stupid impacts with lots of people. We looked at it and knew we had to do it."
When it was first announced, many compared Fall Guys to a battle royale game. Walsh and Mediatonic, however, see it as something else entirely.
"We've been calling it 'party royale', which feels about right," the lead game designer says.
"We really love that adrenaline rush of being in the final circle in a battle royale game and we wanted to bring that same anxiety, that same heart palpitation-inducing tension but to a totally different, more accessible, more welcoming and encouraging kind of game. When you sit down and it's down to those final few rounds, you get that same sweaty palm moment."
In creating such a creative party game, Walsh says that the entire team - around 25-to-30 people - can add in ideas for levels. While it's been an iterative process, with some ideas that sound great on paper turning out to be not much fun in practice - and vice versa - the Mediatonic team
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