How one indie company created the greatest game of 2020

The summer of jelly beans

Fall Guys was made by Mediatonic, an independent studio in London, and published by Devolver Digital on August 4, 2020, for PC and PlayStation 4. The idea fit in one sentence: up to sixty players, each a round, wobbly, brightly colored bean, race through a series of absurd obstacle courses, and each round knocks some of them out until one winner takes the crown.

The timing was extraordinary. It arrived in the middle of a long, anxious summer, when schools were closed, families were indoors together, and many people were looking for something light. The game also came free to PlayStation Plus subscribers that month, which put it in front of millions of players at once. Streamers loved it because every round produced a moment worth laughing at. Within weeks it was one of the most watched and most played games in the world.

Was it the greatest game of 2020? Critics gave their biggest awards to other titles that year, including Hades, another independent game from a small studio. But in the sense that matters for this article, the game that best captured the mood of the year and gave the most people a reason to laugh together, a strong case can be made. The studio was later acquired by Epic Games in 2021, and in 2022 Fall Guys went free to play across all major platforms.

Why physics makes failure funny

Most competitive games make losing feel bad. Fall Guys makes losing feel ridiculous, which is very different. The beans are driven by a loose physics system: they stumble, bounce, flop and get flung by spinning hammers in ways that are hard to fully control. When you fall, you don’t lose with dignity. You tumble off a seesaw while forty other beans tumble with you.

That design choice turns failure into slapstick. It also levels the field. A skilled player can still be knocked off by chaos, and a beginner can still get lucky. For a family where one person plays every day and another has never held a controller, that matters. The ten-year-old and the grandparent are both falling off the same seesaw.

The visual design supports it. Bright, simple shapes make every obstacle readable at a glance. There is no blood, no weapons and no grim tone. The worst thing that can happen to a bean is a bump and a splash of slime.

Short rounds and the shape of a break

A single round of Fall Guys lasts a few minutes, and a full show of several rounds can take fifteen or twenty. That structure makes it easy to play a little and stop, which is unusual for a popular online game.

For students, this is useful. A common study pattern alternates focused work blocks with short breaks of five to ten minutes and a longer break every couple of hours. One round fits a short break. A full show suits a long one. The trick is to decide before you start which kind of break you are on, and set a timer that you actually obey. A game designed around short rounds makes that easier than a game designed to keep you playing all night.

There is another reason a silly game makes a good break. Hard studying uses the same verbal, analytical parts of your mind for hours. A break that switches to quick visual reactions and laughter gives those parts a real rest, more than scrolling through more text on a phone ever does.

Couch co-op at the family table

Fall Guys is an online competitive game, but its spirit lives in a group of cooperative games built to be played side by side on one screen. These are some of the best tools we know for low-stress time together:

• Overcooked 2 turns a kitchen into a frantic shared puzzle. Nobody can succeed alone, and the shouting is half the fun.
• Moving Out asks players to carry furniture out of houses as a team, with similarly cheerful physics.
• Unravel Two is gentler: two yarn creatures tied together, solving puzzles at their own pace.
• It Takes Two, released in 2021, can only be played by two people and was built around cooperation from the ground up.
• Human: Fall Flat and Gang Beasts share Fall Guys’ wobbly physics and its talent for turning failure into laughter.

The common design pattern is shared success. Players must talk, divide roles and help each other, and the games often give different jobs to different players so a strong player and a new one can both contribute. For a family spending a long stretch indoors, whether during recovery from an illness, through a long winter, or around someone’s heavy semester of study, that kind of play offers connection without pressure. Nobody needs to be good at it. You just need to be on the same couch.

Accessibility features help widen the circle: control remapping, colorblind modes, adjustable difficulty and assist options. They are worth checking before game night.

What study planners can borrow

Game designers spend years working out how to keep people engaged without making them miserable. A few of their lessons carry over neatly to studying:

• Short loops. A round of a game has a clear start and end. So does a 35-minute timed section, which is why it works better than an open-ended evening of “studying”.
• Clear feedback. Games tell you immediately what happened. An error log does the same for practice questions.
• Visible progress. Unlocking a new level feels good. So does crossing off a week in a written study plan.
• Failure as information. In a good game, falling off teaches you where the edge is. A wrong answer in blind review does the same.

Practical notes for families

Before setting up a game for younger players, check its age rating and turn on the parental controls for your console or PC. Free-to-play games such as Fall Guys usually sell cosmetic items in an in-game store, and spending limits are easy to set and easy to forget. Agree screen-time limits in advance, especially around study weeks, and treat the timer as part of the game.

Above all, keep it light. The point of a silly game during a hard stretch is not to win. It is to laugh together for a few minutes and come back to the desk, or the hospital corridor, or the long winter afternoon, a little lighter than before. For more on building good breaks into a study schedule, and for family logistics in Baltimore, start at the RMH Baltimore resource guide.