Stumble Guys review of the crafty Fall Guys clone

A good idea is not safe from cloning in the play market. Mass reproduction has always been a somewhat basic tenet of the genre system that characterizes video games, but it has reached almost alarming levels as the landscape expands, particularly through the mobile market and indie productions. There Stumble Guys review You can’t ignore the awareness that this game is actually a clone of Fall Guys, but this cannot be reduced to even one negative thought, because objectively it has so many positive elements and, in fact, it fits into the gaps that the title clearly states. referring to.

The concept is always the same, in principle attributable to battle royale, but mediated through a series of challenges reminiscent of Takeshi’s Castle or the good old “Mai Dire Banzai”: it’s about overcoming a series of tests that put us in competition. with a large number of other players through single elimination rounds that require different actions to be taken.

It’s about getting ahead of the others, or resisting longer, or getting your team to win, depending on the level we’re at, with a series of actions that vary dramatically with Damocles’ perpetual sword of direct elimination. In case it is not possible to enter the maximum parameters set at the start of the challenge. The game mechanics are clearly derived from those of Fall Guys, but there are also new introductions that show a bit of initiative and fresh ideas.

Only one will remain

The purpose of Stumble Guys is, stay as last active player In the game, the number of players is occasionally halved until the last one standing, through three-round matches with direct elimination. The standard levels usually used in the opening game are very close to the levels made famous by the Fall Guys: many funny characters, all with interchangeable skins and appearances, find themselves crossing paths full of obstacles in the need to reach the finish line. before others to re-enter the first half of players and avoid elimination.

The moving elements and the inherent awkwardness of the comic book contenders make these levels difficult to beat, further complicated by the crowding generated among the players and the latter’s obvious willingness to suffocate the others by any means at hand. a little funny. .

this control system It relies on the classic virtual bar with a button on the touchscreen on smartphones, and works pretty well beyond the inherent annoyance, proving to be reactive at the right point, even if the action is certainly more confusing on mobile platforms. precision controls and the chaos that can ensue on small screens.

this obstacle courses they are interspersed with different levels where we have to face various challenges: a kind of “capture the flag” team, a level where we have to resist as long as possible avoiding the lasers, a level where we have to stand last under a constant bombardment, and other multi-activity mini-games of this kind, all very simple but also well designed to provide a fun challenge to play with a significant amount of opponents. The design of these game snippets is a bit quick, replacing good ideas with fairly mundane and less advanced ones, and the obstacle courses probably remain the game’s best moments.

Between imitation and microtransactions

The reasons for Fall Guys’ success can be well described: a game with fully expanded multiplayer, a humorous tone and leading to the craziest jokes, or a formula that has already proven explosive when disclosed via streaming and social media. media. With these predecessors, it was only a matter of time before direct competitors stood out, and in this case, Stumble Guys has managed to establish itself perfectly, taking advantage of some of the Mediatonic game’s key shortcomings.

How did he immediately propose free to play and most of all, it immediately filled the empty space on mobile: with the subsequent removal of Fall Guys from Steam, after it was moved exclusively to the Epic Games Store, it was also the blow, providing the game Kitka Games with excellent help. Self-imposed even on PC. The result was devastating: 163 million downloads and $21.5 million since its soft launch in 2020.

There is an obvious difference between the two games in terms of production values, but we are still talking about technically simple and functional titles. In this sense, Stumble Guys keeps a low profile to work best even on extremely limited devices and therefore finds the right intermediary between graphic simplicity, cartoony style and general fluidity, even with 32 players on screen. The crucial element of disconnection between one and the other can be found at perhaps the most critical point of the Kitka Games game, namely its free-to-play build. microtransactionsinstead of maintaining a pure model with only aesthetic in-app purchases, it offers some features that may lead them to dangerously turn to paying to win. In this case, these are some expressions that represent the real “advantage” that can offer clear advantages over other players in the game, which is obtained only at the end of the battle pass premium and thus the payment of the purchase in the app.