Devolver Digital seems to be busy recently with Fall Guys and its community. Over the past week, the studio has connected with its players over a few stories.
For starters, Devolver Digital apologized for a mishap, refunding legit player keys. The devs also revealed some origin stories on how they arrived with the game’s name. To cap the week off, Devolver also found the game’s top player, giving them a surprise treat.
Devolver apologizes over accident refunds
Fall Guys is getting a lot of coverage recently, considering it’s the best party game of the year so far. Even then, Devolver is still working hard on their updates. Their back end always seems to be reeling, with a few mishaps here and there.
Among those problems was refunding some players’ legit Steam keys. According to Devolver, they’re in the middle of cracking down on scammers. They’re in the middle of looking for people who circumvented the game’s regional pricing.
Unfortunately, the process also caught legit players by accident. It took out some players’ shiny new PC game, which sparked a furor over the web.
“We made a mistake which resulted in the cancellation of legitimate keys purchased by our community, and we apologise unreservedly for our unfortunate error,” says the publisher on their official blog. “Our team also recently adjusted the price in Argentina independent of this issue as the price Fall Guys launched at within the region was incorrect, leaving those who had their game revoked unable to re-purchase at its original price.”
Players affected by the mixup can message Devolver. They can contact them at support[@]devolverdigital.com, says the publisher.
Fall Guys origins and finding the best bean
In another story, Devolver Digital also talked about the origin story for the game. According to Mediatonic Creative Director Jeff Tanton, the original pitch was one page long. Fall Guys came from a January 2018 pitch and named “Fool’s Gauntlet.”
Cut to Jan 2018 – and I invite Joe Walsh (@gosujoe) to brainstorm on a completely different internal pitch – something just clicked and he had his epiphany moment midway through.
I got the one-pager for "FOOLS GAUNTLET" a few days later pic.twitter.com/NBU8PeqdqT
— Jeff Tanton (@Jeff_Tanton) August 20, 2020
Fool’s Gauntlet doesn’t have the same ring as Fall Guys, but instead felt medieval. The original game would’ve been cutthroat and brutal instead of a fun, jokey race. Players would’ve had zero respawns or second chances.
The pitch wanted 100 players, but the principal concept artist Dan Hoang gave a few words of wisdom. He also played around in Blender to create proto-assets for the game.
Enter Dan Hoang (@danhoangart) our principal concept artist who'd been messing about in Blender and very quickly produced our proto-game characters and colourful obstacle-course in the clouds. It instantly looked fun, clean, understandable. pic.twitter.com/lGv97MD4mD
— Jeff Tanton (@Jeff_Tanton) August 20, 2020
From there, they pitched the game to be something akin to Takeshi’s Castle. Jeff Tanton even used Takeshi’s Castle gifs to show their general idea to Devolver.
To cap their week, Devolver revealed that they know the best player in Fall Guys. According to a Twitter post, they have running stats on who has the most wins in-game. While they don’t know the person’s actual name, they can identify who they are.
OKAY, I'VE GONE ROGUE AND DONE A MEME
I've found the player who is STATISTICALLY the BEST
I've just given them Saturday's costume early LOL
Someone out there now has the costume!
CHECK YOUR INVENTORY
We actually don't even know who it is lol
WHO IS #TheFallenOne ?!?
— Fall Guys 👑 (@FallGuysGame) August 20, 2020
The devs gave the best player an item that is not yet available in-game. A costume yet to rollout is in the hands of the best player until it comes out. Devolver Digital and Mediatonic have a superb title on their hands.
Featured image courtesy of DevolverDigital/YouTube Screenshot