Fall Guys Ultimate Knockout: A party game for shut-ins

Every once in a while, an indie game launches during the sleepy days of summer and becomes a surprise hit. It happened with Rocket League in 20 15, and it's happening again with Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
The title has come out of nowhere to become one of the most streamed games on Twitch, and it has Twitter abuzz as more and more players discover it. Fall Guys is a party game tailored to the coronavirus age.
Players move around their characters and they have buttons to let them jump, dive and grab. From there, players are thrown into a series of games and obstacle courses, in which a set number of contestants can win. Each round winnows down the collective mass of up to 60 competitors until one is left standing.
The fun in Fall Guys comes from the unadulterated chaos. When you throw 60 people into an obstacle course and add unforgiving physics, players will see their jelly bean-like avatars tumble forward at choke points, creating a pileup of bodies. Elsewhere, they'll be whacked by propellers and their characters will fly helplessly across the screen. In tense situations, competitors will jostle and push each other off the edge of a platform to survive.
Occasionally, players will encounter team matches, in which the crowd is divided into groups and they have to work together. They can face off in a version of soccer called Fall Ball, or in Rock 'N' Roll, they'll have to collaborate and try to push a ball to the end of a course. The teams are mostly ad hoc, though players in personal parties will be thrown in together. Like the rest of Fall Guys, the teams feel impromptu and abide by the theme of controlled chaos.
The final round games have the smallest crowds with usually fewer than 10 contestants. This is when the competition gets the most intense, and because there's only one winner, it becomes cutthroat. In Hex-A-Gone, players will try to knock off a rival or eliminate the tiles near them. Royal Fumble is essentially like Tail Tag except only one person can achieve victory.
Despite its simple premise, Fall Guys has some depth to it and the multitude of human interactions means that players will always see something different during a match.
Fall Guys is magic because it distills a party atmosphere, in which the more players who compete, the merrier the gameplay will be. In that chaos, anything can happen.
With real life parties being curtailed because of COVID-19, a game like Fall Guys is one of the few ways that players can find that raucous atmosphere. It's a way to feel the energy of a crowd while also staying safe at home.