You've Been Playing Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout Completely Wrong

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout takes a novel approach to the battle royale genre. This game resembles what would happen if Most Extreme Elimination Challenge were populated by sentient jelly beans. Plus, you win rounds by staying quick on your toes instead of killing opponents. However, that is easier said than done when sixty characters try to simultaneously squeeze their way past the same obstacles and doors.

You might be tempted to play by just waddling, jumping, and occasionally grabbing onto eggs and tails — that might even net you some wins. But, If you want to increase your chances of success, you have to take advantage of several strategies that aren't immediately obvious. In fact, some maneuvers seem counterintuitive in the slapstick world of Fall Guys, but rest assured they could spell the difference between victory and defeat.

If you haven't been using these tricks, you've been playing Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout all wrong.

In Fall Guys, if you don't participate in a game of keep-away or a team challenge, you usually find yourself in a race. As with most races, your first instinct may be to dash out of the gate and pray luck is on your side so you can cross the finish line first. However, in this game, luck works against you every step of the way. But, luck is an equal opportunity jerk in Fall Guys and works against your opponents as well. Use that to your advantage.

Most racing challenges in Fall Guys consist of trial and error obstacles, and while you could lead the charge and hope to find a safe path, you should hang back and learn from the mistakes of others. Let your opponents bump into fake doors or trigger illusory floor tiles so you know where not to step. This strategy doesn't work in survival challenges like Hex-A-Gone, but Fall Guys is primarily designed to punish players who try to win instead of simply not lose.

Practice some good old schadenfreude and pave your path to glorious victory on the suffering of others.

Fall Guys takes great pleasure in tripping players at every opportunity. It features numerous hazards and gaps, and the best way to avoid most of them is to channel your inner Super Mario and jump. It might be a little jump that is fitting for the momentum of a waddling bean person, but that's why the developers threw players a bone in the form of the dive.

After you jump (or while falling) in Fall Guys, you can break the laws of physics and dive forward. This technique gives you an extra bit of hang time and momentum to reach platforms that might otherwise be out of reach. Diving is also handy for challenges that involve disappearing platforms like Tip Toe. Just jump over a tile you know is fake (or doesn't exist anymore) and dive for the real one. Better yet, reach the second to last row, jump at the last second to clear the final row's tile, and dive for the finish.

Just make sure you look before you leap, because once you commit yourself to a dive, you're going down one way or another.

Most video games teach players to avoid spinning hammers and bars. These are usually designed to crush digital skulls and break virtual legs, and should be avoided. Fall Guys populates certain maps with these sorts of obstacles, and true to your honed instincts, you usually want to avoid them. However, if a hammer or bar spins in a specific direction, you actually want to get hit by it.

Fall Guys has intentionally wonky physics that give players very little momentum. Usually, obstacles knock players down, but some players have discovered that if they tackle hammers and bars a specific way, they will be catapulted forward, shaving precious seconds off their runs. Granted, they have to stand up after being turned into a pinball, but the time it takes to right themselves is nothing compared to the time they saved with this tactic.

Unfortunately, intentionally hitting yourself with a spinning hammer or bar isn't viable for every obstacle course. If you hit the obstacle the wrong way, it won't work, and you never want to hit any obstacle if a wall isn't available to catch you. This trick might rely on the physics engine basically glitching out, but it is still a solid strategy for races where luck is as much a factor as skill.