Fall Guys beginner’s guide, tips, tricks, and strategies to win

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout might be the next super popular battle royale-style game to hit PC and consoles. In fact, it’s so popular that the Fall Guy servers are having problems keeping up with the excitement on launch day.

Whether you’re enjoying the chaotic action on PlayStation or on Windows via Steam, you’ve probably struggled to be the last jelly bean-person standing. If you need some tips and tricks or general advice on how to win, Polygon’s Fall Guys beginner’s guide will give you a floppy leg up on your competition.

Jump, dive, and grab

Just about every game type in Fall Guys relies on you not falling to your doom, and you’ve only got three moves to avoid a plummet: jump, dive, and grab.

Master jumping first. Jumping is simple, but it can get you out of a lot of trouble and give you an edge. In games where you need to jump to safety, like See Saw or Gate Crash, take the opportunity to learn how far and how high your normal jump is. These race game types are great for experimenting with the game’s physics. If you fall out of bounds here, you won’t immediately lose. You’ll just reappear at the last checkpoint. Every death can be a learning opportunity.

Image: Mediatonic/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Use races to master timing and how fast and how far your character can jump. Once you have a better understanding, you’ll move more confidently in game types that require you to move around (and over) hazards.

Several game types have unexpected jumps. Knowing how to time your jumps without losing momentum (or missing a landing) is a huge benefit.

Diving gets you out of danger (and scores points). Just like jumping, dives are simple moves that get you out of the way of dangerous obstacles. But you will fall down, and it’ll take you a moment to get back up. In games like Fall Ball, where you need to hit a ball into a goal to score points for your team, diving headfirst into a ball smashes it across the field, making it easier to score points.

Image: Mediatonic/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Diving is also a great skill to use for dodging enemies in game types like Tail Tag when you don’t want another player to grab you.

Speaking of which, grabbing works in every game type. You’ll use it to steal tails, or you can just grab someone to stop your momentum if you’re about to fall in game types like See Saw. You can also jump and grab ledges to pull yourself up to higher ground.

Image: Mediatonic/Devolver Digital via Polygon

In races like Slime Climb, you can jump and grab ledges to create makeshift shortcuts. Jumping grabs are difficult and add to the rushed feeling of races, but if you master the timing, you’ll have an advantage.

You can also use grabs to hold other players back. This is great for team games like Hoarders, when you may want to stop a single player from stealing a ball, giving your teammates the chance to knock it away from them. In games like Egg Scramble, you’ll need to grab eggs to carry them, but you’ll also be grabbing other players as they try to steal your eggs.

Follow the leader and cooperate

So much is happening at any given moment in Fall Guys that, sometimes, the smartest tactic is to follow someone else’s lead.

In game types like Perfect Match, where you need to remember where icons are so you can jump to a safe platform, it may be difficult to keep a clear head. When in doubt, choose a central location and watch where the majority of other players are going so you can land on the safe zone with them. No need to memorize anything.

Image: Mediatonic/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Following also works well in games like Block Party where you need to dodge walls coming off screen that can knock you off a platform. You can either stay in the front of the pack to see where the walls are coming first and react quickly, or you can stick to the middle or back of the pack and just follow where everyone else is moving. (In a game like Hex-A-Gone, where the floor disappears under the feet of other players, you want to do the exact opposite of following and run wherever players aren’t going.)

In team games, your success depends on cooperation. So for games like Hoarders or Fall Ball, work with your team to score points and deny the other teams the opportunity to score.

Image: Mediatonic/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Never act alone in team games. Work alongside one or more teammates with the goal of overwhelming your opponents. There’s power in numbers, so use them to your advantage! Team games are the rare moments when you must cooperate, without words, so you can all move on to the next round where you will all eventually betray one another.