How Fall Guys Helped Me Survive the Pandemic

I'm an introvert. The kind of introvert who is content not speaking to a single soul for days on end. The kind that prefers curling into a nest of blankets, reading a book, or playing a game to a social outing. The kind of introvert who stands rooted in tranquility, gazing out a window, deep in thought. Social distancing? No problem. Stay at home order? Already there, been doing it for years.

Months passed, and I slowly realized my mental health was declining. I was irritable, isolating from any communication, lying in bed for hours during the day, and returning to a nihilistic outlook with a disinterest in life.

Oh no… Not this again.

Summer was upon me, and intense boredom joined in the parade of my apathy. Not only was COVID-19 in the air, but so was the California wildfire smoke. I needed something to take my mind off the walls closing in around me as I paced my small home like a caged animal. As an avid PlayStation Plus member, I checked my free monthly games. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. What the heck was this bubbly, rainbow-colored world filled with obstacles and wobbly bean people? It looked like something out of a children’s cartoon, with utterly ridiculous bouncy obstacle courses covered in unicorn vomit.

The first thought that crossed my mind was the similarities to the Japanese game show from 2003, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Now, if you haven’t seen MXC, please do yourself a favor. There was an American version of this show featuring extreme athletes, American Ninja Warrior, and even the novice Netflix obstacle course show, The Floor is Lava. But nothing beat the humor of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, which featured everyday uncoordinated amateurs being humiliated and pummeled by a giant foam rock into a dirty lake. I mean, they even dressed in ridiculous costumes! Shark, bear, horse… You cannot convince me that the developers of Fall Guys, Mediatonic, were not somewhat influenced by this show.

Fall Guys gave me the MXC vibe. I was entranced. These beans could barely stand upright, the slightest shift in terrain knocking your character flat. Now, I’ve never been fond of Battle Royale and multiplayer anything… but to my surprise, not only was this game oddly fun and entertaining, I was good at it.

The pandemic marched on. I work in the medical field, and the inconsistencies of management, CDC, and government leadership were slowly wearing me down. Don’t wear masks or goggles. Do wear masks, but no goggles. Wear both, but don’t wear an N95. Joke's on you, you need an N95, but we simply cannot supply enough. Airborne. No, Droplet. Wait, Airborne. Yes, you can contract from surfaces. On second thought, maybe not surfaces. I wanted to scream.

Immunocompromised employees would buy their own PPE (personal protective equipment) off of Amazon, only to be told by our large corporate hospital that we were not allowed to use non-hospital supplies. Yet medical supplies were in such shortage we were making our own face shields and hand sanitizer, and being told to reuse masks and ration gloves. Supplies were being stolen.

The hospital shut down large conference rooms for ‘safety and infection control', but allowed small employee break rooms to remain open for meals. These break rooms barely accommodated five people, but needed to be accommodate a department of nearly one hundred. Yet the doctors and management had safe, private eating spaces in their offices. But for us? Survive. I was entrapped by indignant rage.

Fine. As a person with C-PTSD, “survive” was my motto.

I kicked back into the old familiar groove of survival mode, the place where I could shut off all emotions and settle into the grind. Wake up, make coffee, mask up, work 8–10 hours straight with a mask and face shield, eat lunch in a dressing room or storage closet, walk home in a mask. Get home. Slump down onto my chair and dissolve. Go to bed and repeat.

Video games served me once through a non-ideal childhood. And I found myself drawn to them as a coping mechanism again. But my normal game genre is a deep, profound, and emotional story. Stories with love and loss, survival, redemption, revenge, and strong human connections. But I did not have the emotional bandwidth for compelling storylines and gloomy worlds.

Instead, I’d turn on Fall Guys. The lighthearted and silly atmosphere pricked at my neurotransmitters, and somehow I felt the dopamine curling a grin into my stark expression, tense shoulders relaxing. I could play for hours and was even placing first in Slime Climb and winning crowns in Hexagon. I found myself laughing when I fell off a giant fruit-blasted conveyor belt or accidentally launched myself or some other chicken-costumed bean out of the course. I wanted all the colors, patterns, and costumes, and somehow I didn’t tire of the upbeat, childlike, and bouncy soundtrack.

Months passed, and I was pleasantly surprised that the developers were very active in the community. To that point, they had released a total of four seasons with revolving rewards and themes. They interacted with the Reddit community and actively took feedback and advice. I may have put the game down for a few weeks, but upon a new season release, I was right back in my chair, letting the exhaustion and emotions of the day slip away into bean world.

My brain found comfort in the game’s mindless pattern recognition. I had zero desire to blast guns in Cyberpunk’s Night City or relive my childhood with Final Fantasy VII Remake. I needed the colors, sounds, and laughter to survive the mental fatigue. A distraction from the trepidation as I walked into the hospital. I needed something to help me cope with the anxiety as I gowned up to enter a COVID ICU room, pre-vaccination, hoping my N95 didn’t shift off my face as I wrestled the dead weight of an intubated patient.

Fall Guys was my happy, imaginary world, the only place I had a sense of control and reprieve in the time of an ongoing global pandemic.