Fall Guys Could Try to Revive a Scrapped Idea Because of Squid Game

Fall Guys, the platform battle royale game developed by Mediatonic and published by Devolver Digital, may try to revive a scrapped level concept due to the popularity of Squid Game.

During an interview with Techradar, lead game designer Joe Walsh spoke about the difficulty the team faces in coming up with new concepts for the game and how many level ideas end up being scrapped compared to those that make the cut. During the segment, Walsh talked about one discarded concept that the team may actually revive, based upon the immense popularity of Netflix’s South Korean survival drama, Squid Game.

“Oh, yeah, there’s definitely a lot,” Walsh said about the number of levels that don’t make it into the game. “One of the ones that’s come up recently, again, is Squid Game, [which] is now the biggest TV show in the world. And it opens with Red Light Green Light, which is something that we dabbled with. And we never actually got to prototyping it, because we couldn’t quite see how it works.”

“Within a video game there’s something about movement, which is in real life it’s very hard to stay still. But in a video game, you just put your controller down. And so at the time, I think we were like ‘we’ll never do Red Light Green Light, it doesn’t make sense.’ But now seeing how popular Squid Game is I’d love for us to have another crack at something like that and see if we could do it in Fall Guys.”

Fall Guys and Squid Game may differ in tone, but the two do share similarities. From building ideas based on childhood favourites, to levels designed using bright vibrant color schemes and an eliminatory aspect, it’s easy to see how some of the minigames featured in Squid Game could transition into Fall Guys and why Mediatonic may be willing to explore the concept again.

Several of Squid Game’s games could feasibly be turned into Fall Guys rounds – and in fact, without spoiling the show, one of them actually feels very similar to an existing Fall Guys activity as it is. It’d be great to see Red Light, Green Light join the line-up too.

Squid Game’s first season has seen an overwhelming amount of praise from audience members and critics alike. IGN’s review of Squid Game awarded the show a 9/10 calling it “one of the most unique things you’ll watch this year.” Despite reportedly losing six teeth due to stress during the production of the show, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk says that he already has potential ideas for a second season – which could focus less on its contestants.

Over the past few months, a number of costumes in Fall Guys have made their way into the game referencing various franchise tie-ins. While games such as Super Monkey Ball, Nier Automata and Ratchet and Clank have all seen crossover content in the platform battle royale, Fall Guys’ ties to Squid Game feel more likely to end with level design, right?

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.