Fall Guys is a delightful battle generous elimination game where a host of jelly beans run through perfect, drawing obstacles for a goal. All participants look the same, even if they wear goofy outfits like a hamburger or a pipe pirate, and they often fuse together as one mocking mass. But there’s one card that shows what’s at the heart of each individual Fall Guy, and it’s a chaotic zone of sadness and despair: See Saw.
See Saw is a course consisting of parallel narrow paths that are only accessible through seesaw platforms. At first glance, it seems to be in line with a course like Gate Crash or Whirlygig. But after a few runs of the course, it becomes clear that each bean is truly for itself, and See Saw sometimes borders on stagnation.
Unlike other courses, See Saw makes players sit and wait to get to the next platform. As the game reaches more players, and people spend more time in it, the gap between the first players and the last one widens, which reduces the problem. The finisher of the first place won her way in the next round, but that triumph is damned by waiting for the rest of the jelly beans to balance the boards correctly. You have to wait for strangers to be kind, or at least patient, and that’s rare.
In a way, See Saw has become a window into every player’s soul. It’s like taking public transportation and seeing people standing on the wrong side of the escalator, or trying to board the train for the subway before everyone leaves. The card requires collective action, and the fact that so many of these little jellybean competitors can not think of one but themselves becomes almost disappointing.
This is also fertile ground for sorrow. Sea Saw not only has the titular, problematic seasaws, but there are also many choke points along the paths that provide an excellent opportunity to tackle enemies. One time I found myself unable to reach one path. The other path, the one I could reach, had four identical orange beans standing that looked at me. It was a terrible choice.
No other stage in Fall Guys has so much interpersonal contact combined with just having to wait, especially if you’re at the back of the pack, and that makes it special. Sometimes it’s absolutely disgusting, and it feels like you’re being punished for crimes by some cosmic power. A few times I have seen someone carefully walk past a platform to balance it out and help everyone behind it, and that warmed me up. So far, it feels like one of the most controversial cards in there Fall Guys, and that may be because it reveals so much about its players.
