Fall Guys Carefully Balances Skill and Luck

The game’s design achieves a clever, if imperfect, balancing act

When I was in my early to mid-20s, I loved to spend time playing Texas Hold’em. As a chef, my free time landed between midnight and 4 a.m. every day. I wasn’t a huge drinker, so I spent hundreds of hours on sites like Full Tilt Poker playing for real money.

Texas Hold’em is a game that finds itself halfway between a game and a sport. There are vital skills that allow the top players to win millions of dollars over their careers, but if you reduce poker to a single game or event, this card game primarily relies on chance.

Texas Hold’em has achieved an exquisite balance between skill and luck that keeps players coming back year after year. Our brains are addicted to the luck mechanic. We desperately want to decode patterns or solve the riddle to create predictable rewards. In gambling, they say we are addicted to the loss and not the win.

I held a casual poker night at my house every Monday for nearly two years before life became too busy to sustain the hobby.

Whenever I observe similar characteristics in a similar game, I am immediately sucked in.

This delicate balance is the most outstanding achievement of the recent game, Fall Guys.