In January 2018, the conception of what became Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout first started at Mediatonic. The idea was a 100-player battle royale inspired by the live Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle. The game was initially considered to be named Fool's Gauntlet and Stumble Chums, before landing on Fall Guys later on. During the Game Developers Conference of that same year, Mediatonic pitched the game to ten publishers until Devolver Digital agreed to fund it. The development of Fall Guys then started six months after the initial publishing agreements,[19] using Unity as its game engine.[5]