New 'Fall Guys' mode is all about stealing candy

This week, Fall Guys introduced a new game mode called “Sweet Thieves” that’s available to play until March 13. In it, users are split into two team, Guardians and Thieves, as they try to protect or steal candy pieces from each other.

As you can probably guess, Thieves attempt to take candy from a base protected by Guardians. There’s also a stealth element in play; thieves are invisible and must be evasive while infiltrating enemy territory. Guardians can capture thieves by grabbing them, which sends the unlucky player to jail. There is a jail break button, though (presumably it isn’t always active).

Even though the test run for Sweet Thieves is only supposed to last until March 13, we wouldn’t be surprised if the mode becomes a permanent Fall Guys fixture. Why spend the hours developing a brand new add-on if it will only be playable for five days?

Aside from its capture-the-flag elements, the mode is reminiscent of Shine Thief, a Mario Kart mini game where players compete to hold onto a shine sprite for 30 seconds. In that game, being elusive is also essential, even as drivers all compete against each other in a free-for-all.

Past its peak — Fall Guys seemed to be everywhere all at once when it released in August 2020 — following the onset of the global pandemic, millions found themselves stuck at home, with more time than usual to allocate towards things like video games. As we come up on the battle royale’s second anniversary, interest in the game has waned since its initial explosion — but that hasn’t stopped developer Mediatonic from trying to shake things up.

Earlier this year, the game partnered with Monopoly to release a Fall Guys-themed set. The lush platformer was also meant to release on Nintendo Switch and Xbox, but there’s still no update on the status of those launches.

Numbers from Steam’s charts show that the average amount of players dropped significantly since the game’s release. In August 2020, there was an average of 124,479 players active at any given time, but that figure has fallen to 6,694 in the last month.

Even though Fall Guys might not have the same dedicated interest it did when it first came out, updates like Sweet Thieves should keep the core fanbase satiated.