No shade to the developer, but I downloaded Poly Fighter, a roguelike fighting game, thinking it was another roguelike fighting game I saw during Summer Game Fest. Three roguelike fighting games have suddenly sprung into my radar in less than a week: one built within 2XKO, and now Poly Fighter, and the other I need to find ASAP. But I’m glad I found this one.
I can lose myself in a well-constructed fighting game. It doesn’t matter the sub-genre. Good mechanics, awesome sounds, cool characters and moves, bring me in. I can appreciate everything else later. Poly Fighter is getting most of that correct.
It mimics an arcade environment with its simplicity. Load the game, press start, choose your character, and get going. I’m glad it doesn’t waste my time. It’s a fighting game. No more needs to be said.
You’ll fight many different characters up a branching tree. For each person you win against, you can select one of their moves to add to your selection. This is where the game is a lot of trial and error and could use a streamlined method of helping players understand what connects with what. Roguelikes benefit from discovery, but what can happen in this game is that certain attacks you choose may not work with your set of moves, so you’re constantly swapping or ignoring attacks. Roguelikes are built on increasing strength through buffs, but if you don’t get a good attack, you’re not getting any buffs. The best way to play this game is to put together a collection of moves that creates ridiculous combo opportunities. As expected, that’s not going to be possible based on what characters are in your path, but I think it would be far more fun if you could combo anything.
Poly Fighters is a game that requires some basic skill to get the most out of it, particularly if you’re using command-based inputs (you can choose simple inputs, too). If you’re not pressing buttons at the right times, you’re not going to connect your combos. If you press the wrong buttons, you’re not going to connect your combos. If this game is made for the average, or even less than average, fighting game player, why not have a giant pool where every move can combo into each other in some way? Our job is to figure out how to connect them in interesting ways. Instead of leaning into something more serious, take advantage of the fact that this is a single-player game and go a little bananas.
D-pad inputs need tweaking. I’m using a Victrix Pro BFG and the D-pad is too sensitive for Street Fighter 6. I jump when I don’t want to. In Poly Fighters, I can’t jump when I want to. Too many times I’ve tried to jump out of a corner and it only registers an Up input unless I’m right next to the Left or Right input. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for command input users, and I’ve dropped combos using simple inputs.
There’s an opportunity to teach mechanics in Poly Fighters being that it’s a single-player game. If this game is aimed at people who enjoy playing fighting games, but are below average, it would be helpful to give us the combo timings. Because I’ve played fighting games, I figured out that most combos continue on hit. There’s not much of a buffer before a strike. That’s fine, but imagine the button masher figuring that out. Nothing wrong with being the button masher, but let the button masher know why their combos aren’t consistently connecting by telling them how to connect combos. There’s no gain in hiding things like that in any fighting game at this point, let alone a completely single-player game.
The training area has a huge opportunity for playing around and pushing mechanical development. As it functions, there’s a standing dummy to punch, which is mostly useless when it comes to understanding what is a true combo or not. Yes, there is a combo counter that stops counting when a combo is dropped or if a combo isn’t possible, but it also drops after a wallbounce, which should technically continue a combo because the opponent is in hitstun. There also could be an option to access all the moves in the game to construct your perfect fighter and practice.
Fights are generally fair, but the AI sometimes predicts what you do based on what you press. Some of my attacks are perfectly blocked as soon as I press the button. Another fight was a mirror against myself and the mirror had no delay in specials, which is an utterly foolish idea to implement. Those matches are an instant avoid if you can help it. If you can’t, then winning is based on luck rather than skill. That’s not the type of unfair that’s good for a fighting game. Make AI overpowered, make them take crazy damage with a jab, create ridiculous endurance rounds, anything that makes matches feel insurmountable. Prediction AI and bots that have special input advantages are a no-no.
It’s the biggest concern I have if I were to make it to a higher round. For a single-player game, how else do you make it more difficult except by adding in the ability for the AI to know what you’re pressing and counter it? On the flip-side, some fights I was able to cheese the AI. During a boss fight, I repeatedly threw my opponent until they lost.
Some of the best fighting games included great background activity, too. Take this guy to your next party.
Thank you for reading The Daily Demo! Did you play it? What’d you think of it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.