Hands-on with Poly Fighter [Preview]

Fixing fists and feet, one battle at a time

We hit the mean streets of PAX East to take on Heart Loop’s Poly Fighter, the ambitious upcoming rogue-like fighting game aimed at those of us who love the single player journey. The game is focused on the individual player, the developers tell us, but why and how it does that is something that may hook us pretty easily.

Our time involves selecting one of six available characters (the game will start with two, with several being unlocked over play time). Each character has some basic skillsets that we can use in one-on-one fights and some pretty unique designs. We choose the fighter Mackenzie, but was half-tempted to pick a character named Mutt that can turn into a werewolf (dog?) in the fight. There are quick attacks, mid and strong attacks, jumps and punches and kicks, and they all feel good and solid when they land, even when decided to use either Standard or Modern controls. Hit detection is great, letting us get close enough to land a powerful punch or grab an opponent and flip them over our shoulder. Years of playing fighting games easily translates here. The battles are best of three rounds, with the lovely addition of regaining around 10% of our HP after we win a round so that we’re not left in a hole when the next round begins. It’s a constant push and pull of a match that keeps moving fast.

The magic really comes from how we customize and advance them. That takes place as we go on our world tour like journey selecting nodes on the map and then which available opponent we’d want to take on. The selection screen lets us see what the opponent brings to the battle — their own unique moves, strengths and weaknesses — and that can help us determine which direction to go. If we’re successful in battle we can learn moves from that fighter or enhance the ones we already have, creating a sort of constantly-ongoing character development situation. It actually reminded me a little like how Pokemon develop new moves, forcing us to either drop or keep abilities that pop up.

And that can lead to what makes this game really intriguing. Single player modes in modern fighting games tend to be arcade runs or mashups of open world and story-building for the games they’re in. None of that actually focuses on the joy of fighting, though, instead having us experience a fighter’s story before moving onto the next. Poly Fighter, on the other hand, might keep dangling that carrot in front of us to keep pushing forward, to keep developing a fighter how we want to, almost exponentially. It’s as if the only “endgame” is whenever we want to stop, not when we solve the game’s main meta run. That means that we can potentially end up with an astoundingly OP character based on our ability and skill choices, and that never doesn’t feel great.

Poly Fighter may end up solving the woes of the single player fighting game void when it launches later this year.