Getting beaten up is bad enough without having your opponent steal your favorite moves afterward. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what you’re signing up for in Poly Fighter, a single-player roguelike fighting game from HeartLoop Games that’s launching into Steam Early Access today.
Rather than spending hours memorizing one character’s moveset, you’ll build your own by taking techniques from the fighters you defeat. By the end of a successful run, you could have a rather ridiculous collection of punches, kicks, throws, and special attacks borrowed from everyone unfortunate enough to cross your path.
Your Opponents Have Some Moves Worth Stealing
The idea behind Poly Fighter is fairly straightforward. You start with a selection of moves, enter a fight, and hopefully come out on top. Defeat your opponent and you’ll have the opportunity to learn their techniques, gradually expanding your arsenal as you progress.
Those moves can be swapped around, upgraded, and combined to create your own fighting style. You may favor grappling techniques that require getting right up in someone’s face, or prefer keeping opponents at a distance with ranged attacks. There’s also the option of building an aggressive rushdown fighter who barely gives anyone a chance to recover.
Of course, you’re not guaranteed to find the same techniques every time. The moves available depend on the opponents you encounter, so you’ll need to work with whatever your latest collection of defeated fighters has taught you.
It also means that someone who gave you a particularly miserable time in one fight might end up providing the exact technique you need to make the next one considerably easier.
There’s Always Someone Looking for a Rematch
Fights are arranged across escalating leagues, with different routes offering opportunities to improve your fighter before taking on tougher opponents.
Regular encounters allow you to collect techniques, while elite fighters and bosses offer additional rewards and perks. Gym nodes provide opportunities to develop your character further, and Mirror encounters introduce another challenge along the way.
Then there are Grudge encounters, where you’ll face stronger versions of opponents you’ve already beaten. Apparently, some people take losing rather personally.
Choosing your route is therefore about more than simply finding the easiest way through. You might want to chase a particular reward, strengthen an existing combination, or risk another difficult fight in the hope of getting something useful.
And because the techniques you collect determine how your fighter develops, the decisions you make between battles can be just as important as what happens once the punching starts.
You Won’t Need to Memorize Fifty Button Combinations
HeartLoop Games is also trying to make the experience approachable for players who don’t normally spend their evenings practicing combos in fighting games.
Poly Fighter uses simplified controls, allowing players to experiment with different techniques without needing to memorize complicated inputs. There’s still room to work on combinations and develop more effective builds, but the focus is on what you do with your moves rather than how many buttons you can press in the correct order.
The colorful low-poly characters and arcade-inspired presentation give it a suitably old-school look, too. Also, as it’s entirely single-player, there’s no online ranking to worry about or experienced opponent waiting to flatten you before you’ve worked out which button does what.
Poly Fighter Steps Into Early Access Today
Poly Fighter launches into Steam Early Access today with 16 playable characters, its technique-learning system, and a complete Discovery Loop.
HeartLoop Games plans to add more characters, techniques, bosses, bonus stages, and encounters throughout development, with a full release currently targeted for before summer 2027.
There’s also a free demo available on Steam if you fancy trying your hand at a few fights first. If you do get thoroughly beaten up, at least there’s a chance you’ll learn something useful from the experience.