Poly Fighter might be the fighting game that gets me into fighting games

I’ve always wanted to be good at fighting games, but it was always shmups that tested my reflexes the most. I am merely a button basher when it comes to fight games. I do, however, love a good Roguelike mechanic, so the idea of Poly Fighter being a fight game where your character upgrades over the course of your run seems like genius to me. Will it be enough to stop me from mashing the controller? Only time will tell.

On the surface, Poly Fighter looks like a love letter to old-school arcade brawlers. It features tight one-on-one fights, retro-inspired visuals, and fast rounds that feel designed to replicate that classic “here’s some more money, just one more go” cabinet loop. The roguelike twist comes after each victory, when players are rewarded with new moves pulled directly from the fighters they just defeated.

Instead of sticking to a fixed move list, players gradually assemble their own toolkit of moves over the course of a run, just like other roguelikes such as the Survivor games. That means you might start out with a fairly standard fighter and end up with something much stranger.

According to the developer, HeartLoop, the system allows players to swap, chain, and upgrade abilities to experiment with wildly different builds. One run might see you creating a glass-cannon combo monster, while another could turn your fighter into a super-armored tank that shrugs off damage. There’s even the potential to build something closer to a projectile-heavy bullet-hell character than a traditional fighter.

The idea is to bring roguelike progression into a genre that rarely experiments with that structure.

Poly Fighter is also leaning heavily into its solo play. Rather than focusing on competitive multiplayer, the game centers around climbing through an underground league of fighters, selecting opponents from a city map and battling through increasingly tough rivals.

HeartLoop says the control system is designed to appeal to both newcomers and traditional fighting game players. Modern inputs allow players to pull off flashy combos quickly, while optional motion inputs remain available for anyone who prefers the classic arcade feel.

Visually, Poly Fighter embraces a deliberately retro aesthetic, pairing low-poly character designs with snappy animation and a soundtrack clearly aiming to match the arcade energy of the fights.

Poly Fighter is currently in development for PC and is available to wishlist and sign up to playtest here.

Poly Fighter uncovered