Heavy Fists
Three rounds. One tank of gas. Spend it on him, or on staying upright.
What it is
Three rounds against someone who keeps coming. You have one tank of gas for the whole fight, and everything spends it: every punch thrown, every shot blocked, every slip. Nothing he does refills it.
So the decision isn't which button to press. It's whether this exchange is the one worth paying for, or whether you hold what's left for a round you can actually win. That question arrives every few seconds, which is what makes it a fight rather than a rhythm game.
Two clocks, and only one of them is yours
His aggression runs on its own schedule and does not care what you're doing. Your gas is yours alone. Neither one reschedules the other: the pressure never lets up and the gas is entirely yours to spend, which is the same separation that makes drowning feel fair in Bottom Time.
Both hands, at the same time
Attacking and defending are independent. You can hold a guard and throw with the other hand, and the fight is built on the assumption that you will. That's the reason the controls are split down the middle rather than layered onto one input.
How to play: touch
- AttackRight half of the screen
- Jab, or wind up a power punchTap / hold and release
- DefendLeft half
- Guard, or slip a shotHold / flick
- Head or bodyHow high your finger is
On a desktop, your two hands are two rows of keys. W and S raise the guard high and low; the up and down arrows throw high and low, and I and K do the same if you would rather keep both hands together. Guarding and throwing are separate keys because they are separate decisions: holding one does not stop the other.
How to play: keyboard
- Punch head / body↑ / ↓ (or I / K)
- Jab, or wind up a power punchTap / hold
- Guard high / lowHold W / S
- SlipTap W / S
Mouse works, but it's the weak option. A mouse is one pointer, so it can guard or punch and never both, and the whole fight assumes two hands running independently. Touch or keyboard is the real thing.
Build Log
-
Build 65
On a wide screen his gloves came out about three times too big for his head, and his power punch covered his face. His body was sized to the ring, but his hands, arms, punches and shadow were sized to the window, which only matches on an upright phone. Everything he draws now reads one stage width: on an upright phone that moved nothing, and a desktop window draws him in proportion. His torso also stopped coiling the wrong way on half his punches.
-
Build 64
The controls were a paragraph of prose. They are now a picture of the screen: two halves, defend and attack, divided by the head and body line. That line is positioned from LINE_FRAC, the same constant the touch test reads, so a diagram cannot teach a scheme the game does not have.
-
Build 63
Half of his punches drew the forearm from the wrong shoulder: across his chest, with one guard glove missing. Two expressions decided which hand was throwing, rolled independently, agreeing only by coincidence. When two places must name the same thing, one has to read the other rather than decide again.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine and no embedded typefaces: it uses whichever fonts your device already has. Cover drawn from the game’s own ring, fighter and glove code.
Heavy Fists is original work by Launchway Games.