I like the use of the theme here, interesting idea! The character is a little close in colour to the background so can blend in sometimes and I get a little lost, maybe try making the background colour just a little darker so you can see yourself and incoming enemies a little faster. will help to deal with the frenetic gameplay of the incoming attackers :) good job!

Short and sweet :) I like the art and the mood. The music loop goes well with the theme but I think it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit longer.

Core game was nice, punishing until you learned where to attack from. Hiding in the upper left corner and charging all the enemies seems to be the winning strategy. Could use some more enemies but one can't have everything :)

Nice work

Also thank you for opening my eyes to Pico-8 seems really cool

Nice short game. The core gameplay loop seems good, but the implementation is kinda weird. I ended up just mashing "Z" and obliterating all my foes, it quickly becomes boring. Maybe more refinement on the controls would make it more fun. But all in all, good work, the art and old school graphics is nice.

Great tight game! The old aesthetic is great. I did notice that holding "Z" and moving up tends to mow down opponents, but great submission!

I'm not exactly sure how the controls work- perhaps some sort of screen that pops up by using "X" that explains how to fight a bit would help? It may be a limitation of pico-8, but in general the "combat" aspect of the game wasn't very clear. I liked the flavor text after each win/death though, and I didn't find any "bugs" per say, other than the characters vibrating intensely when they touch one another(maybe this is a *love* game).

Fighting feels kinda odd. I like the graphics style, reminds me of Nidhogg. How much time went into this?

@pschichtel Thanks! Not long at all, maybe 4-5 hours. It was more to learn Pico-8 than anything. Hoping to further expand the game later.

I always like the aesthetic of pico-8 games. The combat felt a little bit awkward, it was difficult to judge where my attack hitbox was meant to be. Took me a while to figure out the winning strategy is charge them with the attack. Sometimes the enemies start sort of shaking up and down in a weird way too. The music loop could have been a bit longer too, short ones tend to get annoying quite quickly. Good effort I like the concept and the look, but it it feels like it could use some more work.

Nice job with this game. There was a bug where my character was right on top of the other but was not getting hit.

Nice little endless fighter. Plus points for using my fave (Pico-8) engine too!

Late review to get you over the 20 votes threshold for a ranking :D Good luck!

Your game reminds me of one of the first games I saw in my life...I believe a hit sound when you hit the gladiator or when you are hit would help a lot...I always love pico-8 look...Nice use of loop concept.Congrats!

Cool little entry for the time you spent on it! The combat felt a but clunky at times - was hard to tell why I was or wasn't hit/getting hit. Nice job getting something in though!

Pretty difficult until I realized that you need to attack horizontally rather than vertically, then it became easy!