New fighting game Poly Fighter combines roguelike features to build your fighter

15 Oct 2026 at 9:59 am UTC
By Liam Squires-Hand

Poly Fighter is a new Early Access fighting game designed to be for solo play, with you building up your own fighter with each win. No online PvP stress here, it's all about how you handle the fights directly.

The game was created as a real love-letter to arcade classics, but with the added progression and build experimentation of a roguelike to make things a little more interesting than just being yet another fighting game attempt. In Poly Fighter you fight your way through a high-stakes underground league, defeating opponents, taking their moves, and combining abilities to create different fighters, leading to wild new potential combos and setup options in each run.

See the trailer below:

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• Fight, adapt, and repeat: Battle your way through a high-stakes underground league in tense one-on-one fights, choosing opponents, climbing the ranks, and facing increasingly powerful rivals and secret bosses.
• Adopt moves and build your perfect fighter: Defeat opponents to earn new abilities, then swap, chain, and upgrade them to create devastating synergies and an ever-evolving fighting style.
• Create wildly different builds every run: Experiment with everything from super-armoured tanks and relentless rushdown fighters to zoning specialists and chaotic projectile-heavy machines in a roguelike twist on the classic fighting game formula.
• Accessible to newcomers, challenging for veterans: Choose between modern, approachable controls and nostalgic motion inputs, with stylish combos that are easy to pick up and thousands of possible move interactions to master.
• A retro-cool aesthetic built for solo players: Experience high-stakes duels and replayable build experimentation without the pressure of ranked ladders or online competition, brought to life with snappy animations and a banging soundtrack.

From the press release sent to GamingOnLinux: "Poly Fighter has been a passion project for us from the beginning, and seeing players finally get their hands on it is incredibly exciting," said Osama Dorias, Creative Director. "We built the game as a love letter to the fighting games and arcade classics we grew up with, but with a roguelike twist that lets players experiment with a huge number of different builds. Early Access is the next step in that journey, and we're really looking forward to seeing players’ experiences."

A demo is available with should run well with Proton 11.0-2. It worked perfectly in my testing.

Release Date: 📅 13th October 2026Platform: ⚛ Proton / Wine (Windows)Devs:HeartLoop GamesOfficial links:Steam Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Early Access, Proton, Demo, Fighting, Indie Game, New Release, Roguelike, Steam | Apps: Poly Fighter 4 Likes All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.