Hitfalling, Rivals of Aether's most interesting and fun universal mechanic, was originally a bug! Fastfalling was coded to be doable when vertical acceleration was zero or negative (i.e. after the peak of your jump and when falling already), but Dan didn't account for the character freeze during hitpause (and accidentally players could fastfall to interrupt their rising momentum if they hit a move) - nowadays, it's been expanded and you can fastfall any time after landing a hit.

Indies are often made by people who are insanely passionate about the genre. It's part of why we see so much love for classic tech or mechanics within them. The smaller scale of indie games also works in their favor in this regard. As fighting games get more expensive to produce and are trying to be esports, games have had to become, let's say safer, with the designs, balance and mechanics because the stakes are much higher now. Indies being on a small scale means they can get a lot more wild or experimental with things since they're not as restrained by that.

"There's a lot to love here but for me what stands out is the character's power levels. It's kind of reminiscent of Guilty Gear Plus R or Super Turbo. Every character when viewed within a vacuum has a mechanic or situation where they seem completely unreasonable. But when you look at them in the larger context of an average matchup, it's actually pretty balanced. I really like this style of design. When you first load up a character in training mode, you pretty immediately find something wild and will desperately want to learn how to abuse it in a real setting. There is nothing boring and nothing mediocre here. Everyone is operating on an incredibly high power level, that, outside of a few exceptions, feels tangibly old school. I say this because a lot of modern AA developers want their games to be balanced, quickly, and the fastest route to balance is homogenizing the cast as much as possible, removing weaknesses, and strengths. This other style of balance that operates in the extreme, simply takes more time from both the developer and players to hone, but the advantage is, we start with characters and mechanics so exciting that you can genuinely lose yourself in them." THIS MAN FUCKIN' GETS IT!

Also worth mentioning is Hellish Quart , 3D historical medieval swordfighting game in style of Soul Calibur / Bushido Blade made by a team led by a guy who was responsible for fighting system in Witcher 3

Problem is indie fighting games always have 20 players or less.

As someone who just presented an indie fighting game prototype at a local event recently: thank you. I'm glad people are paying attention. Now to buy all these games lol

Indie Fighting Games are incredibly creative and a game that really shows this is (as dumb as it sounds) Among Us Arena, originally every character in the game had the same moves, only changing colors, but recently the devs updated the game adding ONE and only one unique move to each character, this changed everything since now your gameplay revolves around that unique move and it makes 20 characters with basically the same moveset play completely different and I love it, we need more indie Fighting Games that really expand the creativity and show the true design depth that fighting games can have

I LOVE games whose design philosophy is "everyone gets something unique that seems really OP but since everyone gets one it'll (usually) balance out." It's not a fighting game but Cosmic Encounter fits this perfectly. It's a board game about alien races conquering each other's planets and one of the races' special power is "you can not die".

I'm glad to see E''s Laf 2 is still going strong. I had not seen it in a while, and even then, there was so much potential to it.

on the topic of jumpless fighters: french bread (melty blood and under night) made their own boxing fighter called glove on fight 2: gleam of force back in 2008, and that has really interesting defensive+offensive mechanic to balance it, especially bc theres not throws either

Compared to other games, I feel like Indie fighting games are incredibly hard to make. Why? Because you need the animations to be as clear as possible to allow for smooth gameplay, you need a really talented art team, that not every small studio can obtain/afford. Indie games like Baba is You can use minimalist graphics but a minimalist fighter seems rather hard to achieve.

I used to play a lot of an indie fighter called Lethal League Blaze, where instead of fighting each other directly you have to smack around an anti gravity ball and try to hit them with it and the ball keeps getting faster and faster the more it gets hit. And another thing was the characters being differentiated in a different manner. everyone has the same running speed and hitting power, the differences are in the angles they can send the ball, special swings that are focused on throwing off opponents, and a unique movement option like a glide or wall jump. Throw in some Jet Set Radio vibes and you got a good time.

Great. More games to add to 'the list'. As you said at the start, our choices for games at this point are astounding. Modern AAA with full developer support. Mid level games getting fresh life breathed into them with better netcode. Legacy titles kept alive by both the companies, the communities and cleaver programmers who make them available again. Super niche sub genres that can find a community thanks to online. Right down to the forgotten and broken that are still worth checking out, thanks to archiving. The biggest problem now, is how to actually have enough time to play any and all that look interesting. Stay up to date with current AAA game, revist AA with renewed interest, check out all the new stuff. Good problem to have, I guess?

E's laf ++ is fantastic, I definitely hope free releases it fully at some point, but front what I can tell he's still got a lot of aspirations, a few more characters to add, and more modes and information

I would like to mention Fight of Steel, the new game by the Fight of Gods/Animals devs. on the surface it looks like they just made another similar game with robots, but you're given FULL customization of your character, choosing sets of normals, specials, animations, and cosmetics as you choose, while maintaining the simple control scheme the dev likes to use. You won't see it at a major most likely, but it's an excellent game to learn with a friend or jump online to see the insane builds people put together.

something to add is that indie fighter may even introduce people to fighting games as a whole! I dabled in street fighter when i was a kid, but i never understood it. I then picked up Skullgirls to play with some old friends of mine and it essentially became the reason i fell in love with fighting games.

I love the "if everyone's busted nobody is busted" philosophy of Fighting Game balancing

We just need more fighting games in general. Also more people should play ES laff.

You really did a great job of selling Arcus Chroma and E's Laf++. Gonna see if I can get any of my friends interested in giving one of them a spin.

A friend and I made a demo for a airdasher in a 3D game more 3D than Tekken (arena fighter perspective) with 8 way movement while keeping core aspects of 2D fighters like motion inputs and hold back to block. It resulted in a crouch button and quartercicles ended being crouch, crouch + forward, forward; similar to how you would do it on a hitbox. We got rejected when trying to get funding due to just being a fighting game and now it's on hiatus.

I love all the shout outs These games are so cool there's really so much different type of indie fighting games out and still a lot of cool stuff that's in the making

Really cool video, and also reminded me how much fun I had playing something like One Strike as compared to Tekken or Street Fighter - it felt very refreshing, but it was also refreshing to play with friends since we were all on an equal playing field.

I knew where you were going after you posed the question in the beginning. It's good to have someone else talk about how unintentional strategies and exploits in the genre really defined FGs as they existed for a good chunk of their history and conversely how, well to put it nicely, 'overtuned' they're becoming now in fear of how unintentional, obscure mechanics/strats might drive away potential buyers thus resulting in less risks being taken in their design. I wouldn't call indie fighters and their approach to design the future of the genre, but as you say they're a much needed but sometimes underappreciated breath of fresh air for FGs right now.

This is truly encouraging my guy. Ill go ahead and keep all the projects i have cooked as blueprints in my view.

Your video introduce me to so much great indie games out there, thank you

Thank you for listing the games shown! Each clip I wanted to look up the games’ name!

Absolutely amazing video! I’m very new to fighting games, and this made several compelling points I could understand. Thank you!

loving your heavy metal lettering. I've gotten really curious about ArcusChroma because I have always (quietly) complained about all fighters have to resort to crouching moves, even crouching in itself is disadvantageous in a real combat setting, let alone jumping. So seeing that Indie exploring the complete removal of jumping is pretty interesting. Speaking about interesting indie fighters that innovate the genre. I think you kinda forgot to mention this game: Divekick. I liked your video and sincerely think there will always be a lot of potential for the genre.

Them's Fightin Herds is such a good fighting game. Too bad it will never be seen as it own thing.

Play Rivals of Aether everybody!

Immediately got to E's L....what a treat. This whole list is a treat. I'm pretty new to FGC but I've always been. Support indie type guy. This is what I needed. Thanks homie

An amazing figther game i played was lethal league blaze where you don't directly hit your enemy instead you hit a ball, and seeing that increase in speed becomes amazing

wonderful. This is both why we NEED and why we LOVE to play indie fighters. Thank you!

While I haven't played Arcus Chroma as much, it was nice seeing it here, that said, it should also be noted why the game never had jumping to begin with: The single person who was developing the game never really knew how to implement jumps properly when originally making the game. As such, they wound up designing the game around their limited knowledge.

For someone like me who is interested in fighting games but doesn't have a lot of money to spend in AAA games and a PC that can run them, this video is perfect! Thanks a lot!

Ahhh so many cool fighting game's I've never heard of in this video!!! They look so interesting and fun too!

this video gave some great insight of indie fighters to check out! usually i don't see many indie fighters that don't try to change or remove something (either for the sake of being "unique" or appealing to new players of the genre)

One small indie fighter that holds a special place in my heart that i go back and play any now and then is skullgirls ❤😀

Thanks for the awesome recommendations! And I'm thinking of making an indie fighting game, so this is really useful and quite inspiring!

This was well presented, Great topic and great video!

I’ve been working on making a fighting game with my friends, and god is it so difficult. I do the drawing/writing/and game direction, and it’s tiring. Indie fighting games are a miracle from my POV, it’s one of the harder genres to make. Well, make polished anyways

I honestly find that indie games, especially in the fighting game scene, are the only ones nowadays to usually push the genre into new territory, I mean, sure, there's lots of variation found within bigger fighting games, but it just doesn't hit the same way as, say, umbrella's crazy projectile stuff or the absolute insanity that is e.laf's new art style (granted this is all coming from someone currently trying to make an indie fighting game, so go figure, ofc I'd like them)

Super Mario 3 battle mode and Superfighters both make me think non traditional battles in a way that feels fresh. I'd be hard pressed to call them traditional fighters at all, but they have a bunch of PvP elements that make them fundamentally similar to the traditional fighting game. Obviously we don't call Smb3 battle mode a fighting game at all because the players don't really harm each other directly, but you can easily cause each other to get hurt with the right manipulation.

I've never heard of Arcus Chroma before, but I feel very intrigued to play it after u talked about it, for one reason: it potentially solves a problem I have when playing a fighting game, and that is "jumping too much". No matter what fighting game I play, i seem to subconsciously jump a lot, which makes my approach (whether defense or offense) very predicatable. Arcus Chroma doesn't have jumping, which I think would teach me a lot about movement control if i manage to play it, and if i wanna play another fighting game, I can use what I learned from it and apply it to other fighting games, so wish me luck :3

Shout-outs to all of your TFH footage having Javamorris in it! Seriously, though, this video's message is beautiful.

I super agree! I really love the innovation in the space! I see Smash Brother as the equivalent of the "Mobile Suit Gundam" of Fighting games, opening up brand new Avenues that werent present before while not invalidating past works, if that makes any sense. I just can't wait till the next genuis designer comes along and craft even more great pillars to expand what it means to be a fighting game!

Indie Fighters can tackle one of Fighting Games biggest issue: Tradition. A lot fighting games often don't change or experiment due to the tradition of what came before it. Not to mention a large portion of the FGC often complain when something in a game is changed because it was in the previous game, but not the new one. But here's the problem with tradition: It's a slow poison that kills creativity. What it mean by that is that sticking to what you know and only what you know becuase "it's the way we've always done it, why change it?" Is a way to to make what you're making stagnant and kill any good ideas that might come. But by going against the conventions of what people think shouldn't change, we can create something unique that could potentially change things forever. And sometimes what we create won't work the first time. That doesn't mean that the idea is immediately bad or wouldn't work, it just means we need to do it better. Example: Playstation All Stars is pretty unique as how it's a platform fighter, but it has a super meter. The execution is kinda dumb, but there's a cool idea there! I'd love to see a platform fighter that plays more a like a normal PF, but with a multi leveled super meter. The point of all of this is that we need people who can go past what people say shouldn't be changed to prove that these things CAN be changed to make a fresh experience out of it.

I hadn't heard of E's laf++ until this video, but it looks exactly like the kind of fighting game I enjoy most. Definitely gonna give it a shot after this.

9:30 Crouch Cancelling isn't a glitch, it's actually still in Smash games today, but there *is* a glitch in that came about when you held down when getting hit by a move when near the ground, which is what you're doing while you're Crouch Cancelling an attack

using this as an excuse to shill touhou hisoutensoku again, that game has some of the most creative mechanics I've seen in a fighting game

hey I worked on pocket rumble, thanks for showing some of my animations

Thank you for another awesome video. Well done sir.

ST is still one of my all time favorite games ever made. Any game inspired by that is something I wanna try for sure

That Megaman Battle Network style game looks really freaking cool. I remember playing a 2-player flash game that was basically a watered down version of MMBN, this looks like the grown-up, cooler cousin of that. I was gonna originally joke about Eternal Fight Zero or some other super old doujin fighters, but thanks for bringing our attention to these great, modern games!

We need more fighting games in space to explore. Minting a acolyte warrior in Taunt Battleworld is a game changer when it comes to joining their tournaments.

Too many people sleeping on what unique a version of The Fighting Game, Acceleration of Suguri 1 and 2 are. Yes, the Touhou fighters bring the Shoot em' Up Bullet Hell into a more traditional 2D fighter style, But Acceleration of Suguri brings the fighter into an insane Shoot em' Up style.

I feel that crazy mechanics and glitches can still exist. It just up to developers to implement new mechanics and players to discover the glitches.

Thanks for unintentionally reminding me to install E's Laff. I've been wanting to try that game out for a while. I need to play big gurl

Fully indie, small team games can put effort into experimentation. Mid-studio games can put effort into adapting and balancing the experimented things. AAA studios can put effort into refining those things within the whole game package. It's a self fulfilling cycle that feeds the entire gaming community to the future. If it hadn't been for indie games, we'd be stuck with Call of Duty 29 and Fifa 2022 October Edition which are identical to the previous 17 games of the franchise except for having a couple more shaders. And if it wasn't for AAA studios who actually take those new mechancis adn implement them, we'd be stuck with Baldi's Basics Clone #472. And if it wasn't for the mid-level studios, we wouldn't have the ability for smaller teams to get more budget, and vice versa for larger teams to see the potential of these new experiments. And this applies to every genre under the sun

I've recently been on a kick of imagining an indie fighter that takes inspiration from more non-conventional places. I recently randomly was talking about Naruto with a friend until we both remembered eighting (the people who worked on Bloody Roar/McC3/TvC/DNF) worked on a Naruto fighter series called Clash of Ninja, or Gekito Ninja Taisen in Japanese. We decided to download it and play a little bit, until we realize there is in fact a community for it (The one most liked is Clash of Ninja 4). And I was surprised at how unique its take on what a 3D fighter of the style of Tekken or VF is. The game game has overall a very low amount of strings per character compared to Tekken or VF, however it compensates by having extremely high movement and get out options, and teleports. It's like they envisioned the "ninja" aspect of it into a lot of mechanics you would see more from anime or airdash fighters, like double jumps, teleports, ways to redirect yourself in the air, multiple aerial attacks, etc. The game's central mechanic, is called substitution. Basically, at the cost of 75% of your meter (which meter moves really really fast in this game) you are allowed to teleport *out* of a combo. The reason why the game has a lower amount of sequences becomes apparent instantly, as the game becomes about using different strings not for the purpose of grounded neutral, but to force the opponent in weird unconventional situations for the subgenre and then attempt at catching you try to break out. With damage being extremely high, rounds can be up to 2 hits if the read is perfect (game is 3 out of 5). When I was younger I always felt like the subtitution was cheap, because it puts the opponent that broke out at an advantage. Normally the teleport ends up facing your back, which in games like Tekken or VF, you cannot block attacks hitting you on the back. However, after replaying it, this is what makes the game so interesting, it becomes about getting where the teleport is, and going extremely fast from offensive to defensive plays. And there is an entire layer of decisions from the substitution itself. If the teleport is behind you, there are moves that can cover in front, and also the back also known as "subtitution-traps", you can also turn around and block, or in the case you called it out you can turn around and throw (on which you get like 70% combos out of). The game is also equipped with a mechanic called Y-cancel, if you are juggling an opponent, you can use 25% to do a cancel, on which it allows you to set up more "sub-traps", and baits that will get them killed if they try to substitute out. If the opponent teleports perfectly and you were randomly mashing a sequence, you will get hit, or you can attempt to sidestep their attack, or attempt to jump neutrally on which if they tried to mash, they will miss and you will get a combo, or if they didn't mash, you get to try to find your way to the ground again. It's not the most polished concept out there, but what is great is it's such an *unique* form of interaction. I can safely say, I play most fighters to try them out and find something in them, and what this series has, although not the most polished, is an extremely interesting concept on top of a genre that overall doesn't try adding as crazy airdash mechanics in such as Tekken or VF. The reality is, there are so many ideas of non-traditional concepts you can put into any genre. We see a lot of different takes on 2D genres, and although there are a lot of Tekken-like fighters, there is certainly a gap on people trying to go fairly non-traditional on it. And I would love more people trying it out, and seeing what is special about it. The community likes the game so much, they made a modded version called Super Naruto CoN4, which adds new moves, QoL, universal changes like run into side-steps being faster, etc. Each character ends up being extremely unique, there are characters that are good for sub-traps, other with teleports that instead rely on cross-ups, ones that rely on aerial buttons more, chars that take piece of your meter to make it harder to get enough for substituting out, etc. I can't recommend it enough, and I hope more people try out non-conventional games out there. And who knoes, maybe one day see an amazing indie game that explores the depth of what can be found in it.

I remember, in ssf2 a indie smash game, ther was this tech calf dash crouch cancel, and instead of patching it out, devs just modified parameters to balance each character’s crouch dash( although it has been a while since I’ve played it so it may have been patch out today)

My favorite is defintely skullgirls, the game is just full of flavor, amazing music,wonderful gameplay,neat stories and incredible animation! I hope skullgirls will go on for even more 10 years!

Yep, there we go, my favourite video of 2022.

Indie titles cannot offer a playerbase, I have massive respect for indie developers who want to make a fighting game while Namco, Capcom, Arc Sys, Microsoft, NRS are still around. I just feel for their wallets, they must be empty.

Indie Fighting Games are probably among my favorite of the genre, whether it's a fan game like Famicom Fighters and Hyper Dragon Ball Z, or an original IP like Merfight, Tiger Tournament, Arcus Chroma, and Tough Love Arena. There isn't one I haven't liked and given a chance. Sadly with the general public, getting them to try indie games isn't exactly easy, no matter how hard people try to push them to the front and center

As someone whose recently fallen in love with the genre I'd like to see what more it has to offer & it seems like indie Devs can offer just that.

Blade Symphony will never get enough attention, and its part because its is an arena fighter, but to me, adding aiming and individual camera control to a fighting game adds depth and variety use with moves that you dont see in a lot of games

Didn't expect to see one step from eden here

Ultra fight da kyanta 2 is a insane indie fighting game with its own small community,made by one guy,granted it doesn’t have amazing quality but it shows how varied fighting games can be.

Looking forward to E's Laf 2 and Chaos Code Next. Those are my next 2 big anime fighters that I want to sink my teeth into.

Your only move is hustle is a turn-based fighting game and its the most unique indie game ive ever seen

Woa, never heard of that E's Laf but it looks AMAZING, best looking fighter ive seen not made by ArcSys

Dude I watch a lot of your videos for inspiration and input bro since you have such vast knowledge on fgc. I'm making a fighting game myself and it would be amazing if TheoryFighter would play my game one of these days!!.....but it's far from finished right now lol not even a single character. This video that has given me new drive to complete the game, I have been working on it even though I've stopped doing the devlogs since they take a while to make and slow me down.

i love fighting games and im sad that i cant afford any, i still stick to the hope of sometime supporting my fave games to see, so i can play them myself

Capcom never meant for SF2 WW to have combos. Canceling moves into each other to form a sequence of attacks that can't be blocked once the first attack lands was a happy accident. Let that one sink in. A genre defining feature could have been fixed by a well meaning programmer and who knows how modern fighting games would work.

If you want a fighting game with really unique mechanics, check out Karate Champ It's an old arcade game in which there are two joysticks, and moves are preformed by tilting the joysticks in different positions. Low attacks are done by pressing down, advancing normals are done by pressing forward, etc. There is no blocking, and the points awarded per hit are dependent on Counter hit, attack strength, etc. Very novel.

Oh boy, this video makes me extra scared to make my own FG, because, the indie fighters shown are so good, i dont even know if i could live up to them

finally someone is talking about es laf 2

I'm trying to develop a strategy rpg which adapts a tabletop RPG I made in high school on Google drive, I long moved to the mindset of buffing weak abilities instead of nerfing overpowered abilities, with the exception of it being game breaking In the original version of my tabletop I allowed my players to upgrade weapons indefinitely, eventually allowing upgraded weapons to outclass late game spells despite not costing MP and at earlier levels, I had to fix this and the way I found was to gut the weapon upgrade system entirely and just greatly buff the weapons base damage, to where they are often equal to mid level spells but not high level spells, then you can use Weapon skills to bring them on par with later spells That was an example where I had to outright remove a mechanic cause it invalidated spellcasting, however in all cases where a mechanic doesnt invalidate another ability but can be seen as quite powerful it is perfectly fine to leave it be, just buff any abilities that could fall behind The combat of my tabletop and in turn the game that I will adapt from it were built around combos, and stacking buffs which last for variable amounts of times, if an ability doesn't deal good damage give it a buff that casts in addition to damage, the general rule I follow is that all buffs with a different name stack and all with different names do not, because buffs have unequal timers you can never reliably get all buffs An example in the tabletop is the chain line of skills, they are weaker than even base LV 1 spells but allow you to add your Magic Stat an additional time for the next attack of the same element as the chain skill used

I'm glad someone's talking about Es laff 2

One of my favorite games of all time is an indie platform fighter (Rivals of Aether)

The Arcus Chroma game looks amazing

Indie fighting games will hold a special place within the genre of fighters, no matter minds are they!!!

That Yatagarasu games looks amazing! The name sounds familiar but this is my first time seeing it.

When you think about it, For Honor is the most unique fighting game, while being made by a AAA studio, it is 8 years old yet it still feel fresh compared to the other bigger titles.

Arcus Chroma being soley ground fighting makes high level fights look like full on brawls, it’s like watching a boxing match on steroids

Indie games "ideally" are the place where you find innovation. Sadly few of them stray away too much from the standard 2D and Platform fighter model. I don't really know why.

I too am excited for the future of indie fighting games. I just wish there were some for 3D fighting game enjoyers 😔There's so much design space not yet explored, in general but especially with 3D fighters.

What you said about characters on "E's Laf++" sounds exactly like the characters in Dota 2; when you read them and demo them every characters seems nuts and broken but in a real match everything is pretty balance.

Still remember the day when melty blood vanilla was still known as an indie fighting game, but now look how big it is

Hearing you talk about that game with no jumps made me wonder if you could get away with removing the corners at all, I miss when moves could wallbounce midscreen for free in some games and I feel that would give a reason to bring those back. But that's just a shower thought

Just cause it wasn't shown here, but Blazing Strike is easily my most anticipated fighting game from a smaller team! Highly recommend checking out the trailer.

Damn I love this KZfaq channel.

Skullgirls is my jam.

More people should play Then's Fightin' Herds for real. Luckily it's coming to consoles in a couple weeks on October 18th

Skullgirls is a true masterpiece.

My favorite part of the video is the segment where you say you're fine with AAA big budget fighting games over footage of Happy Chaos.

Quite frankly, modern fighting games have been losing me as a fan due to how vehemently they pursue casual players with dumbed down and overtuned balance mechanics who otherwise would not play them. As a result it has not only left me disillusioned with the genre but outright bored since I have felt abandoned as a fighting game fan. Kof being about the only notable exception right now. I will definitely look into indie fighters from now on as I do now have a PC. Perhaps they can give me what I've been missing in fighting games for so long. That sweet emergent design (sidenote I had my eye on skullgirls for a while, it seems to be up my alley).

just went ahead and bought arcus chroma game looks sick

Fighting games have always interested me. Maybe someday, both indie fighting game devs and AAA fighting game devs can team up to create a definitive fighting game; who knows?