How to play
- Player 1 uses W, A, S, D. Player 2 uses the arrow keys. Both players share one keyboard.
- Your fighter is a ragdoll held together by physics — it wobbles, staggers and overbalances just like a real puppet.
- Swinging flings your blade along an arc. Damage depends on how fast the blade is travelling when it lands, so momentum matters more than button mashing.
- Headshots hurt roughly 60% more than body blows. Drain the opposing health bar to take the round.
- First player to win three rounds takes the match.
A physics-driven fighting game with nothing to install
This is a small browser fighting game built around a Verlet physics solver. Instead of pre-drawn animation frames, every limb is simulated, so no two exchanges ever play out the same way. The whole game is a few kilobytes of JavaScript rendered on an HTML5 canvas — it loads instantly and runs on almost anything with a browser.
Why ragdoll physics makes for better local multiplayer
Traditional fighting games reward memorised inputs, which punishes whichever player has played less. Physics-driven combat levels that out. A wild, badly-timed swing can still connect if the blade happens to be moving fast, and an expert can still overbalance and fall flat. That unpredictability keeps matches funny and close, which is exactly what you want when two people are sharing a keyboard.
Momentum is the whole combat system
There is no combo table and no move list. The blade is a physical object on the end of a floppy arm, and damage is calculated from its speed at the moment of contact. Winding up by running, jumping or turning before you swing genuinely increases your damage. Standing still and tapping the attack key produces weak, easily punished pokes.
Built to load instantly
Everything you see is drawn procedurally with canvas primitives — there are no sprite sheets, no texture atlases and no engine runtime to download. That keeps the payload tiny, which means no loading bar, no progress spinner, and a game that still works on a slow connection or an older phone.
Plays on desktop and mobile
On a desktop or laptop the two players share a single keyboard using well-separated key zones, which avoids the keyboard ghosting problems that break a lot of browser-based local multiplayer games. On phones and tablets, a set of on-screen buttons appears on each side of the screen so two people can still play on one device.
Frequently asked questions
Is this game free to play?
Yes. The game is completely free, runs in your browser, and does not require an account, a download or a plugin.
Can I play with one player?
This is designed as a two-player local game — both fighters are human-controlled on the same device. There is currently no computer opponent.
What are the controls?
Player 1 moves with A and D, jumps with W and swings with S. Player 2 moves with the left and right arrow keys, jumps with the up arrow and swings with the down arrow. Touch controls appear automatically on mobile devices.
Why does my fighter keep falling over?
That is the point. Each fighter is a ragdoll simulated by a physics solver rather than a set of fixed animations. A balance force keeps your puppet roughly upright, but hard hits, big jumps and fast swings can all knock it off its feet.
Does the game work offline or on a school or office network?
The game is a single static page with no server calls during play, so once it has loaded it keeps running even if the connection drops. It is unblocked on most networks because it does not rely on any third-party game host.
Is this the same as other puppet fighting games I have played?
No. This is an independent game written from scratch for this site, using an original physics engine and procedurally drawn graphics. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a copy of any other puppet or ragdoll fighting game, and it shares no code, assets or artwork with any of them. "Puppet fighter" here describes the genre — physics-driven puppet combat — not any particular other title.