• Price: $7.49 USD (currently on sale for $2.39 until August 21st)
• Developer/Publisher: Weakfish Studio
• Release Date: August 1, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by Weakfish Studio. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Fightro is described as a 2D arcade fighting game that fans of old-school fighting games will especially enjoy. I started up the game, and it cuts right to the chase. There’s no storyline or dialogue – you start fighting immediately in a timed round.

There are 3 modes ranging from easy to hard, and they each consist of one boxing match across three rounds. It took me a minute to figure out the mechanics – particularly the stamina function. I’m very unused to having a stamina meter in the fighting games I’ve played before, so it felt a bit awkward having to wait to be able to attack again in a timed fight. The stamina meter appears to be located at the top, and the bottom meter seems to be for your ultimate attack (which fills up based on combo chains).

There are light attacks, heavy attacks, combos, and an ultimate move. I tend to button mash a lot in action games, but figured out that guarding – which temporarily stuns your opponent when done correctly – is a pretty necessary move here (plus staying back and dashing). Combo chains and ultimate moves are an even bigger help in normal and hard mode, although I wasn’t very skilled at chaining attacks. After I realized where I went wrong, I managed to beat easy and normal mode, and eventually hard mode as well.

I liked the graphics and the music, and they tried to change things up a bit with some varied backgrounds. The bar scenery with someone sitting there watching you fight (probably thinking “this is above my pay grade”) made me laugh a bit. And it did feel like the game ran pretty smoothly overall in terms of its technical performance. I will say that I probably would have preferred more fights with additional opponents instead of just the one opponent for one match. Fightro is a brief look at retro arcade fighting games that has some positives – I just wish it was a little longer. 🥊