The Skeletons Are Fighting

The Skeletons Are Fighting is a traditional 2.5D fighting game where six skeletons duel across the ages. Choose a character and one of three Specialties, each offering a different moveset and playstyle. Across the roster, the Specialties provide 18 movesets and archetypes.

Characters

Each skeleton has a distinct approach to combat:

• Yor: A swashbuckling ship captain from the 1800s who uses a long sword to control midrange and has a well-rounded set of special moves.
• Fredrick: A suave monster hunter from an unknown era who throws and stabs with an apparently endless supply of knives to keep opponents at bay.
• Wreath: A mysterious, shy nature lover who is forever timeless. They use a long spear-tipped scythe to control spacing and tricky movement to keep opponents guessing.
• Gigante: An imposing, not-so-gentle giant from the cold era. She uses her long limbs and armored moves to close the gap, then presses her advantage with powerful throws.
• Wes: A wild, eclectic fitness fanatic from the modern era who fights at every range with quick punches, kicks and special moves for controlling space and maintaining offense.
• Albert: A fast boxer who rushes opponents down and mixes them up with cheap tricks.

Specialties

Each character has three Specialties. The default Specialty uses the character's standard moveset; the alternate Specialty changes the playstyle and archetype, including move properties and potentially the number of special moves. The advanced Specialty adds mechanics and animations and generally makes the character more complex.

Fighting mechanics

Combat combines slower neutral play and footsies with eccentric mechanics and moves inspired by anime and hyper fighters. The game uses five buttons: Light, Medium, Heavy, Universal and Dash. Light, Medium and Heavy are normals of increasing strength; they can be chained or canceled in ascending order (L > M > H), and most normals can also be canceled into Specials and Supers.

Universal handles system mechanics, including throws, dodges, parries, guard cancels and Supers. Dash controls movement options such as forward dash, back dash, run and super jump. Most characters can run by holding forward during a forward dash, and any character can super jump by jumping during one.

The available mechanics include:

• Universal Overhead: A quick leaping attack that must be blocked while standing.
• High Dodge: Evades attacks that hit high.
• Low Dodge: Evades attacks that hit low.
• Air Dodge: Evades incoming attacks in the air.
• Parry: Dodge just before an attack connects to act immediately and counterattack.
• Guard Cancel: Spend 25% meter to attack out of blockstun and interrupt an opponent's offense.
• EX Specials: Spend 25% meter on an enhanced special. Some can be canceled into from regular specials and may offer more speed, damage, combo extensions or movement options.
• Supers: Spend 50% meter on a powerful, quick-starting attack that deals high damage and can extend or end a combo.

Game modes

Campaign Mode is a single-player story in which you fight through Death's trials to free the skeletons from Death's control. Arcade Modes include Classic, where you fight the cast and face a final boss to reach the credits; Survival, an endless run against progressively harder enemies; Time, a five-minute race to defeat as many opponents as possible; and Combo Trials, which set premade combos to complete for every character and Specialty.

Versus Mode offers local one-on-one fights against another player or a CPU. Online Mode features rollback netcode and lets you choose Quick Match or Player Lobbies. Training Mode provides a self-paced practice environment with hitbox viewing, frame data and a framemeter, frame advantage, an input viewer, record and playback, and reversal settings.

Stages

The game includes six stages.