Yeah, uh, this is gonna be a weird one. Hell yeah. It took me a LONG time to get this review out, and reading this, I'm sure you'll find out why.
Fight.EXE is an indie horror fighting game by SolidValentine, released in 2025 and updated with new characters for a bit after launch. At present the roster consists of 13 fighters, which sounds small- but just you wait. This is a game that defies description in almost every way. But I will try my best. But to start with...
I am a huge fan of fighting games that place a strong emphasis on their storylines and single player content. Especially in ones with smaller rosters.
Fight.EXE does that, but in such a batshit insane way that I have never seen before, and I couldn't stop playing it. I had to plumb the depths of its incredibly bizarre storyline and secrets, and marvel at the solid bones of gameplay underneath it all.
This is the first fighting game I've covered on this blog, and it took me a long time to chew through and form my thoughts into anything resembling coherency- not helped by this game being an absolute sensory assault in the best way possible. If you want something weird and off the beaten path- this is it.
Also, this game does have online play, so there's a selling point. I didn't really test that out, so I can't confirm how good it is.
AESTHETICS- THE DUMPSTER OF FIGHTING GAMES
Fight.EXE looks like no other fighting game I've ever seen, and that starts from the menu UI. Instead of a traditional menu, you have a fake desktop with all the different modes on it, complete with custom sword cursor.
Even the loading screen is filled with ominous gibberish, like the entire arcade machine the game is played on is haunted- and given certain events in the lore, that might actually be true. Maybe. But when you get into the actual game, it gets even better.
There are no words to describe how these models look, but the best I can think of is "beautiful garbage", and I mean that very affectionately. The closest comparison I can think of is Cruelty Squad, with everything looking like complete and utter nonsense on purpose.
Every single character has bizarre texture warping on them like this is a game from the PS1, jittering in and out like they're about to clip out of reality at any second. Beating your opponent causes them to ragdoll and distort like something out of Garry's Mod. The voice clips are all so bitcrushed that you can't even tell what they're saying.
Despite ALL OF THAT, reading the characters' moves is not as hard as it looks. Because everything's so exaggerated, it's usually pretty easy to tell what your opponent's doing- not that it makes beating them any easier, because the AI is defaulted to the "Impossible" setting, and will kick your ass.
The backgrounds range from MS Paint scribbles, to vomit-esque textures, to constantly flickering and changing the color scheme like this forest stage. My personal favorite aspect is the occasional usage of mixed media- like a theater stage playing Manos: The Hands of Fate in the background.
The music is similarly chaotic, ranging from Manos clips, to distorted jazz that sounds like it's being filtered through a toilet, to Hatsune Miku singing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" to an audience of no one except the player.
And the "Match Won" screen is just perfect. I mean, look at it.
Despite this audiovisual headache, the game's UI elements are thankfully much less obtuse. Everything is clear, from the super meter, to the round clear boxes, rendered in HOT PINK Windows UI. It's loud, but not loud enough that you can't tell what you're looking at a glance.
Basically, this is a game that immediately makes an impression, and will not leave for a long time. But aesthetics aren't worth anything without good gameplay to back them up, and Fight.EXE is far deeper than its vomit-colored coat of paint suggests.
GAMEPLAY: THE BONES OF A GREAT GAME DISGUISED AS A SHITPOST
This game has four buttons- light and heavy punches and kicks- and two special buttons. But that's not it- there's a couple extra bits of mechanical depth.
Namely, install combos can be performed by hitting the heavy punch/kick buttons at the same time. I didn't use them, mostly. But that's not it.
There are two separate special buttons, but performing a quarter circle combo forward and back gives them different variations, like increasing knockback, damage, speed, or a LOT of other things. Hitting that button in the air also does something different for each character. It's very cool to tinker around and figure this stuff out. The only problem is, there's no movelist in the game itself, so be prepared to mash a lot of buttons to figure out what each character can do.
And, of course, what's a fighting game without supers? They're just as flashy as you'd expect, in the typical weird way of this game. Most of them are simple, but some are aggressively weird or obtuse to use.
I freely admit, I am probably missing a LOT of things about this game, but to be fair it's not like Fight.EXE makes itself easy to understand. Purposefully so. But from what I can gather, as somebody who is Not Good at fighting games, this game has a fair bit of depth below the surface, and seeing high level play is probably very interesting.
This game has a roster of 13 characters- and each of them merit discussion on their own, because there's a lot of weird shit happening here and some archetypes I've never seen before in a fighting game, ever.
THE ROSTER RUNDOWN
DUFFA SNICK
Duffa has a lot of ridiculous zoning tools, making her a great choice for playing games of keep-away with the rest of the roster. Her bombs take a long time to come down, which makes it HARD to keep track of them. Her crossbow attack is great at keeping folks away, especially with its variants that do different amounts of knockback. Her giant laser super is hard to hit people with, but if you can get it, it'll do a ton of damage.
Plus, she has a dive kick that hits straight down and is VERY good at getting through the CPU's guard.
With all of that combined, she can have some crazy setups to gank opponents. Definitely one of the easiest characters to get into. Also, there's three other versions of her on the roster that play entirely differently. Yes, seriously.
PANIK CORVID
Panik Corvid lives and dies by their grab special, where they yoink the opponent and slash at them repeatedly with their cleaver. Their other special with summoning vines underneath can be used for some fun bouncing setups, but those are just an excuse to get in close for that command grab.
Their super is another command grab, but the awkward little leap it makes makes it a bit hard to hit things with, sadly. They can be kind of jank to use, but if you get the hang of their tricks, they can be devastating.
Also, Panik Corvid for a scarecrow is the best pun name I've ever heard. No notes.
DELPHIA DENNY
He's the resident big guy character, with a ton of highly-damaging moves that break guards. His elbow drop air special is a nightmare to deal with on the receiving end. As is his headbutt move that'll just blast you all the way to the other side of the screen.
And as if that wasn't enough, he's got a Reppuken-style ground wave that travels FAST along the ground, with some interesting variations. Plus, a super where he just swings a gigantic chair over your head. Nothing exemplifies "big and strong" like this guy.
Basically, getting up close to him is a really big problem, but he is also really slow. So if you have a fast character, you can still sneak hits in. I had a lot of fun playing this guy.
DR. SNICK
This guy is my favorite character in the entire game. Every single move he has is trash, except for one. His gun special, that can be fired multiple times in a row to bounce the opponent for tons of damage. That's right, it's literally "for his neutral special, he wields a gun", but that's his ENTIRE KIT right there.
You can charge up his bullet meter in the air, and you DON'T FALL when you're charging unless somebody kicks you down. and if you hang around there long enough, he gets a Super Saiyan aura. This does nothing, but it's still very funny.
I can't get over how unique this concept is. This is how you make a joke character- he has ONE good move, and he milks it for all he's worth.
EVIL DUFFA
This is literally just Duffa, but Akuma. All of her projectile specials are traded out for that other guy's tricks. The hurricane kick, the diagonal fireballs from the air, the uppercuts, it's all here.
And yes, she does have the Raging Demon as her super. It's as transparent a reference as you can get, but it's absolutely hilarious. And she does play vastly differently from her inspiration, forcing you to get in close and burst down your opponents before they can react.
It's a great gag- and she's not even the only one!
STAR DUFFA
Star Duffa- as in, Duffa Snick but Melee Fox- is basically playing an entirely different game from the rest of the cast. She has a dash you get by double-tapping, complete with controller noises. Her blaster special is incredibly spammable, letting you play the worst kind of keep-away.
But that's not the most ridiculous part. Her gravity is cranked way up, making jumping so difficult it's not viable in the least. And her super is a dinky little kick that's damn near impossible to hit anything with.
Words cannot describe how awkward this feels to play. And yet, I can feel the bones of something here- if you can get around her jank, you can probably get some wins with her. Plus, the gag is fantastic and had me laughing out loud the entire time.
THE KHAZ
This guy is a real test to master, with his generally slow attacks. But his heavy punches and kicks where he swings the guitar around, are REALLY good, able to juggle the opponent easily. One of his are just tossing notes around, generally useful for keeping enemies off your back...
Though his knee-slide special is not that good.
But his super is absolutely ridiculous. He goes full guitar hero on your ass, and you have to hit all four notes in order to get the full potential of it. I kept screwing it up because of the ambiguous button prompts, but this is a great bit.
KESHA
Okay, this one is weird. There's a reason we don't have Motaro-type characters in fighting games very often- because her attacks hitboxes defy description. Her jumping kicks have hitboxes on both sides, and because they're so long, she sometimes doesn't hit things directly in front of her. But her high kicks can do some FEROCIOUS juggling acts.
Her specials are equally odd. Getting a fishing hook to reel things in is understandable, but then there's summoning skeletons that can summon pillars of fire, throw bombs, and uppercut depending on what variations she uses.
But her super is the most fun thing, a JoJo HFTF-style punch rush from a big skeleton that can REALLY mess up your foes if you get it just right. Definitely a weird character- but honestly, I had so much playing her.
AUTUMN
This girl is kind of like Panik Corvid, but with a few key differences. One of her specials is replaced with a shield ability... which is not that useful. What IS useful, though, is the fact that instead of a cleaver, she has a fucking CHAINSAW.
Which means, all of her moves that would have used said knife have extended range, greater damage, and multi-hit. Use that to your advantage- oh, and her super just yeets the chainsaw out in front of her in order to cleave off a huge amount of health.
CRUSTEAN
Crustean is a fairly simple character, with some interesting tools. His specials are a dash that can grab the opponent and send them flying... or, more interestingly, a counter stance that is VERY hard to time correctly. But if you do, you can really devastate the opponent.
I love his special move, where he tosses the trident and it comes back to skewer the opponent in an octagonal pattern. It's aesthetic as hell, and very effective, besides.
He can also pogo off people with one of his air attacks, which is really funny. I couldn't get the hang of him, but from how many times he thrashed me in arcade mode, I'm sure he's got some sauce. He is from another game by the same developer, fun note.
MIRDIR PHUKIR
This guy is just strange, and I still don't fully grasp how the hell his character works. Apparently, attacking a lot with specific moves fills up the meters on the left of the screen, and turns him into one of three forms. Even in his base form, he's well-equipped, with an air kick, an elbow drop, and a fireball as his specials.
But his alternate forms get even more ridiculous than his base moveset. The werewolf form has ferocious headbutts and command grabs, great for absolutely decimating health...
The abomination form has LONG tentacle attacks which are really good for stunlocking your opponent from the air...
And the zen form can summon chains of blood from the ground to trap people in place. Oh yeah, all forms of this guy have their own, entirely different, movesets. So he's essentially FOUR CHARACTERS IN ONE. Predictably, his super is just combining all four of his forms' attacks for a huge barrage all over the screen.
This is the most WTF-inducing character in the game, but once you know how he works, he's unstoppable.
ARMORED DUFFA
The last of the Duffa clones, this one is a reference to Armor King from Tekken. She's got command grabs out the wazoo, complete with cinematic camera angles. Plus the most ridiculous special, spewing purple fluid from the air. Perhaps poison mist from Japanese wrestling?
But nothing can compare to her absurd super. On the surface, it seems like just a headbutt, but if you waggle the control stick up and down, it becomes a brutal instant-kill combo with the most cinematic angles in the entire game. Nothing in the game tells you how to trigger this, by the way. I found out by accident.
Plus, she's hidden below the visible area of the character select screen, so protip- press down on the bottom row to reach her.
VOID Q33N
Void Q33n's the sub-boss in most of the arcade paths, and she has the moveset to live up to that. She can teleport all around, and do it incredibly fast. Her projectile comes out in a set of three, which can easily disrupt any attempts to get close. And most importantly, her super move is a Raging Demon-esque attack that turns the entire screen to static.
Even her basic moves are fast and incredibly spammable. Needless to say, she's the most busted character the player has access to. I'm happy she's not nerfed in the player's hands. Even if playing her optimally requires some skill.
STORY MODE
Story Mode is the entire reason to play this game. At least it was for me. Because as far as fighting game singleplayer content goes, this game goes above and beyond.
Every single fight has bespoke pre-match dialogue, which is always good to see. And every single bit of it is composed of complete and utter madness. None of it makes any kind of meaningful sense, and yet somehow you can still get snippets of the characters' relationships through it. Figure out their motivations. The Khaz wants to perform for people, Duffa wants to advance her scientific discoveries... some are a bit hard to describe, though.
But there's not just unique dialogue- the between-battle interludes are ALSO different for each character for the most part. Most of them take the form of bizarre first-person segments with varying objectives. In Duffa's storyline, it's a break the targets-style minigame.
Sometimes it's an involved horror game segment, like these recurring trips to the Meat Forest and the accompanying house in the woods. Several characters' arcade modes deal with this, and it's never the same each time, so expect a lot of terror.
Crustean gets to be extra weird, with his interludes involving first person puzzles where you toss a trident and teleport to where it lands- but only if you hit the brick walls.
Kesha also gets something unique. A fishing minigame, which your performance on actually determines what ending Kesha gets. She's the only character with two endings, and they're both equally inexplicable.
Or sometimes it's just a Manos: The hands of fate maze with the worst, ugliest textures you've ever seen, and slow-ass movement the whole way. It's hilarious.
I will say, this recurring segment with Void Q33n stalking you is a bit exhausting. Especially when she pulls a Weeping Angel and only moves when you're not looking at her. You have to get all three keycards, then go to the start and get the quarter, THEN reach the arcade machine at the back. It's tedious, and it's made worse by one specific problem.
You can't strafe in first person. This is as annoying as it sounds. It's one of the few times the game started losing me, because you have to repeat this bit a LOT if you're doing all the arcade paths, and it never gets any less tedious.
This is probably the only quibble I have with this game, to be honest.
There are unique midbosses scattered around throughout the story paths, too. Like this huge-ass tank, which is exactly as janky to fight as it looks- it's a big bastard that can't be grabbed or knocked around easily.
Or a literal horseshoe crab in Crustean's path, that can zip all around the screen and kill you quick, but has no health. I couldn't stop giggling when I saw this. Even if it killed me several times.
There's also this... thing that appears as a final boss on some paths, Raven. A bizarre puppet-master-esque thing that has a Panik Corvid model on strings, and keeps summoning other variations of it to harass you, and has some of the jankiest hitboxes to ever exist. Fighting it an exercise in flailing at the wall until you somehow manage to win.
Most routes have Void Q33n as the penultimate battle, and she is nightmarish in the hands of the AI. Abusing that teleporting move to the fullest extent, she is the hardest standard challenge the game has to offer and then some.
And the final boss... well, this guy is something else entirely. Fighting 4ce feels like the game itself is breaking down around you. In aesthetics and gameplay, he is an absolute mess in the best way possible. For one thing, he's textured like the same static on the game over screen and his arena. Speaking of his arena... look at it. It feels like you're on the inside of the arcade machine looking out, given how there's a distorted human on the "window". What does this mean? Who knows.
As for how he fights, 4ce is a LOT to deal with. He can summon all the other playable characters you've fought in that arcade run. And while they don't take a lot of hits to kill, things can get VERY out of hand very quickly if you don't get rid of them and keep the pressure up.
And it gets even worse if he manages to use his super, because then he can summon the unique midbosses, with all the tankiness you'd expect. And he can KEEP doing that, endlessly. It's an absolute clusterfuck of a boss fight, and eking out a victory is a tough challenge indeed.
Honestly, the few times that one of the Duffa clones usurps him is actually easier to deal with in comparison. 4ce is that hard. But it is very satisfying to figure out the appropriate cheese strats to deal with him. Too bad you can't play as him.
Almost every character's story mode ends with the world fading out, just as they've achieved their goal. Some of them reach some kind of self-actualization from this. Others seem blissfully unaware. But no matter what, there is no true ending, no proper resolution to the purgatory of Fight.EXE.
I'm not gonna dig into every character's story mode, because that would be foolish- it's better to experience it for yourself. But there is some interesting stuff to unpack.
AUTUMN'S ARCADE PATH: HOW THIS GAME MADE ME FEEL LIKE A CREEPYPASTA PROTAGONIST
Oh boy. This one is the wildest arcade path in the entire game... for better, and for worse. But first, for some preamble. In Panik Corvid's path for example, you visit the cabin in the Meat Forest, and can find a passcode there. That code is required to open Autumn's story path, which... kind of explains what the deal is with the Meat Forest.
On every other path that deals with that place, it's all about how the Meat Forest corrupts everything inside, and now you finally get to see how.
In between matches you get these top-down segments, where you have to reach the cabin in the forest, while SOMETHING under the ground stalks you. It's pretty easy to dodge around, but if you get caught...
Yeah. Not pretty. Thankfully this doesn't come with any penalty.
Once you reach the cabin, there you get brief flashes of Autumn's past through MS Paint horror doodles. And they are NOT pretty, let me tell you. They show her mindset, how she transformed into Panik Corvid- possibly- and several other interesting things.
And all of Autumn's pre-match dialogue is just railing against the purgatory she's trapped in, trying desperately to get out and struggling with her perception of herself as a monster. It's... very disconcerting given how goofy the rest of the game is.
On the gameplay side of things, all of your opponents are increasingly malformed versions of Panik Corvid, from a literal png to one with a skull for a head, culminating in a fight with Raven... and then, the pain begins for real.
After you beat that, you have to complete a janky platforming course, which is actually one of the dev's previous games, Meat 2 Mulch. The physics are uncomfortable, but consistent. If you could retry as many times as you want, it wouldn't be an issue. But there's a problem.
One fall, and the game crashes itself, forcing you to go through all of the preceding fights again. It's... not fun at all. Especially when actually clearing it requires jumping over the final bit of spikes, into a seeming pit. THEN it works.
And the final boss? It's a ridiculously souped-up Crustean with glitched out textures and Panik Corvid's sack on his head. NOt the most creative thing ever, but it is also BRUTALLY DIFFICULT. He killed me like at least ten times, more than Void Q33n did on any given arcade mode attempt. And then the pre-boss cutscene glitched out on one of my attempts, forcing me to reset AGAIN. At this point I was really annoyed and set the AI to minimum difficulty, because getting here takes way too long already.
At least there is a cute ending at the end of this. No big jumpscare, just this tortured soul trying to make some sense of her existence. I tell you, delving into this path felt like being a creepypasta protagonist, fighting tooth and nail against a game that did not want to be played.
Was it rage-inducing? Yes. Was it satisfying as all hell to finally get that steam achievement that only 2.2% of players have? Also yes.
VOID Q33N'S PATH: THE FINAL LOREBOMB
This path ALSO requires a password, though you're more likely to stumble on it by accident given it's in the mostly-mandatory Void Q33n stalking segments.
This path is the closest thing to a true ending this game has, not that it clarifies much of anything. Basically, you're playing the stone wall of a sub-boss, getting to stomp the cast before they can reach the final boss.There are interludes with exposition in between fights, but the audio quality is so bad I legitimately couldn't tell what was being said half the time. As far as I can tell, there was some sort of project to create immortality- Project Lazarus- and this arcade machine was the result.
The names "Q33n" and "K1ng" come up- we know who Queen is, but perhaps K1ng is the ghost in the machine?
Anyway, you can't let the rest of the fighters reach 4ce, because you're going to do something to him instead. Apparently Void Q33n is trying to free whatever's trapped in the arcade machine, along with all the souls inside. But 4ce isn't going to make that easy. Not in the slightest.
The recurring keycard segment has some extra venom in it, with this person taking the place of Q33n and being a LOT faster. Oh, and having the Weeping Angel strategy active from the very start. Seeing a real person's face in here is unbelievably uncanny.
Heart of 4ce has some extra tricks to make him much more difficult- namely the fact that his jumps are way higher and floatier, which means he can just spend a lot of time in the air, sending out his little minions, where you can't do jack to him. It's an absolute mess trying to keep him contained, and definitely the hardest thing to fight in the game. But does beating him get you anything special? An explanation for any of this?
No. Why would you expect that? You walk up to a computer, holding the Heart, and... upload it to the internet.
Perhaps this game you're playing is the Heart of 4ce, and he's spreading, free of his arcade machine this way. Or something. I don't know.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Fight.EXE is a great example of something looking totally unassuming, trashy even, and pulling out all sorts of surprises. The visuals are a charming jankfest, full of deliberate art-style clash and bizarre audio- but all of that makes the genuinely fun gameplay all the more enthralling. Especially given the depth of unique content in the arcade ladders.
There is no other fighting game with this kind of look and feel, and I highly recommend it if you're a fan of analog horror or just want to try out something absolutely weird.
TIER LIST:
S Tier- Mirdir Phukir, Void Q33n, Armored Duffa
A Tier- Evil Duffa, Duffa Snick, Autumn, Delphia Denny
B Tier- Kesha, Panik Corvid
C Tier- Dr. Snick, The Khaz, Crustean
D Tier- Star Duffa
GAME LINK:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1715860/FightEXE/
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