Shadow Boxer
About
Shadow Boxer is a melee combat game inspired by titles like Street Fighter and the formative experience of hanging out in your friends’ basements as an early-aughts preteen.
Word has spread among the neighborhood kids that if you can sneak out after dark and find your way to the basement of the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, you will gain entrance to a one-of-a-kind show. Our three performers – Maxwell, Glen, and Ellory – set up their flashlights, tape on light filters, and hang the curtains. Knuckles are cracked, fingers are stretched, and wrists are cocked. It’s time for the ultimate shadow puppet throwdown.
Pick your character, pick your power-ups, and brawl!
Enhance combat with light filters
Before each fight, you and your opponent enter a draft to pick light filters charged with one of the four elements: yellow filter for air, blue for water, green for earth, and red for fire.
Each filter enhances different attributes of your shadow puppets (attack, speed, etc), and combinations of filters can be greater than the sum of their parts.
Switch between puppets mid-fight
Shadow Boxer features a unique mechanic where you can switch between shadow puppets mid-combat to enhance your strategy: Jump high as the rabbit, then shift to the elephant mid-jump to pound down on your opponent, then shift to the dinosaur to add a finishing headbutt.
Each character has three unique puppets with their own strengths and weaknesses:
Controls
Keyboard
| Arrow keys | Movement and Jump |
| 1,2, and 3 | Change Shadow Puppets |
| Q | Attack |
| W | Heavy Attack / Dive Attack |
| E | Block |
| Escape | Pause |
Gamepad
Press any Gamepad button and the on-screen display will update.
| DPad or Left Joystick | Movement and Jump |
| R2, L2 | Hold for Shadow Puppets |
| Left face button (X) | Attack |
| Right face button (B) | Heavy Attack / Dive Attack |
| Bottom face button (A) | Block |
| Start | Pause |
Credits
- All development and coding by Alex (Coderah) DiBerardino and Frank Dragomir
- All music and sound effects by Swardy
- All art by Erica Fagin
Made with Sprixle by Sprixle Studio.
Development log
- Steam Page and New BuildAug 16, 2024
- The Future of Our Shadow FriendsAug 01, 2024
Comments
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Game loading gets stuck at 229/256. Clicking sends me to main menu though. Nice splash menu. No volume slider, but fortunately some people appear to have put a surprising amount of effort into the BGM. Would have been nice to be able to turn it down slightly. Art is great. I jumped in the air and burned people down with the dragon in the end.
Some things are less clear - For example, wolf doesn’t appear to be able to Heavy Attack. And when a player is wedged into a corner it is difficult to hit them. Some of the hitboxes may benefit from some optimising.
There’s definitely bigger things to polish (like hitboxes and a tutorial that clarifies what puppets have heavy attacks and don’t) as well as smaller “quality of life” things (like volume control and optimization for all browsers). Thanks for letting us know what your experience was like. We definitely want to continue to improve the gam after the jam is done.
-Erica
As many others have said, the concept of your game and the visuals are just so charming and fun.
I just want to say that the music and the sound effects are just superb - I can see and feel your three characters performing the main theme, and i intend to keep your game open on the main menu just to listen to that lovely track.
Huge, huge props for making something this original, yet simple and filled with soul and character.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment! I admit we have also been keeping the tab open and just playing it on repeat…
-Erica
Nice concept, lovely art and music. Well done.
Thank you!!
This is such a creative use of the theme! Love the music and the art! The gameplay is a bit tough, it's was hard to know what attacks were able to do what, i had such a hard time hitting my opponent. I like the switching characters though, such a great game! Good job!
We’ve had a lot of really good feedback around how to make the combat clearer, so thanks for sharing yours as well. We’re eager to make the game as good as it can be.
-Erica
Awesome theme for a game, excited to see how it progresses!
Thank you – so are we! :)
The concept is cute and has a cozy vibe to it! The music is charming, and Glen's rabbit into elephant true combo is OP haha! Great stuff friends! Best of luck this GJ!!!
We love hearing Glen, Ellory and Maxwell talked about like they’re tried and true game characters, even if it’s to throw some OP shade. Definitely want to hear how people are playing, that kind of input is really helpful. Glad you liked it!
-Erica
This was such a clever use of the themes and in general great world building, love the idea that these are kids with crazy imaginations.
Thanks for the kind words! The story behind the game was really important to us, happy to hear it resonated with you.
-Erica
This is one of my favorite games in the jam so far! It could easily turn into a Steam release.
Really cute game with relaxing music and fun sound effects. It fits the shadows theme incredibly well!
+ You are also a fellow <div/> enjoy-er so that's bonus points in my book :P !
Also "Plz Nerf" Duck / Swan he do be blocking a lot ;)
Thank you! We definitely want to get it on Steam, hopefully soon.
We’re collecting everyone’s feedback on each puppet and will work to true everything up in future versions, so appreciate your swan nerf suggestion.
-Erica
damn this is so cool! i've had trouble making fighting games, but this is crazy awesome! definitely has that SF2: World Warrior feel to it. The music is great, the sound effects are awesome! The game runs a tad slow, maybe a turbo-mode could be added to speed things up like Hyper Fighting did! Good stuff, and gotta be my top pick!
Awesome, so glad you enjoyed it! We definitely plan on revamping the gameplay based on the feedback we’ve received so far. Believe it or not, it used to be much slower than it currently is! :D
-Frank
This is in my top 10 for this jam. All the small details are my fave, but I have to give it to adding/removing instruments on each character selection! I have no idea if Glen's rabbit has a heavy attack but I couldn't figure that out. I like the elephant charge though, if I can space it out well enough, it's very hard to counter!
<3 wonderful! thank you so much for playing and sharing your thoughts!
Yeah we wanted to get more details and a tutorial / playground in. Each puppet has a set of moves intended to pair well but not all be jacks of all trades. That’s a bit ambitious in 2 weeks with 3 characters of this complexity :D
-Alex
wow nice! taking on the challenge of making a fighting game for a jam is super impressive, and it plays really smoothly! my keyboard doesn't have arrow keys so it's a little tricky to play but i really enjoyed it!
Hey Max! Thank you for playing! Really appreciate you playing and your feedback we plan to add keybindings and an options menu :)
Glad you enjoyed it! <3
-Alex
This is absolutely beautiful. A lovely take on the fighting genre, with great usage of the themes. Congratulations Team!
Thank you! <3
-Alex
WHOA WHAT A COOL IDEA! This should win the steam page
<3
-Alex
This is such a creative idea!
Thank you, appreciate you taking the time to give it a try!
-Alex
Cool concpet!! I love the artwork too
Thank you! <3
-Alex
So is Multiplayer available currently? Or is that for the presumed later Downloadable version.
This seems like it'd be a blast Multiplayer, but I'm not sure if it's possible currently.
And if it is, is this one of those situations where you Need at least controller to play local multiplayer?
It’s 100% planned to add at least couch co-op with two controllers.
We decided to focus on the core of AI gameplay for the game jam but do plan to continue with quite a few other things as well!
Thanks for giving it a play!
-Alex