Blood in the Sand

Blood in the Sand is a small gladiator duel game I've been making on my own. Two players (or teams of two) drop into a sandy arena, pick a weapon and a few abilities, and fight until one side is dead. Rounds are short, a match is over in a few minutes, and then you queue again.

There's no aiming. Your attacks go at whoever's nearest, and every attack has a windup you can see coming. So the whole game is spacing and timing: do you dash through it, block it, or step out of the way and hit them while they're recovering?

You die once and you're out for the round. First to three rounds wins. If two people spend too long circling each other, the arena starts shrinking and anyone left outside it starts bleeding, which sorts things out quickly.

What's in it right now:
- Ranked 1v1 and 2v2, with a solo queue for 2v2 if you haven't got a mate around
- Private rooms with a passcode for playing friends, up to 4v4, plus a six-player free-for-all
- Practice against bots. The easy ones are genuinely bad at the game. The hard ones will beat you.
- A big map of achievements (I call them deeds) for things like winning on your last sliver of health, or killing the person who just killed your teammate
- Blood that stays on the sand for the whole match, footprints through it, and a crowd that gets loud when something happens

It's free. There's a shop with some extra weapons, abilities and announcer voices. You can buy the currency for it with real money or earn it by playing. Nothing in there makes you hit harder, it just gives you more things to build with.

A game like this only works if there are people to fight, so if you like it, tell someone. There's a Discord where I run match nights and post patch notes: discord.gg/8FHgBmaSnT

Made in the evenings by one person. Bugs and strong opinions about balance are both welcome.