Skyfall

Skyfall is a 2D archery brawler in pixel art, somewhere between TowerFall, Rivals of Aether and a bit of Mario. Two to four archers share a small arena: one arrow kills, a jump on the head does too, and the last one standing takes the round. It plays online or on the same couch, and it’s written in Lua on LÖVE, with Nakama for multiplayer.

How it plays

• Moving. Run, jump, slide down walls, wall-jump, grab ledges and dash. Dashing into an incoming arrow catches it.
• Shooting. Hold the bow button to draw, aim in any direction, release to fire. Your quiver is limited: arrows stuck in walls are picked back up.
• Rounds and the buy phase. Each round pays Round Shards, plus more for kills. Between rounds, everyone shops the same grid at once, each with their own cursor: drill arrows that go through a wall, bramble arrows that leave lethal thorns, bombs that can be defused by catching them, flat and fast feather arrows, homing bolts, toy arrows that just knock people back, and a shield that soaks one hit.
• The replay. Every kill replays the last few seconds in slow motion, with a VHS rewind effect.
• Three ways in. Quick Match, a private lobby joined with a 5-letter code, or Local Couch for 2 to 4 controllers, no sign-in needed. Matches are first to 5, 7 or 10.

How it’s built

• Shared engine, client and server. The physics, players and arrows live in one engine/ folder that runs both in the LÖVE client and in Nakama’s Lua runtime on the server, so both sides simulate the same game.
• Built for bandwidth. Physics runs at a fixed 30 Hz, the same rate as the server, so offline play feels exactly like online play. Rendering isn’t tied to that tick: players, arrows and the UI are interpolated between physics steps and drawn at the screen’s own refresh rate, so a 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitor gets 120 or 144 smooth frames a second. Clients only send presses and releases, and the server only sends what changed: a player standing still costs zero bytes.
• Atmosphere. Dynamic lighting from torches, a CRT shader, rain, lightning flashes and drifting clouds, in a 320×180 world scaled up to the window.
• Everywhere. English and French, keyboard or gamepad, with build scripts for the web, Linux, Windows and Android.

Still in pre-alpha: character customisation, chests, accounts and more arenas are next on the list.