The Risers

I have a soft spot for games that exist because two people loved something so much they had to build it themselves. The Risers is exactly that kind of project. Brothers Ignacio and Santiago Medina, both from Argentina, spent years putting together a 2.5D brawler clearly born from a childhood spent in front of arcade cabinets running Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II. That origin story matters when you sit down to play it, because understanding where it came from is half of understanding what you're looking at. The roster gives you eight fighters pulled from a post-World War III tournament setting, each carrying a strange, specific little backstory. There's a surgeon hunting for the human soul, a cursed firefighter squaring off against gods, an undead Iberian knight searching for a lost love, and a puppet whose entire motivation is making children laugh. Individually those pitches are weird enough to be charming. Whether the in-game endings deliver on those hooks is a question of temperament. Arcade mode has you fighting through seven opponents before reaching a final boss, across four difficulty levels that the developers describe as running from simplicity to full frenzy. For a solo singleplayer session, that structure is familiar and lean. The combat system is where the game puts its bet. Each character gets two manual combos, two auto combos triggered from a single button, and a Hyper move executable with just two buttons. The signature mechanic is the X-BREAKER, a critical-health reversal inspired by Mortal Kombat's X-Ray moves. Rather than slow-motion bone damage, the X-BREAKER shows the full skeleton and musculature being struck in fast motion, which fits the developers' stated goal of keeping everything feeling kinetic. The dual-gauge system, where one bar powers standard Breakers and the second unlocks X-BREAKERs only when you're nearly dead, gives the late-round moments a genuine spike of desperation. That part, at least, works on paper and in practice. The honest issues are hard to overlook. Gamepad support out of the box is broken enough that community members have had to post manual fixes for inverted and non-responsive directional inputs. The game also now lists AI-generated tools, including audio and asset pipelines, among its production credits, which may matter to buyers who care about that distinction. With only eight user reviews on Steam and no critical coverage to speak of, there's no broad community consensus to lean on, only the artifact itself. For players who find something magnetic in that first-attempt sincerity, the rough craftsmanship is part of the texture. For anyone expecting a polished indie fighter with tournament-level depth, this will feel undercooked. The Risers sits in a specific, honest category: a passion project that made it to Steam and wears that fact openly. The character concepts have a genuine eccentric spark. The X-BREAKER mechanic shows real design thought. But the execution is uneven, the gamepad setup requires patience, and the production has evolved in ways that may give some players pause. Approach it as a curiosity from two brothers who cared enough to finish something, not as a replacement for anything on your fighting game shortlist.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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