THE CLIMB
6 floors up the building, best of three rounds (or one, or five: your call), against coworkers who each fight their own way: the turtle, the rusher, the grappler. Beat the boss without a continue and you'll find out who else is upstairs.
NEON STICK FIGHT
A temp fights their way from day one to the corner office. A free stick-figure fighting game you can play right here, on your phone, or online against a coworker. Click the game, then press Enter.
INSTALL IT: on Android or desktop Chrome, choose Install app from the browser menu. On iPhone, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. It opens full screen, like a native game.
THE STORY
FROM TEMP TO THE TOP
You're the TEMP. First day, borrowed badge, no desk, and a building full of people who've already decided you won't last the week. The only way up is through them.
Every floor of the tower teaches you something about office life. The INTERN swings at everything because nobody told them not to. HELPDESK waits for you to make the first mistake, then closes your ticket. The COURIER won't slow down for anybody, SECURITY decides who belongs in the building, and the JANITOR knows the floors nobody else goes to. At the top, THE MANAGER has your performance review ready, and it's now.
Surviving here works the same way as surviving a fight. Let the loud ones overcommit. Don't burn yourself out trying to look busy. When somebody finally swings too hard, make it cost them. Panic and everyone sees it. Make it all the way up without asking for a second chance, and you'll find out who signs THE MANAGER's paychecks.
LIFE IN THE TOWER
18 COWORKERS
From the TEMP on day one to the corner office: the RECEPTIONIST who puts you on hold, the LAWYER who objects, and HR, who's writing all of this down. Each one has their own moves and a file on their page.
HORDE FLOORS
Restructuring day. Wave after wave of temps come through the office doors after your spot. Clear the floor, vault the stairwell railing, and do it again one floor down. See how deep you get.
OFFICE RIVALRIES
Settle it with the coworker in the next cubicle. Send a four-letter code for a quick match, or set up a crew room for the whole department, with standings, head-to-head records and winner stays on.
OFFICE POLITICS
Panic in front of everyone and it shows: you overbalance, spin out, trip over your own feet. A few mistakes, made at exactly the wrong moment, turn out to be brilliant. Nobody's going to tell you which.
WORKS FROM ANYWHERE
A phone, a gamepad or the keyboard. Install it to your home screen and it opens full screen and plays offline, for the commute or the meeting that should have been an email.
THE OFFICE
MEET THE CAST ›18 coworkers, one building, and everybody wants the same promotion. Pick anyone for their stats, unique moves, strings and frame data.
TEMP
First day. knows the basics
- 1, 2, 3, 4NEON TORNADO
- →→ 2COMET CROSS
- ↓2, 1, 2, 4SKY SPIKE
- →→ 1COFFEE RUN
- ↓1, ↓1, 2PAPER CUT
- 1, 2, 2REPLY ALL
- ← 1TICKET CLOSED
- ← 2REBOOT
- 1, 3, 2CTRL ALT DEL
- →→ 3EXPRESS SLIDE
- →→ 4DROP-OFF KNEE
- 1, 1, 3SAME DAY
- → 1+3ESCORT
- ← 2SHOULDER CHECK
- 1, 2, 1LOCKDOWN
- → 3WET FLOOR
- ← 3MOP SPIN
- 3, 3, 3AISLE 3
- 1, 2, 2PERFORMANCE REVIEW
- ← 3DOWNSIZING
- 3, 2, 3TOP-DOWN
- ↓ 3FINE PRINT
- ↓3, 4BALANCE SHEET
- ↓3, 3, 2WRITE-OFF
- ↓3 in airSQUEEGEE DIVE
- ← 3UPDRAFT
- 1, 3, 4STREAK FREE
- ← 1WRITE-UP
- ← 2MANDATORY TRAINING
- 2, 1, 2EXIT INTERVIEW
- →→ 1COLD CALL
- ← 3THE PITCH
- → 1+3CLOSE THE DEAL
- ← 1ESPRESSO SHOT
- ← 2POUR OVER
- 1, 2, 1LATTE ART
- ← 2CLEAVER
- ← 1FLAMBÉ
- 1, 1, 4EIGHTY-SIX
- ← 1 (hold)TREE POSE
- ← 1, 4CRANE KICK
- ← 1, 3ROOT SWEEP
- → 1LIVE WIRE
- ↘ 3GROUND FAULT
- 2, 1, 2SHORT CIRCUIT
- → 1PLEASE HOLD
- ← 1+3TRANSFER
- 3, 1, 1HANG UP
- ← 1OBJECTION!
- → 1CROSS-EXAMINATION
- 2, 3, 2CLOSING ARGUMENT
- ← 1GOLDEN PARACHUTE
- ↘ 2HOSTILE TAKEOVER
- 2, 1, 2STOCK SPLIT
LIVE NOW
Quick matches being fought right now. Pick one to watch, about 3 seconds behind the action.
THE BOOKS
HR keeps a file on everyone: who gets picked, who wins, and who can't get past whom. Every finished match goes in it, with no names attached. The numbers load from the game's server, and they aren't available right now.
MOST PICKED
- Pick share by fighter shows up here.
BEST WIN RATES
- Win rates show up here once a fighter has enough matches.
MATCHUP CHART
Every fighter against every other: how often the row beats the column.
The chart needs the game's server. Meanwhile, every fighter's page has its stats and frame data.
HOW TO PLAY
1LEFT PUNCHjab · key U
2RIGHT PUNCHcross · key I
3LEFT KICKsnap kick · key J
4RIGHT KICKroundhouse · key K
One button per limb and a direction. That's all the controls there are. The rest is reading the person across from you.
THE RULES ›Guard, throws, stamina, the parry, getting up, and the controls for keyboard, gamepad and touch.
THE PHILOSOPHY ›Why timing beats speed, why mashing loses, and why the harder they commit, the harder they fall.
STRATEGY ›What beats what, how to spend your stamina, and how to handle each coworker on the way up.
PLAY A FRIEND ONLINE
No accounts and nothing to download. From the main menu pick VERSUS ONLINE, choose your fighter, and then one of these.
QUICK MATCH
- One of you picks HOST A GAME and gets a four-letter room code and a link.
- Send the link, or read the code out loud. Codes skip 0, O, 1, I and L so nobody mixes them up.
- The other opens the link, or picks JOIN A GAME and types the code.
When a match ends, REMATCH keeps the same fighters and NEW CHARACTERS goes back to the pick. The room keeps a running tally until somebody leaves.
CREW ROOMS
- Pick CREATE CREW ROOM and name your crew. You get a link that stays good as long as people keep using it.
- Drop it in the group chat. Everybody who opens it lands in the crew's lobby.
- Press PLAY when you're ready. The next two ready players fight, and the winner stays on.
The lobby keeps standings for the whole crew: wins, losses, your record against each person, and everyone's favorite fighter.
WHY IT FEELS LOCAL
Online fights use rollback netcode. Each side plays its own input right away, guesses the other's, and quietly rewinds and replays the last few frames when the guess was wrong. The connection goes peer to peer when it can, and through Cloudflare when two phones can't reach each other.
Want to keep your crews on a new phone? PROFILE in the online menu saves them to your email.
ABOUT AND CREDITS
Neon Stick Fight is a side project by Scott Pierce. It's free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, and the whole thing, from the rig to the netcode, is on GitHub. If you serve a changed version to players, the AGPL asks you to share your source with them too.
The animation aims at Xiao Xiao, the old stick-figure fight cartoons, and the office tower is lit like a modern 2D game.
Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.
- MUSIC ENGINEStrudel by the Strudel contributors, AGPL-3.0. Source at codeberg.org/uzu/strudel. The game's tracks are written as Strudel patterns.
- FONTSBungee by David Jonathan Ross and Teko by the Indian Type Foundry, both SIL Open Font License.
- INSPIRATIONXiao Xiao, Zhu Zhiqiang's stick-figure fight series, set the bar for the animation. No art from it ships with the game.