Ragdoll Arena

A side-view arena shooter where the physics do most of the killing. Weapons have knockback, the characters are ragdolls with no stiffness, and the arenas are small and full of hard edges — so the reliable way to win is not to shoot somebody until they die but to shoot them into something. That makes the aiming goal unusual. Shooting at an opponent's centre does damage; shooting at an angle that throws them at a wall, a hazard, or out of the arena does considerably more, and the good players are aiming at trajectories rather than at bodies. Your own recoil moves you too, which means every shot is a small repositioning decision and firing blindly puts you somewhere you did not choose. Rounds are seconds long, the arenas change, and the whole thing looks faintly absurd at all times because the ragdolls never hold a pose. Two-player on one keyboard is the best mode, since reading a person's commitment is the skill and the computer commits predictably. It runs on anything and plays with three inputs per player. There is a progression of arenas behind it, each with a different arrangement of walls and hazards, so what you learn transfers as an instinct for reading a room rather than as a set of moves. Matches are over quickly and nobody is ever far behind.