Stabfish IO

An underwater arena built on charging rather than on growing. Your fish has a tusk, so does everything else, and a collision is resolved by who was travelling faster and at what angle — which makes this a game of committed passes rather than of accumulating mass. That changes the rhythm from the usual arena formula. Boost is limited and recharges, so you cannot be fast continuously, and the skill is choosing which passes to commit to and which to decline — a head-on charge against a faster opponent is simply a loss, and disengaging costs nothing but pride. Corpses leave trophies that are worth collecting, which creates contested spaces after every kill. There is progression through unlockable fish with different speeds and tusk lengths, which gives the repeated rounds somewhere to lead. Matches are continuous rather than timed, the lobbies fill with real players, and the presentation is clear enough to read angles at speed. It plays with a mouse or a drag, runs on weak hardware, and is more aggressive than most games in its format.