Gladihoppers is a game that caught my attention when it was first posted to our forums in early November of last year. Developer Dreamon Studios meant for the forum thread to act as a mini devlog and I figured the game looked really cool but I’d wait for a bit more information to be posted before I told you all about it. Then Dreamon decided to take a break and not work on the game for most of December and January. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Well, they’ve popped back into the thread announcing the game is in active development again, and it continues to look awesome. Gladihoppers is a physics-based gladiator battling game that uses pixel art sprites for the characters and background props but 3D polygonal graphics for the arenas, which gives it this really cool pop-up book look. Here’s the newest animated gif for Gladihoppers, as well as some of the older ones posted previously to that thread, to give you a better idea of what the game is like.

As you can see, the combat in Gladihoppers is pretty simplistic but there’s some more complex damage calculations going on under the surface which will be determined on things like where on the body a blow lands, the speed of the characters when a hit takes place, the type of armor being worn, and more. I love that these types of silly physics games can end up being rather complex, so if you want to read some more detail on the damage system you can do so in this specific post. Dreamon Studios is no stranger to silly physics-based games either, with the likes of Bouncy Basketball (Free) and Hockey Hysteria (Free) under their belt. Gladihoppers though, with its gladiator theme and over the top brutality, looks right up my alley compared to most games like this that are based on real sports. No release window has been revealed yet but you can follow along with Gladihopper’s progress in our forums for the time being.