Not on many highlight reels

Designer: Giorgos Eleftheriadis & Theofilos Koutroubis | Publisher: Drawlab Entertainment

In an arena-style fighting game, you would expect to take control of a fighter and unleash your arsenal of moves and weapons on your opponent to win the match. Fired Up flips the script on this concept and places you into the audience instead. During the game you are watching the fight, cheering for the competitors, and encouraging them to perform very particular moves in order to cash in your highlights and win the secret bets you’ve made throughout the match.

Bets are mostly straightforward and open to all players. They involve predicting who will win or will be knocked out first and reward players who take the risk of betting early in the fight. Highlights, on the other hand, are more specific and each player has a few they aim for each round. For example, they may ask for a fight between a contestant with low and high morale or for a certain number of damage to be dealt in a single attack. Morale, attack targets, fight order, damage and block values – all these factors can be influenced by the players in order to orchestrate an exact event that matches a requirement on their highlight cards. This is done in the first phase of the game by rolling dice and applying their results to different fighters in the arena. In the second phase, the characters fight each other through dice combat, where players roll for the attacking and defending sides and then assign damage and block results.