Soul Fighters

Gameplay video

Overview

Soul Fighters is a fast-paced online 2D fighting game with a Kickstarter-backed community. Competitive fighters demand frame-perfect inputs and identical simulation on every machine, so the entire combat layer had to be deterministic and netcode-first from the ground up.

My role & the team

Contributed as a gameplay and multiplayer programmer alongside the project's art and design team.

What I built

• Implemented the core combat systems and a flexible character ability framework.
• Integrated Photon Quantum 2 for fast-paced, rollback-safe multiplayer combat.
• Handled input buffering, prediction logic and deterministic combat resolution.
• Built a flexible state-machine for character moves using Unity Animator layers and transitions.
• Created custom debug tools to inspect save data, manipulate game state and reproduce online edge cases.
• Developed UI systems for the in-match and menu flows.

The technical challenge

Fighting games are unforgiving: any divergence between two players' simulations produces desyncs and unfair outcomes. The combat had to feel instant locally while remaining perfectly deterministic across the network.

My engineering approach

I built the combat on Photon Quantum 2's predict-rollback model, driving moves through a deterministic state machine with buffered inputs and prediction. Custom debug tooling let me replay and reproduce edge cases that only surfaced online, so desyncs could be isolated and fixed quickly.

Result

A responsive, rollback-safe fighting core that holds up under competitive play — the foundation the game's Kickstarter campaign was built on.