-In the menu: d-pad or left stick moves the highlight, A presses it, Start begins the duel, B closes this panel. Plug in any time; keyboard and mouse keep working alongside it. A skips cinematics and moves dialogue on.
Pick 2 Player under Mode. Two controllers: one each. One controller: P1 on keyboard and mouse, P2 on the controller. No controllers, share the keyboard:
Press any key on a touch device to switch to keyboard mode.
Land strikes on the kick for bonus damage. Ticks slide into the pink box on the beat bar. Perfect, Good, Ok or Off is graded in milliseconds.
On-beat hits, parries and clash wins fill your DROP meter. When full, your next drop lasts 4 bars: faster, stronger, wider timing.
Block in the last 120 ms before a hit to parry and open a punish window.
Blade flash: yellow is a quick swing, red crushes a guard, so parry or dodge it. Dodge just before a hit for a perfect dodge, then attack to riposte. Knock rivals into the ring edge for a wall splat. Drops send out a bass blast: block, dodge or back off. The thin cyan bar under stamina is poise: keep landing hits to break your rival's stance, then hit again for an EXECUTION.
Every style has its own light chain (tap attack in rhythm): Neurofunk diagonal, backhand, 360 spin, leaping rising cut. Liquid lunge thrust, wrist flick, circle cut, riposte thrust. Jump Up two-handed overhead chop, power sweep, uppercut launcher. Jungle broad sweep, overhead slam, spinning backhand, leg sweep that trips. Halftime (two sabers) right, left, right, X. Leftfield (staff) cut, rear-blade spin, rising cut. Techstep wields the Split-Staff Greatsword: two hilt halves magnetically locked into one double-bladed staff. Locked, it sweeps wide (a three-hit chain of wide whirls, two-hit heavies); its Special, Shift, splits it into twin sabers with a dashing X-slash, giving four-hit chains that hit bosses 15% harder; Shift again locks it back with a full whirl. Minimal wields the Great-Saber Stave, a long blast-proof haft with needle-thin spikes at both tips: the longest reach in the game, tip hits land harder and every hit shoves the rival back to stave length; its chain is a thrust, a rotational spin, a vaulting overhead strike and a double spin; its Special, Vault, springs you clear of a crowding rival (sweeping them back) or over the gap onto a far one. Footwork wields the Obsidian Ring Shoto, a saber-tonfa: snap stab, hook cut, ring elbow, then a three-stab flurry. Holding block with it is a forearm guard: light blows glance off (no chip, almost no stamina) and leave you on the elbow, and thrown blades are swatted back. Its Special is Ring Guard, a counter stance that catches any blow on the tonfa and answers with elbow and flurry. Roller wears the Hidden Blade Gauntlet, a heavy vambrace with a compact emitter along the forearm: its chain is jab, cross, hook on the fists, then the short blade fires past the knuckles for a rising uppercut. The blade also comes out for the heavy, the lunge, executions and clashes, then snaps back in. Throw is a grapple instead: up close it catches the rival's collar and tosses them over the hip, straight through a block. Its Special, Ghost, vanishes and reappears behind the rival for a blade takedown that hits 40% harder from behind.
EDGE TEETER: a hit that leaves you on the lip of an open edge leaves you wobbling there for two beats, and the music drops to the bass. Any clean hit sends you over. Dodge ON THE BEAT to spring back to safety (off the beat, you keep wobbling); hold on and you step back in. Caught a rival teetering? Hit them now.
CLUTCH: under 20% health you hear your own heartbeat on the beat, the track softens and the screen edges pulse red.
Story Season 2: The Silence opens once Season 1 is finished. A new villain, VANTA, is stealing the sound: five chapters across three new arenas (the Night Line, Pirate Tower and the Null Room) with new rules (Dead Air, Echo), and a three-phase boss with a Graviton-Stabilized Heavy Claymore (slow, crushing swings whose shockwaves break any block; a miss leaves her OVERCOMMITTED, so dodge and punish) who takes the music, steps through the dark and shakes the floor. Big Larry teaches you the Bass Force along the way: press F (pad LT, touch FORCE) to push a rival off their feet up close, or, once you have learned it, to pull them in from range. It costs stamina and recharges in 6 seconds, and you keep it in every mode except 2 player. Season 2 also unlocks new hair (ponytail, spikes, veil), skins (Signal blue, Mascot pink, Null ash), outfits and the Null blade.
Music (Music card in the menu): 18 Free Love Digi tracks play as the soundtrack, one per fight. Each fight starts as the track's drop lands, the beat bar follows the track's own tempo, and your DROP adds a riser and a lift over the music. Choose FLD tracks (shuffle) or Pick a track (tap one to hear its drop). The menu is quiet: the music starts with the fight, and every change of track is blended like a DJ mix.
Training room (Mode list): a dummy you set to Stand, Guard, Swing or Fight (keys 1 to 4). It never dies and you never lose. R resets, B fills your drop meter. Every hit is explained on screen: beat timing in ms, damage, how late a block was for a parry, plus your style's frame data.
Personality: every style has its own round-start entrance, a taunt on T (a little drop meter and crowd love, but you're open for a second) and its own victory pose. Pick a visor or mask under Your look.
PHOTO MODE: press C in a fight (or Photo mode in the pause menu). Freeze or slow the action to 0.1x, step frame by frame, drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom, focus either fighter, hide the bar, and take a screenshot.
Knockback: light hits barely move a rival, but each hit you chain pushes harder. Finishers, heavies (charge them!), launchers and specials send them flying, and landing a whole chain is a FULL COMBO that launches the finisher furthest. Big launches skid across the floor, smash props, splat into walls or fly off open edges.
Arenas: smash fighters into amps, railings, speaker walls and crystals to break them. Where an edge is open (rooftop gaps, smashed railings or speaker walls, anywhere on Orbit), a hard knockback sends your rival over for a RING OUT, which wins the round. You can't walk off by accident. Everything dents and cracks before it breaks, smokes once it's hurt, and leaves wreckage behind; a broken railing shows a hazard strip. The Warehouse barricades bend but never give. Bass Blasts, Air Slams, executions and the Laser Sweep smash props too.
STORY: "The Drop That Went Dark". Big Larry has vanished with a dub plate that turns blades red. Seven chapters across the city (Warehouse, Rooftop, the Vinyl Vault, Neon Pier, Dub Yard, Orbit, the Dark Room), each with a twist: ring outs only, on-beat damage, half-step, a laser that runs all fight, 35-second rounds. Clear chapters to unlock outfits (Bomber, Tracksuit, Haori, Raver mesh), headphones and shades, braids and undercut hair, and the Dark Room arena. The finale ends on a choice; each ending unlocks its own outfit. Click, Space or Enter moves the dialogue on; Esc or Skip jumps ahead.
Cinematics: the blow that wins a match plays a finishing cinematic (the hit in slow motion, the fall or the drop over the edge, then the winner's moment). In Story, every chapter has its own Free Love Digi track (muffled under the dialogue, then the filter opens and the drop lands on FIGHT!), scenes cut between the speakers like a film, the champion and Selecta Sam talk through the fight, a red-bladed champion surges in the deciding round, chapters open with a fly-over and the champion's entrance, beaten champions kneel while the red burns out of their blades, and the finale stages Larry's fall and your choice. Click or press Space to skip any cinematic.
SUPERS: while your own DROP is active, Special becomes your style's super, once per drop: Reese Overdrive, Tidal Flow, Meteor Drop, Amen Breakdown, Crossfire Storm, Cyclone, Dark Drop. A short invulnerable power-up, then a blade combo with its own camera that ends in a launcher. Fire it up close: it can whiff, a guard eats it (guard crush) and a parry cancels it outright.
Physics knockdowns: launches, KOs and ring outs hand the body to physics, so fighters tumble, fold over barricades and props, and land however they land, then get back up.
The boss: Big Larry has gone dark. Hooded, red blade, low guard. His big swings carry super armour (your hits land but don't stop him), though poise damage still breaks his stance. Force Push launches you (block to get shoved instead, or dodge it); Force Pull yanks you into his blade from range. At half health he RAGES: faster, harder, every swing armoured.
Every DROP flips the arena for 4 bars: LASER SWEEP (a floor beam circles twice, so jump, dodge or stand in the centre), OVERDRIVE (longer blades, faster swings for both) or HALF-STEP (the beat halves, everything hits harder). SURVIVAL mode: one round per rival, no end; your health carries over with +25 between waves and a boss every 5th wave. Like Arcade, every point rides a live multiplier (up to x4), you pick a boost after every wave you clear, the boss rotates through the bosses you have met in story, and each boss wave is followed by the SMASH THE RIG bonus stage.