The price to pay for immortality is to live forever.

Some people in the Bone Republic kill time by training their mind and body to one day wield the Elevator Button, a supposed Ultimate Artifact of Infinite Power. Skeptics call it a literary device created solely out of desperation by a culture to give infinite life a purpose, while others call it salvation.

Regardless of the truth, the Elevator Button motivates the whimsical cast of this 2D love letter to classic arcade stick fighters to improve themselves enough to reach it.

Friday Night Knockout is designed to be mechanically complex enough to satisfy veteran stick fighter players while holding back on excessive memorization to be accessible to new players to the genre. With fewer combos to memorize than usual, new players can jump into the game and not feel like the only thing in their way is knowledge of the indigestible amount of button sequences to keep track of.

Welcome to the Bone Republic

Welcome to the Bone Republic! Informally known as the Bone Zone, the Bone Republic is a plane of existence perpetually in limbo. It's been interdimensionally sitting beneath everyone's feet since the dawn of time, collecting dust, as well as forgotten objects of unmeasured power, people from a variety of backgrounds, and creatures of unknown origin. Strangely enough, the epicenter of the plane is the calmest, while the further one someone finds themselves, the closer they venture to the Event Horizon, where chaos takes the reigns. With objects falling from the sky without notice and rifts opening to unimaginable planes, the laws of physics become a mere suggestion to anyone who dares approach it.

The plane is unforgiving and untamed, yet in the midst of the chaos lie two distinct powers that be: June and the Elevator Button. Many speculate June's origins. The self-elected leader of the Bone Republic has equally unknown abilities and intentions. While she casually makes appearances at various locations in the Bone Zone, she successfully created a bureaucracy, built a transportation system, and funded the Friday Night Knockout League from nothing. The Elevator button is even more mysterious. Many deny its existence, and few claim to have seen it with their own eyes. Everyone, however, agrees that it's an artifact of immeasurable power.

Friday Night Knockout geographically spans the entire Bone Zone, from the peaceful town, Rio Claro, to the middle of the Event Horizon, in Belo Horizonte. It also has characters quite familiar with the plane and to fresh new faces.