Karate Survivor is an 80s-tastic battler about building your own combos

Karate Survivor | Launch Trailer - YouTube Karate Survivor | Launch Trailer - YouTube
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A horde battling roguelite inspired by 80s action movies recently released: Karate Survivor throws you up against hordes of mooks and tough elite bosses as you customize and combine your very own combo sequence of attacks into a punchy arrangement all your own. The fast runs at the game's five levels are pretty intense, encouraging you to use not just your attacks but the environment to take down foes.

And you really can use the world around you. Which I love. I've seen chairs, microwaves, scaffolds, water towers, mops, a tuna, cement mixers, and more used as weapons in Karate Survivor. That's on top of the various attacks you earn and slot into your custom combo while you level up in runs at each level.

Developers Alawar have also announced that—though it's not officially approved by Valve yet—Karate Survivor is also working on Steam Deck.

"From the start, we’ve been optimizing Karate Survivor to ensure a smooth experience when playing on the Steam Deck," said Alawar. It noted that all UI elements, menus, and icons should scale correctly, that the performance should be good, and that Karate Survivor was designed top-down with gamepad compatibility in mind.

You can find Karate Survivor on Steam for $5.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.