I'm back with a post that came with something very interesting. Before we get started, I want to say Happy New Year to each and every one of you. We closed out 2025 and rang in 2026 very strong. Here's to another great year.
But today, I want to mention now is something I came across is the new indie 2v2 tag fighter that is in a sense, an indie 2XKO. That's right, an indie 2XKO. Son Studios has started development of their 2v2 crossover tag fighter, Saturday AM: Battle Manga. It is a 2v2 tag fighter that features a diverse roster of characters from various Saturday AM titles like Apple Black, Clock Striker, Hammer, Soul Beat and many more.
Right off the bat, the trailer opens up with Saturday AM manga dropping. As we ripped through the trailer, we saw the dramatic zoom when a launcher and a grounder land like in Dragon Ball FighterZ. The game's development cycle starts out with the first four characters being Sano from Apple Black, Cast from Clock Striker, Stud from Hammer and Dante from Soul Beat.
The trailer showcased its gorgeous visuals. We saw words pop up in game. That's because of having visuals taken from the English-written manga that is produced in the United States, not in Japan, meaning that they will have fully voiced English VO according to the hub on Steam. In fact, these visuals and the gameplay are so dang gorgeous that they resemble the art style and cel shading from Guilty Gear Xrd that is the start of bringing its visuals and art style to future fighting games. Just look at the visuals here. We also saw Cast kicking some butt with her gauntlet.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised that Cast would be inspired by Vi and Ekko down the line. I mean, she is quote unquote black and scrappy like Ekko. I think that's something that Ezreal could have if he ever comes to 2XKO. The trailer ends with telling that the game's demo is coming soon, so we'll have to wait and find out when we're gonna play this 2XKO-esque indie 2v2 crossover tag fighter and its demo.
We seen crossover fighting games and they're are always so magical, especially in the case of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. However, nothing has ever got as popular as it did with Guilty Gear Strive. Even so, we lost our crossover fighting game with Shonen Jump characters because the game's quality became dull. Thankfully, the one crossover fighting game we're getting is being developed by an indie dev. There are two reasons why this game is being developed by an indie developer and why it's a good thing.
The first reason is to have less money and less memory than AAA. They tend to avoid providing microtransactions and have their games reasonably priced so that players wouldn't spend extra money on a game they already purchased or spend $70 games, and they can use less memory. Indie games are like AAA games, but have less money and less intensive memory and technology.
The second reason is so that devs can have the freedom to develop this game however they wish and however they want. Without the constraints of a AAA studio, they can be able to take creative risks to bring unique innovations to this game like making it have up to four players to provide Duo Play on both offline and online to make it truly an indie 2XKO.
I think what's really cool is that since Cast is inspired by Ekko and Vi because of the gauntlets and being scrappy, we can see future characters that could be inspired by the characters in the current roster in 2XKO, like Darius, Ahri, Warwick, Blitzcrank, Jinx, Illaoi and even Caitlyn Kiramman, which would also be cool for one of the Saturday AM characters that wields a rifle. And Katarina, though she is not in the roster yet, but she is confirmed though. It's Sofdec and ADX being integrated into it. But one character that uses a hammer is Stud from Hammer, and if Poppy comes to 2XKO, she'll take some of the playstyle from Stud.
Since Evo 2026 is in order, the developers who are developing this game could attend there to give us a development update regarding it and possibly revealing new characters during Friday's Evo Showcase. We saw updates for a bunch of fighting games in the Evo Showcase, so Battle Manga could be showcased there in Evo. See, Evo is the E3 for fighting games that became the source of the ever-thriving FGC. In fact, it's the summertime Christmas for fighting game fans across the globe that provides fighting game news, reveals, demos and booths for games that are not out yet.
But the demo version of Saturday AM: Battle Manga is not the only thing that is coming in 2026 because a lot of things are also coming in 2026 and I have the post that talks about it. If you're interested in seeing what is on the docket for fighting game fans in 2026, here's the link below. Have a happy 2026, everyone.
