Heavy Bag
Strike to the beat. Heavy Bag turns a kickboxing session into a gesture-driven rhythm game: jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts, roundhouses and leg kicks, every one a tap or a swipe, all in crunchy pixel art, in two-minute rounds. Built for iPhone.
The Game
Cues light up on a diamond; you answer with the right strike at the right moment. The screen is split by a line you can drag: tap above it for a jab, below it for a cross, swipe across for hooks and roundhouses, swipe up or down for uppercuts, and switch between Head, Body and Legs with the toggle under your other thumb. A fighter keeps both hands up for the whole fight; here you keep both thumbs on the screen, one striking, one resting on the toggle. Keep your finger down and change direction to chain a combo without lifting. Twenty-two strikes, and the gesture set is tuned until it feels like second nature.
Timing is everything. Perfect, Good, Normal, or a miss that breaks your streak and costs a heart. Every clean string pays: tokens, experience, rating, a name on the board. Once the rhythm is yours the bag stops being a target. It becomes the fight.
The Diamond
Every cue in Heavy Bag lands on one diamond, and every shape on it is a gesture. The two rectangles in the middle are your taps. The arrows above and below are the uppercuts, each pointing the way you swipe. The four side wedges are hooks above the Line and kicks below it. When a zone lights up, its colour tells your other thumb where the slider goes: red for head, yellow for body, blue for legs.
That is the whole language. A cue fires, you slide the toggle to its colour, you answer with the shape's gesture while it is lit, and it flashes green. Chains light one zone after the next. A double lights two at once and takes a single flowing touch, up then down without lifting. The diamond assembles like this at the start of every level, and the Controls page in the pause menu draws it again whenever you want the reminder.
The diamond is a proprietary cueing system, built for this game alone. It did not start out looking like this. It began as a sketch: a handful of boxes on paper, drawn to find out whether one cue could carry both the strike and the target without a word of text. Every strike that went into the game pushed it further, adding the arrows for the uppercuts, the wedges split by the Line, a colour for each target. It was redrawn, tested and redrawn again until it settled into the shape above.
Ways to Fight
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Career
Five levels, from Fundamentals to Apex. Each one is a class with your Sensei, a drill to groove it, and a challenge that has to be beaten to open the next. Stars pay out tokens.
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Offline
Two minutes, five hearts, one score. Pick from fifteen gyms around the world and chase your personal best.
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Compete online
Sparring puts you in a live 1v1 on the same cue stream as your opponent, two-minute rounds, higher score wins. Fight Night and Undisputed are knockout tournaments. Call Out a friend by name. Wins move your rating and your fight points on the Hall of Fame.
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Locker Room
Thirty avatars, four skin tones, and glove and shorts colours that retint your fighter live. Earn tokens by playing, or watch a rewarded ad.
Screenshots
Play It Early
Heavy Bag is in closed beta on TestFlight for iPhone (iOS 17 or later). Testers get every build first and a direct line to the developer.