How to Play Dojo Duel
Dojo Duel is a one-on-one arcade fighting game in the classic tournament style: your fighter stands on one side of the screen, your opponent on the other, and the first to win two rounds takes the match. Each round runs on a 99-second clock with health bars in the top corners — knock your rival's bar to zero for the K.O., or hold the health lead when time runs out. A dead-level tie on the clock awards the round to both fighters, which can push a match into a sudden-death decider.
On a keyboard you move with the left and right arrows and jump with up. Hold S for a high guard and hold the down arrow for a low guard. Z throws a fast light attack, X a slower, heavier strike, and C fires your special; P or Escape pauses the match. Your modifiers change what comes out: holding down turns the light into a low kick and the heavy into a sweep, while attacking as you walk toward your opponent turns them into a rushing jab or a shoulder rush — longer reach and bigger knockback, at the price of slower recovery on a miss. On a phone or tablet, on-screen pads appear automatically: movement, jump and the ▼ LOW crouch under your left thumb, attacks and BLOCK under your right.
Guarding is a height game, not a wall. A high guard stops jabs, heavies and rushing attacks; a low guard stops low kicks and sweeps; specials hit mid, so either guard turns them away. Match the height and the hit does no damage at all — there is no chip damage in Dojo Duel, though a blocked blow still shoves you backwards. Guess wrong and the attack breaks straight through the guard and lands clean, which is why nobody can simply stand and block forever. You are not locked in place while guarding either: an attack input takes priority and fires you out of a held block.
The power meter under your health bar tracks the whole exchange — landing a hit adds 8 points, taking one adds 5, and blocking one adds 2, so even a defensive round builds toward something. When the meter fills, your special is armed, and knowing when to spend it is the real skill: a special thrown at a guarding opponent is a meter wasted, while one timed against a whiffed heavy can swing an entire round.
Winning fights pays coins, and coins are how your fighters grow. The Ladder is the main event: eight rungs of increasingly sharp AI opponents, with palette-swapped Master versions of the roster — darker colors, gold trim and 12% more health — waiting from rung five on. Your run score climbs with every rung cleared, deeper rungs are worth more, and finishing fast, finishing healthy or taking a round without a scratch each add on top; your best run goes to the leaderboard. Free Spar is the relaxed alternative — choose Easy, Normal or Hard, earn half the coins, post no score — which makes it the ideal place to learn a new fighter or test a freshly trained skill, since spar wins still count toward finishing dojo training.
Meet the Fighters
Blaze is the fire monk and the roster's balanced all-rounder — even speed, 100 health, the Comet Dash — a flaming forward lunge that closes distance — and the Ember Barrage, a light-light-heavy string that ends in a burst of flame. Ripple the water dancer is quicker on her feet with lighter hits and 92 health; her Tide Wave rolls a crest across the stage, and her Flow Chain strings three rapid lights together while refilling her meter. Boulder the earth wrestler is the tank: slow, 118 health, crushing heavy attacks, the Quake Slam shockwave, and the Aftershock, a heavy-heavy combo whose second slam staggers whoever it catches. Zephyr the wind acrobat is the fastest and most fragile fighter in the dojo at 84 health; the Cyclone Rise is a rising spin that beats opponents out of the air, and the Gale Dance weaves light-heavy-light into a three-hit flourish. From rung three of the ladder upward, opponents start running their own signature combos against you.
The Dojo and the Shop
Coins can be spent two ways, and they feel very different. Shop upgrades are instant and global: Hearty adds 10% maximum health per rank, Lucky Coins adds 20% to your earnings per rank, and Second Wind lets you survive one K.O. per ladder run at 15% health. The Dojo is slower and personal — a per-fighter tree of nine skills across three branches, where buying a skill puts that fighter into training and the technique only switches on after their next win. Deep in the branches wait the game-changers: Counter Stance staggers an attacker when you snap into the matching guard at the last instant, Guard Breaker lets your heavy attacks crush a turtling guard, and each fighter's EX Special evolves their signature move into its master form.
Tips and Strategy
- Finish your fighter's signature route. Any landed light can be cancelled into a heavy for a quick two-hit string, but each fighter also has a named route of their own — press the next attack during the follow-through and the last blow lands as a finisher that hits harder and bursts in your fighter's colors. A blocked hit or a whiff breaks the chain, so start a combo off a confirmed hit rather than a guess.
- Read the stance, then switch heights. A guard only covers the height it is set to, so an opponent who never changes is free damage — and the same is true of you. Blocking correctly costs nothing and feeds your meter, so keep switching rather than committing to one guard.
- Alternate high, low, and rushing attacks. A low kick, a sweep, and a shoulder rush all arrive at different heights and ranges. Cycling between them is how you crack an opponent who blocks well; leaning on one of them is how you get read.
- Punish whiffed heavies. Heavy attacks have long recovery. When an opponent swings one through empty air, that is your free window — step in with a light-into-heavy combo before they can guard.
- Learn each special's counter. Jump over Boulder's Quake Slam, block Ripple's Tide Wave, stay grounded and guard against Zephyr's Cyclone Rise, and back away from Blaze's Comet Dash range before it starts.
- Train before the Masters. Rungs five through eight block far more of your predictable attacks. A fighter with Quick Recovery and an EX Special climbs those rungs dramatically more easily — bank coins on early runs and finish a training branch before pushing deep.
- Chase perfect rounds. Winning a ladder round without taking a single hit pays a 25-coin bonus and adds 500 points to your rung score. Against early rungs, patient blocking and whiff punishment make perfects very achievable.
