Planned Release Date: Oct 12, 2026

About This Demo

THIS IS THE DEMO VERSION OF CARDBOARD GLADIATORS. Not all content is unlocked in the demo. Play Act 1 with five gladiators: Troll, Vampire, Goat, Dwarf and Deep One. Other gladiators and Acts 2–3 are reserved for the full game. The presentation below uses the full game's visuals, which may show content unavailable in the demo.

Collect items with different effects and combine them to create powerful chains and unexpected interactions. Earn items and money from PvP battles, purchase equipment from shops, and experiment at forges by combining items to create entirely new ones.

Discover new forge recipes and transform the items you find into equipment that opens up different effects, synergies, and strategies.

Before each PvP battle, choose how many of your remaining bets to place on your team. Committing more bets increases the potential rewards, but also puts more of your run at risk. Your bets also function as your lives—if you lose all of them, your run ends.

Position and sequence your items carefully to control where and when their effects activate. Once combat begins, the battle plays out entirely automatically, so victory depends on the crew, equipment, and activation order you prepared beforehand.

Normal encounters pit your crew against teams created by other players through asynchronous PvP. You do not need to wait for another player to be online: their prepared team provides the opposition while the battle resolves automatically.

Assemble a crew of three from the five gladiators available in the demo: Troll, Vampire, Goat, Dwarf and Deep One. Every gladiator has a unique fighting style, creating a wide range of team compositions and item combinations. Build around a single strategy or combine gladiators whose strengths complement one another.

Recruit available gladiators from gladiator camps during runs and experiment with different crews and item builds across repeated runs. The full game adds more gladiators and further progression through leagues with increasingly skilled opponents and a greater variety of PvE bosses.

The demo includes Act 1 and its powerful PvE bosses. The full game expands each run to three acts, each with a boss to defeat; a successful full-game run takes approximately 90 minutes. Acts 2 and 3 are not unlocked in this demo. Try different crews, routes and builds across repeated demo runs.

Along the way, choose between PvP battles, shops, forges, gladiator camps, and other opportunities to strengthen your team. Purchase equipment, experiment with item combinations to forge entirely new items, recruit available gladiators, and prepare for the bosses waiting in Act 1.

Balance immediate rewards against the evolving needs of your build. Pursue valuable encounters when your crew is strong, search for the items your strategy needs, or take a safer route when survival matters most.

KEY FEATURES

• PvPvE inventory-management autobattling with asynchronous multiplayer
  
• Fully automatic battles determined by your crew, equipment, positioning, and item activation order
  
• Act 1 and its PvE bosses in the demo; three-act runs in the full game
  
• Five playable gladiators in the demo, with teams composed of three fighters
  
• Items with combinable effects and powerful synergies
  
• Forges where items can be combined to create entirely new items, effects, and build possibilities
  
• A risk-versus-reward betting system where your bets also serve as your lives—lose them all and the run ends
  
• Shops for purchasing equipment with money earned during battles
  
• Gladiator camps for recruiting unlocked fighters
  
• The full game offers further league progression and a greater variety of bosses
  
• The demo covers Act 1; a complete full-game run takes approximately 90 minutes
  
• Strong replayability through varied crews, items, routes, and opponents

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

AI helps us bring our creative ideas to life. In true indie fashion, we are two starving game developers—figuratively, and occasionally quite literally. It’s the only way for us to produce the art we need while saving our remaining coins for developing the game. If the budget grows, we’ll consider buying the better cheese from the local market.