FERAL STREAM is a fighting game made in 2D FIGHTER MAKER 2002 for Fighting Game April Jam 2026. 

This game features two characters, Crumanda and Rat-Tricia, and three buttons. Button 1 is for light attacks. Button 2 is for heavy attacks. Button 3 is for throws. 

Rat-Tricia (the angry one) has a more traditional FG style of gameplay. She can cancel most of her weak normals into simple specials, like the rising uppercut on 8L, or her forward punch attacks. She also has an invincible reversal kick bound to 1H, although it requires meter to use. She can also forward and backwards dash, and cancel the forward dash into her jumping light attack for burst damage.

Crumanda (the joyous one) operates a bit more like a 3-D fighter character. Many of  her moves have extensions that work whether or not they hit opponents. In other words, she can spam strings, although she only has a few at the moment, chiefly  L H 2H and 6H2H. She is much larger than Ratricia and can use her size to her advantage for longer pokes and sweeps. She has a large amount of command normals, and her 4L has armor during its start-up.

Both characters in FERAL STREAM have access to unique supers! 

Rat-Tricia can initiate hers once her gauge is full by inputting 2-6-L! (Fireball Motion). She can also cancel into it from many of her attacks.

If she lands her super initiation move on her opponent, both players will enter GUESS FOR GAME, a game of chicken where both players will get access to a super powerful attack that they can input once. However, there's a catch. Being in the start-up of your super attack also makes you invincible to your opponent's attack, with players only becoming vulnerable after the start-up frames.   Try to be the player who strikes second! 

Crum's super move is a bit more straightforward. It's a more powerful variant of her blocking attack that only works if the other player attacks her while she is in its start-up. She may need to read her opponent, or just provoke them, to pull this off, but if she can, it will do a ton of guaranteed damage. 

Is Flipnote Studio and 2D Fighter Maker 2002 The Future of the FGC?

Probably not, but those were the tools I used primarily to craft this game. Using the classic Nintendo DSi animation software, I hand-drew the countless frames of animation that appear in FERAL STREAM. The line work is far from perfect, the characters seldom "on model", but the immediacy and sketchiness of Flipnote naturally lends itself to expressive motion and comic mischief. Animation was cleaned up in the Game Maker sprite editor and exported in a 2DFM friendly format via Paint.Net.

2D Fighter Maker 2002, on the other hand, is a fun but limited tool that has been used to create  qurky fighting games for nearly 25 years now. It comes with a lot of limits, like a 256 color palette limit on visual assets and unique frame rate. Still, its limitations make pulling things off with it all the more fun! 

Those familiar with Pokemon Close Combat should be able to use LillithPort, that game's online solution, with this game as well. 2D Fighter Maker does have controller support, but it may be recommended to use an external program like Joy2Key if you continue to have issues. 

This game is entirely developed by Matches Wusstunes, although Sound effects were taken from the Osabisi doujin library. A car vector was also used from Freesvg.org.  Other background assets are derived from my own photographs and scans.