All was peaceful in the idyllic land of Indines, until a powerful artefact, the Belt of Beatdown, was discovered by the villainous Wardlaw O’Brien. With the belt, O’Brien was able to absorb the bar-fighting powers of the greatest fist fighters across the world. O’Brien scheduled a world-wide pub crawl, and invited all the greatest fighters in the land to take part. Can you become the greatest fist fighter in the World of Indines by fighting your way through seven rounds, punching and gouging your way to supremacy?

At the start of the game, each player chooses one of 11 characters and takes a set of seven cards associated with that character. In each set, four cards are simple punches, doing a variable amount of damage, while three also have special effects. At the beginning of each round of the game your deck is shuffled and placed face down in front of you. A stage card is turned up to show the rewards for most, second and third most KO points this round.

When someone yells fight, the players simultaneously start picking up cards from their decks, looking at them and then playing them on another character. Whenever a player runs out of cards, they take a drink token from a common supply. Their character’s stamina will be ten plus or minus the value of that drink token. When everyone has played their cards, the next step is to resolve the stacks of cards played on characters, applying damage. If a character’s stamina is equalled or exceeded, the character who achieved the knockout earns a KO point. If a character survives all the punches aimed at them, then they receive the KO point. Players can also score two KO points for knocking out Boris, a non-player character. KO points are turned into gold according to each round’s stage card. The player with the most gold at the end of seven rounds is the winner.