Stick It to the Stickman hits 1.0 after five years of punching the boss

Stick It to the Stickman started life in January 2021 as a GitHub repo called “Boss-fighter”, with a simple plan: a stickman game where you beat up your coworker and press Z to attack. On September 23 it finally hit 1.0, a little more than a year after it arrived in Early Access.

It’s made by Free Lives, the Cape Town studio behind Broforce and Terra Nil, and published by Devolver Digital like both of those. You play a blue stickman climbing a company one floor at a time by beating up every red stickman in your way, and becoming CEO only gets you demoted back to intern.

What 1.0 adds

The big one is Billionaire Bunker, a mode where you fight your way down to the very bottom of a doomsday bunker to face the game’s final boss, the Founder. Free Lives describes that boss as “slightly ridiculous”, which from this studio is a promise.

The other new mode is Neurolink. You pick one of nine archetypes and survive using mind powers, and the studio’s own launch post says it “is going to blow your mind.” On top of that there are new characters, new bosses and new passives and special moves to build around.

If you last played during Early Access, there’s a lot more to come back to than just this update. The game picked up a Level Builder in December with Steam Workshop support, then a 2D stickfighting mode and the Foreign Manufacturing mode earlier this year.

Players love it

Steam reviews tell the story. Close to 9,000 people have reviewed it, and 96% of them are positive, which puts it firmly in Overwhelmingly Positive territory.

It’s easy to see why. Everything runs on physics, so every kick, throw and chainsaw swing sends stickmen tumbling into each other in a big messy pile. You can play it alone or bring friends along with couch co-op and remote play.

The writing is half the fun too. The whole game is a satire of corporate life, where you bust unions, bribe politicians and place bets on hyper-violent billionaires, all while being told it’s for the shareholders.

A game made with a lot of heart

The launch post from the team is one of the nicest things I’ve read from a studio this year. They counted the days since the first commit (2,071 of them), and talked about the people who joined and left Free Lives along the way. According to the studio, over a million people played the original prototype, and that’s what turned a small side project into something much bigger.

They’re also upfront that a few teased modes didn’t make it, because finishing them would have taken another year and the team is ready to move on. What did ship is, in their words, “quite likely, the most elaborate stickman game ever built.” Free Lives says an optimisation pass, bug fixes and Steam Trading Cards are coming in the next few weeks.

It’s $11.99, and it’s half price for launch week, which makes it an easy pick. It’s one of several great releases this month, so check our September 2026 new indie games roundup and our piece on Well Dweller if you want more. You can also browse our list of the best indie games under $20.