Lethal League

Lethal League is an indie fighting video game developed by Dutch developer Team Reptile. It was released worldwide on Steam on 27 August 2014, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions released in May 2017. A sequel, Lethal League Blaze, is planned for release in October 2018.

Gameplay
Lethal League is a 2D arena fighting video game in which up to four players face off against each other in an arena. The goal is to hit a ball back and forth, and have the ball hit other players until there's only one player left. With each consecutive hit, the ball will speed up more, making it harder for the other players to not get hit and hit the ball back. In their review, Destructoid described the game as "If Mario Tennis and Smash Bros. had a baby, and it was raised by European DJs who love baseball."

Development
Lethal League started out as a flash game, the idea coming from the developers playing around with a 'hit and reflect projectile mechanic' in Team Reptile's first game, Megabyte Punch. The flash game was picked up by several media outlets and was the Mystery Game at the UFGT9 fighting game tournament. After being very well received, the developer decided to flesh out the prototype and develop it into a full game to be released on Steam. The more fleshed out version of Lethal League was first showcased at the 2014 Casual Connect Europe, and later at EVO's indie showcase and gamescom, where the game was a crowd favorite.

In 2016, the game was part of the Humble Indie Bundle 17 with ports to Mac OS X and Linux.

In Q4 2017, Team Reptile announced they'd be making a successor to Lethal League, titled Lethal League: Blaze. Instead of being a sequel in the series, TR states that it will be a 'full remake', promising the addition of more characters and overall content compared to its predecessor. One of the new features Blaze spans is full, 3D models and animations compared to the basic sprite-sheets of the first game, as the characters have been redesigned to fit this new title. TR plans to release this title on October 24th, 2018 on personal computers, followed by a release on major consoles on Spring 2019.

Reception
Lethal League was released on 27 August 2014 and has received mostly positive reviews. Many reviewers praised Lethal League for being "easy to learn, spectacular to watch and complex to master" and for being a lot of fun to play on the couch with friends. Destructoid's Ben Pack ended his review saying "It’s my personal favorite of the revival of couch co-op games, and may be my favorite “tell a friend” game of all time."