Just yesterday, we learned that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will have a playable demo at Evo 2025. During this yearly event, a “Developer Combat Panel” will also take place in which core mechanics will be revealed.
Up until now, the only information that we knew about Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was based on general observations regarding the first gameplay trailer. We know that the playable characters thus far are Captain America, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Ghost Rider, Doctor Doom and Storm, but there are plenty of others that have yet to be revealed.
We also know that Marvel Tokon is set to be a 4v4 fighting game, implying that the developers intend to step up the craziness that we usually get with the 3v3 fighter formula.
However, alongside the announcement that Marvel Tokon will have a playable demo present at Evo 2025, the developers also released a batch of new screenshots featuring this demo build. From these, we’re being clued in on some of the game’s mechanics.
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In one of these images, we can see Captain America landing the first hit against Iron Man. It’s indicated that this particular hit is a counter hit due to the “Counter!!” text that appears on the side of Iron Man as this is happening.
Captain America’s team is made up of Captain America himself, Star-Lord, Ms. Marvel and Dr. Doom. Meanwhile, the other team consists of Iron Man, Star-Lord, Storm and Dr. Doom.
It’s interesting to note that there are only two clear health bars displayed on the screen. One of these health bars is for team Captain America while the other is for Iron Man.
Technically, there are three additional bars situated under both of these health bars, but they don’t seem to be directly attached to the character portraits. They are also significantly smaller than the clear health bars.
This seems to indicate that the green gauges positioned under the longer health bars are intended for an entirely different system. Perhaps it has something to do with assist actions.
“Learning four characters is extremely daunting, but the team at Arc System Works has found a way to design a system that adapts to your playstyle.” — Reid Brad
During gameplay of the other team fighting games (such as Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Dragon Ball FighterZ), we typically see the health bars of all characters present on the screen at all times. Through tag systems, characters that are not being used are regenerating the grey portions of their health bars.
Nothing is set in stone right now, but this seems to be indicative that each team will share a singular health bar. This seemingly fits inline with what the developers have already said about the game’s learning curve.
“Learning four characters is extremely daunting, but the team at Arc System Works has found a way to design a system that adapts to your playstyle,” said Reid Brad, senior producer at PlayStation Studios.
“So you can duke it out as just the leader and three assists, or you can tag in your assist to swap your leader and change the match up on the fly.”
“So you can duke it out as just the leader and three assists, or you can tag in your assist to swap your leader and change the match up on the fly.” — Reid Brad
Essentially, the developers acknowledge how daunting it must seem to learn four separate characters in a fighting game like Marvel Tokon. As such, it would seem that they’ve developed a system that allows players to stick with just one fighter throughout the entirety of a match should they choose to do so.
We can also observe six bars of meter at the bottom (which apparently totals to 150 points). This is likely a super gauge of some sort.
Notably, two bars of this gauge have been separated from the others, which could indicate that the most powerful attacks could spend up to four bars of meter.
We’ll likely get more concrete details during the upcoming “Developer Combat Panel” that will explicitly explain Marvel Tokon’s mechanics. As such, we’ll just have to wait until then to find out the meaning of what we can see in these screenshots.