At PAX Australia 2015, it was pretty difficult to get near most of the indie game booths. Some were more packed than others, thronged the entire three days with gamers anxious for a try.

One of those booths was Rivalry, an odd-looking game in which two players take turns trying to manipulate ragdoll figures into stabbing each other. It looks very barebones, with shadow-puppet silhouettes and the gouts of red blood vivid against the primary blue backdrop.

Movement is slow and surreal, the active player indicated by a circle that shrinks down as their turn progresses. Once you grab a mouse, it makes more sense. You click and drag parts of your character's body to try and attack your opponent. The circle is a timer, counting down how much you can move. Stop moving and the timer stops too.

Its creator, 14-year-old Kew McParlane, describes it as a sort of chess with swords, mixed with the hilarious clumsiness of coordination nightmare games, QWOP and Octodad.

"The way I like to describe Rivalry is that it starts out like sword chess and ends like Octodad with knives. You drag limbs and weapons around with the mouse and get your player into weird and unnatural positions. But you only have a specific amount of movement so you have to work out the best way to cause damage to the other player but also have enough movement to set up a defense. Each move you make is vital and very quickly just one misplaced foot can end in a whole leg missing,"