Unplayable, but charming
Let's get this out of the way: from every sort of objective standpoint, DF: Death Fighter is overall a travesty of computer software. Everything about it makes it seem like it programmed and sprited by a five-year old instead of a man in his twenties.
The sprites are hand-drawn and look like they were colored in with marker or color pencil. There are almost no animation frames; characters have no walk cycle, and any attack which requires movement will usually entail of a character's hand or leg being redrawn slightly. There is more or less just one background, consisting of two colors (the "sky" and "ground", I suppose) that is just palette swapped to represent times of day.
As much as the game is an assault to the eyes, the gameplay seems to have even less ambition behind it. For characters that have basic standing attacks, a player can just move across the screen while holding the Attack button and run into the opponent over and over until they fall. This can also work for a number of the game's specials, depending on the move and input. Oddly though, not every character even has a basic standing attack! In fact, half the cast has one or the other - either basic standing or basic air. Pressing the Attack button in situations in which there is no attack available makes absolutely nothing at all happen.
The attacks also lack any sort of feedback in almost every case. You might hear a brief, unintelligible vocal or sound effect if the attack hits, but there will be no visual stimulus and in most cases no indicator at all that an attack landed, outside of your opponent's health depleting. If it's an attack that has to be "created", like a projectile, and it's performed too close, the attack won't even be displayed and players will have no idea that the attack was even pulled off. There's also no hitboxes to speak of, and you can't face your opponent if they jump over you and vice versa, meaning that you can stand behind your opponent and hammer Attack to hit them, and they can do the same to you. It also renders Johnny's "Backpunch" attack exactly like his regular punch, just with a different arm sprite, since it seems to have been developed with the idea that he can hit behind him, but his regular punch will do the same thing.
So with everything wrong with this thing mechanically, why do I still play it, especially considering there's no single-player mode? For one, I'm insane and play pretty much every fighting game, regardless of quality, or lack thereof. It also does have that real "so bad it's good" quality to it. The most blatant, however, is that it seems very charming. Even with next to no animation, the personality of the characters is very apparent just from looking. The character design, while obviously juvenile, is unique enough as well. The least interesting one is a psycho with a chainsaw, and even he would probably stand out on most other fighting game rosters. I'm also massively impressed with the fact that the late Mr. Okkerstrøm got standard fighting game inputs to function in Game Maker - something I've been struggling with for like 12 years.
So yeah, there's nothing of substance here, and you can barely call it a game. But it's almost a work of art in its own right; the machinations of a mad genius put into ones and zeros. If you have like 8 seconds to waste, it's worth taking a look for just the sheer "wtf is this?" factor.