OPEN GUARD Officially Out on Steam

OPEN GUARD released on Steam on 15 August 2026 from solo developer Goyski. It is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu management simulator, and the depth of its fight engine is well beyond what the price suggests.

A grappling world generated from scratch every save

You start either with an empty mat and a dream, or by taking over an established academy with a roster and a reputation to defend. From there you scout from a worldwide pool of free agents, sign fighters who fit your vision, and take them from local opens to a world championship.

Every new game builds an entire grappling world: 80 gyms across the globe, each with its own roster, reputation and ambitions, and more than 1,500 fighters competing across men’s and women’s divisions.

Goyski is clear that the world runs without you. Gyms rise to glory and crumble into obscurity, fighters break through, build rivalries, suffer injuries and eventually retire. As they put it, the prodigy who storms to world gold in one save might never even be born in the next.

The fight engine is the real product

This is where the game earns attention. Every bout is simulated tick by tick across 41 distinct grappling positions, 34 submissions and over 130 unique transitions.

That is a genuinely detailed model of the sport rather than a dice roll dressed up with commentary. You can watch a match unfold live with positional illustrations and round-by-round commentary, or skip straight to the result when the outcome is all you need.

You set tactics before the first grip is taken, shaping how the fight is contested — but Goyski are blunt that nothing on the mat is ever intended.

Gi and no-gi, under proper rulesets

The calendar covers both gi and no-gi events under their correct rulesets, and the game distinguishes between them rather than treating them as a cosmetic toggle.

For anyone who trains, that distinction is the difference between a simulator built by someone who understands the sport and one built from a Wikipedia summary. Covering both formats properly is what “the whole sport, not half of it” means on the store page.

An accessibility set built for a text-heavy sim

The options fit the genre well. OPEN GUARD includes a Mouse Only Option, Adjustable Text Size, Playable without Timed Input, custom volume controls and a playable-at-your-own-pace designation.

Adjustable text size matters here more than in most games — a management sim lives in menus and tables, and readability is the whole interface.

Note what is absent: no Steam Achievements and no Cloud saves are listed. The build is Windows only, English only. Steam genre tags are Indie, Simulation, Sports and Strategy.

Eleven dollars, no discount

OPEN GUARD is on Steam at $8.24 at the time of writing in August 2026. Discounts change often — the spec table below is checked against the live listing.

One correction on the framing: this is a launch, not a version 1.0 update to an existing release. The game arrived on 15 August.

For a solo-developed sim with a 130-transition fight engine and a fully generated world, eleven dollars is a lot of simulation for the money. The audience is narrow — you want to care about grappling — but within that audience this looks like a serious piece of work rather than a novelty.

Full details are on the official Steam store page.

📖 Read More on PixelForge Network

• The Escape From Dungeon Keep Out Now on Steam
• I Hate Polygons Officially Out on Steam
• Dinosaur Officially Out on Steam
• Fluff’n’Roll Officially Out on Steam

This article may contain affiliate links to affiliate partners. PixelForge Network may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support our independent gaming coverage. Read our full disclosure.