The Cut Man

The bell rings. The fighter sits. Everyone looks at you.

The Cut Man is a short solo journaling RPG about blood, trust, pressure, and the sixty seconds between rounds.

You are not the fighter. You are not the trainer. You are not the person who gets their hand raised when the night is over.

You are the cut man.

When your fighter returns to the corner hurt, bleeding, swollen, shaken, and desperate, it is your job to keep your hands steady. Patch the cuts. Calm the panic. Hide the damage. Tell the truth. Or throw the towel before it is too late.

One fight. Six rounds. Sixty seconds at a time.

What You’ll Do

In The Cut Man, you will guide one fighter through a brutal fight night using a deck of playing cards, 2d6, and a journal.

Each round, you draw cards to discover what happens in the fight. Your fighter may gain Momentum, take Damage, lose control, or come back to the corner needing your help.

When damage happens, the game shifts into the Sixty Second Corner mini game. Draw three cards. Choose two actions. You might talk your fighter back, make an adjustment, work the damage, hide the truth from the doctor, or make the hard call to stop the fight.

Winning matters.

But survival matters too.

You’ll Need

• A standard deck of playing cards with Jokers
• Two six-sided dice
• A pencil
• A journal or paper
• 45–60 minutes

What Kind of Game Is This?

The Cut Man is a compact solo journaling RPG about the quiet pressure behind combat sports.

It is designed to be played in one sitting and tells the story of one fight night from the corner, not from the spotlight.

This game is about:

• Corner work
• Fighter safety
• Trust under pressure
• Bad cuts and worse decisions
• Knowing when courage becomes danger
• The person who has to look at the damage and decide what happens next

Features

• Fast solo play
• Complete game in a short zine format
• Playing card and 2d6 mechanics
• A tense corner-work mini game
• Multiple fighter and opponent archetypes
• Damage, Momentum, Trust, Hands, and Calm tracks
• Legacy endings based on what kind of cut man you became
• Play aid and fight tracker included

Tone

Gritty, tense, emotional, and reflective.

This is not a game about becoming a champion.

It is about the person in the corner with blood on their hands, trying to decide if they are saving the fight or risking the fighter.

About UYUY

UYUY Games creates solo journaling RPGs about glory, sacrifice, pressure, and legacy. Many of these games explore sports and the overlooked people who live just outside the spotlight: the backups, the corner workers, the aging pros, the almost-greats, and the ones who keep showing up when nobody is cheering.

Other games from UYUY include:

🏈 Sunday Legends — A football career from high school glory to retirement and legacy.

🏒 The Backup Goalie — A tense solo RPG about a backup goalie waiting for one impossible chance.

🥊 The Cut Man — A night in the corner of a fighter’s biggest bout.

🏎️ Redline (Coming Soon) — A racing driver’s journey from karting dreams to the edge of Formula 1.

🥊 The Cut Man is part of this growing line of short, emotional solo RPG zines about the people behind the big moments.

Find more games here: https://uyuygames.itch.io/

If you enjoy The Cut Man, please consider leaving a rating, comment, or sharing your story. I’d love to hear about the fighter you kept standing, the round that changed everything, or the moment you decided enough was enough.

The crowd remembers knockouts.

Fighters remember who kept them standing.