Interesting idea. However, it lacks a bit more of user interaction. Perhaps being able to customise your gladiator's skills before getting into battle might add an extra layer of user interaction while keeping the game the same. Also, I'm not sure if that's a bug but I kept hearing the fight sound despite no one was actually fighting.

Interesting take on the jam.  Unfortunately, the next option doesn't cycle around, so I got stuck picking the last fighter.  The game seems quite hard, I kept losing even when I got a strong character.  You then have to wait quite a while for the battle to finish.  The walk animation was quite slow.  It would have been better if the battle ends as soon as your fighter is dead.  It would also be fairer if the fights were only against 1 opponent at a time.  You could then upgrade between fights.  Luck appears to play too big a role right now.

The animations, sounds, music were all very good.  I actually went and grabbed the music!  I think with some extra time spent on it, your game could be really good.

I thought it was interesting that i could only move forward, so skipping by a powerful unit and not seeing anything better definitely added some intrigue. my one critique would be that when you lose, you can be left watching AI you have no interest in battle for a surprisingly long time. some sort of auto fast-forward or skip would be appreciated!

The idea of an arena autobattler is nice, but I felt my choice to have very little impact (choosing the highest damage /dexterity person and still dying first)... Maybe it was just not clear enough to me, what the individual stats really influenced. Also the sound effects are very repetitive, maybe it would be possible to play them with slightly changed pitch (creates awesome variety in sounds).