I had a similar idea in my video game design glass.(We ultimately went with something else). You can get rid of the wall deaths and instead make them elastic co

I had a similar idea in my video game design glass.(We ultimately went with something else). You can get rid of the wall deaths and instead make them elastic collisions. You turn either left or right when you hit the wall, and that crutch will force players to defeat each other. Of course, there's always the "hard mode" option where you disable this.