A fighting game that’s strategically difficult but mechanically simple.
FACT SHEET
Game Name: Fantasy Strike
Developer: Sirlin Games
Release Date: July 25th, 2019.
Free-to-play Launch: July 21st 2020.
Platforms:
Steam (Mac/PC/Linux), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4.
Price: Free to play (Core Pack: $19.99)
ESRB: Teen
Press Contact: leontes@sirlingames.com
Social Media:
Twitter: @FantasyStrike and @SirlinGames
Facebook: Sirlin Games
DESCRIPTION
Fantasy Strike is a colorful fighting game where fantasy meets martial arts. It focuses on depth and strategy rather than difficult execution. It's designed for tournament play, but also to welcome you to the genre if you haven't played other fighting games before. Online play uses the excellent GGPO networking technology. Includes several single player modes.
HISTORY
The game is designed by Street Fighter HD Remix lead developer, David Sirlin. Sirlin was also a three time Evo top 8 finisher, tournament champion, and member of Street Fighter Team USA at the Japanese Super Battle Opera tournament. Sirlin was always interested in getting new people into the fighting game genre, and explaining the appeal of the strategy and dynamics found in fighting games.
In 2009, he released Yomi, the first “fighting card game”, as a way to translate some of the strategy from fighting games into a tabletop form. Yomi was based on a fictional fighting game called Fantasy Strike. Ten years later, he released the actual fighting game Fantasy Strike, focusing the design on how to maintain the deep strategy he had enjoyed as a top tournament player while stripping away many of the genre’s usual hurdles that are barriers to new players.
Fantasy Strike was also Sirlin’s chance to address many user-interface gripes he’d encountered playing fighting games for two decades. Ideals such as: getting into an online queue quickly and easily, switching characters between matches quickly, challenging friends in a one-click process, viewing in-progress matches of friends with one click, seeing the concept of frame advantage through visual effects during gameplay, clearly displaying hit points in a discrete way, showing visually when a charge-based character (like Guile in Street Fighter) has a charge built up, highlighting characters to show different states such as invulnerable / parry / poisoned / armored, and more.
WHAT’S COOL ABOUT IT?
Features
Streamlining the genre. It’s not any single feature—it’s an overall approach to caring about player-decisions and user-interface. Fantasy Strike wants you to engage with opponents strategically without fumbling around with missed moves or dropped combos.
Characters The characters from several Sirlin Games tabletop games come to life. Our goal is to have move diverse dynamics across characters than in Street Fighter 2, so several characters have gimmicks or extreme properties such as Lum’s random items, Quince’s illusions of himself, Onimaru’s extremely damaging yet slow moves, Argagarg’s unusual poison and water-push mechanics, DeGrey’s ghostly helper, etc.
Cross-platform, online play, and online features.
Excellent implementation of GGPO rollback networking allows for smooth play across continents.
Ability to challenge a friend online and even watch an in-progress match in one click from the in-game friends menu.
Ranked play puts you in automated tournaments and uses an innovative take on the team battle format which results in a wide variety of matchups while letting you just pick your three best characters without worrying about being counter-picked.
Learning resources. In-game Netflix-like interface where every character has their own spotlight video, a narrated tour by game director David Sirlin. Each video goes though that character's moves and what their general gameplan and strategy is about. There’s also a short 5-minute interactive tutorial that’s all you need to get started.
Notable Firsts
First fighting game to visually show frame advantage in visual effects during gameplay.
First traditional fighting game to have cross-platform play between consoles and PC (Nintendo Switch / Sony PlayStation / Steam).
First fighting game to have the ability to one-click challenge / one-click view an in-progress match from an in-game friends list. (We are not aware of any that came before, at least.)
First commercial fighting game to offer all characters for free in online queues (with no grind-to-unlock).
First fighting game (that we know of) to offer explanatory videos in-game for how to play every character.
WHAT’S FREE?
ALL Characters Free in Online Queues
The term “free to play” has a wide range of meanings. We’re not talking about “one character is free, please buy the rest for $5 each.” All characters are immediately free in online queues. No grinding or unlocks.
Free Modes: Online Casual Play, Online Ranked Play, Practice Mode, Single Match vs. AI.
WHAT’S FOR SALE?
Core Pack
Get the Core Pack to access more modes: Boss Rush, Arcade, Survival, Local VS, and online friend matches.
Boss Rush
Our biggest and most awesome single-player mode.
Draft a deck of powerups as you play though a series of 8, increasingly crazy AI bosses.
Roguelike, in that if you lose, you start over and can start building a new deck.
Arcade Mode
Fight a series of AI opponents. Includes beautifully illustrated, voiced story intros and endings
Direct Friend Challenge Online
To play a friend, click on the crossed swords by your friend’s name. When they accept, you’ll both be put into the same gameflow as if you were sitting next to each other in the same room.
Four Survival Modes
A rapid-fire series of opponents with no loading times between them. They get stronger as you go.
Local Versus Mode
Local play in standard mode or
3-character team battle.
Costmetics
Alternate costumes, intro animations, victory animations, special KO animations. Cosmetics do not give any gameplay advantage.
FANTASY+ (optional service)
Want some perks? The Fantasy+ service gives you these extra features for only about $3 usd / month (with a 1-year plan).
Replay Theater
An extensive set of features for viewing game replays. Search for specific matchups of specific ranks online, or view your own games. Includes 2 “TV Channels” of endless replays from other players.
Watching a replay has controls like watching a video.
Skip forward or back 10 seconds, or to the next round. Change speed, or even frame step forward or back.
Master Costumes
These exclusive costumes are each character’s ultimate form. They can’t be bought in the item shop. They’re only available on Fantasy+, and even then, you must be at least level 20 with that character.
To help you level up faster, Fantasy+ members get XP at twice the normal rate.
(XP does not give a gameplay advantage.)
To show your support for the game, Fantasy+ members also get in-game name shown in green.
STREAMLINING THE GENRE
To us, "accessibility" is a top-to-bottom commitment to be inclusive. It's not any single feature; it's an overall approach to include as many players as possible in the fun, strategic core of the game.
We do this by:
1) Emphasizing decision-making.
It's about should you do a move and when, not can you do it. We put the focus on your smart decisions and strategy, not on dexterity tests unrelated to strategy.
2) Making things understandable.
You have to understand what's happening in order to participate in a game's depth, so we do our best to make sure everything is clear and readable.
3) Aiming for elegance.
We cut out cruft that we don't need so that what remains is all the more solid. The lack of clutter helps you learn.
Decision-Making
We have to make sure your moves come out when you want.
Move Commands
All moves can be done with a single button press—there are no joystick motions like quarter circles or 360s. Simply getting your moves to come out should not be part of the challenge.
Input Buffer
When you press a button slightly before your next move is allowed to come out, we know what you meant to do. Your next move comes out as soon as it can, thanks to our generous 8-frame input buffer.
You're Playing the "Real Game" from the Start
When you reach expert-level play, the game does not devolve into being about input bugs, L-cancels, kara-cancels, plinking, charge partitioning, 1-frame links, or other things you didn't sign up for.
Combos
Combos are short, fast, and anyone can do them. The trick is making the right strategic choices to be able to land a combo. Grave's most common combo is simply jump A, A, then cancel to B. The skill is getting in a position where you can land it.
Play on Any Controller
It's just as easy to play Fantasy Strike on a keyboard, console controller, joystick, or just about anything else. There's no competitive advantage on one controller vs another, so use whatever you're already comfortable with using.
Keyboard is especially easy-to-use because you never even have to input up or down with your left hand, just left / right. (Though you can set up-to-jump rather than a jump button if you prefer).
Making Things Understandable
Lifebar
The lifebar shows segmented chunks, each one is one hit point. This makes it at clear as possible that your 3-damage combo will beat an opponent with only 3 life left.
Super Meter
The super meter fills automatically over time, so that it's as understandable as possible.
Invulnerable
moves flash white.
Armored
moves flash blue.
Parries
(to beat attacks)
flash green.
Poisoned
characters flash purple.
Counterhit
(interrupted)
characters flash red
Poison also displays the timing of when the next poison damage will happen, right in the lifebar.
If you get hit by a special throw that you could have jumped out of, it says "Jumpable" on screen.
If you do a move that hurts yourself, it says "-1 Health" on screen so you know to be careful.
Frame Advantage
Every hit shows through visual effects who will recover first, and by how much.
Aiming for Elegance
We try to do more with less. Characters have 12 - 15 moves, so we make sure that every move in the game has a purpose and pulls its weight. It also means we can fit them all on one screen with room for some notes on their properties.
No Crouching
We found that the game works fine without crouching, so we just have left / right movement. That's nice, because it's one fewer input you have to bother with.
Air Moves
There are more air moves in Fantasy Strike than in many other fighting games. Jumping gives you access to two air special moves and an air super with every character. This allows us to have more moves overall with fewer buttons.
ONLINE PLAY
Best-in-class Networking Technology
Excellent implementation of GGPO rollback networking allows for smooth play across continents.
A Different UI Approach to For Online Play
Playing With a Friend Online
To play a friend, go to your friends list and click on the crossed swords by any name to challenge them.
That’s it.
When they accept, you and your friend are put into the same gameflow as if you were sitting next to each other in the same room.
Watching a Friend Online
To watch your friend play, go to your friends list and click on the eyeball by any name.
That’s it.
You'll continue watching your friend automatically,
as they play different opponents online,
even in different game modes.
This is so simple and great, but we’ve never seen it done this way in another fighting game.
Ranked Play
Rank up through the leagues in a series of tournaments. Get a fresh start every 3 months.
The Tournament Experience
Play in automated 8-person tournaments.
Tournament-style matchmaking is generally more exciting and has more ups and downs than standard "always 50-50 win rate" matchmaking.
Our point system is as simple as our lifebars: you get 1, 2, or 3 stars for winning, depending on how far you are in the tournament.
Team Battle Format
Choose a team of 3 characters, play a best-3-out-of-5 match.
Each game, play a new randomly chosen matchup.
You'll go through all your characters before repeating
Must win with all 3 of your characters to win the match!
There's lots of variety in this mode. You'll play an even spread of many matchups, rather than usually playing the most unfair matchups as often happens in counter-pick systems.
LEARNING RESOURCES
Spotlight Videos
Every character has their own spotlight video, a narrated tour by game director David Sirlin. Each video goes though that character's moves and what their general gameplan and strategy is about.
Tutorial
This short, 5-minute tutorial teaches you all the basics.
Do some fun exercises that flow continuously
with no loading times.