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Ex-Street Fighter Dev Working On "Deceptively Simple" 2D Fighting Game For PS4/PC

Fantasy Strike promises to be tournament-style fighting game simple enough to bring in players new to the genre.

29 Comments

[UPDATE] A crowdfunding page for Fantasy Strike is now available on Fig. The developers are looking to raise $500,000 by August 25. You can learn more here on the funding page.

The original story is below.

Whether you're a long-time fan of 2D fighting games or new to the genre, Fantasy Strike is promising its gameplay will appeal to you. Developer Sirlin Games, whose founder was a designer on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, is raising money on Patreon for the game.

Fantasy Strike's controls will all be single-button press, with a unique system for countering certain attacks. If your opponent goes to throw you, letting go of your controls will trigger a punishing move called a Yomi Counter. However, attempting this leaves you vulnerable to non-throw attacks. The developer says it's emphasising player decisions over dexterity, letting you do special movies easily to avoid difficult-to-execute techniques throughout the game.

"You also don't have to worry about doing moves with 1/60th of a second accuracy, as is common in fighting games. In Fantasy Strike, anytime you try to do a move, we automatically repeat your input for 8/60ths of a second to make sure it comes out, every time. The hard part should be deciding if you want to do a move, not in getting it to happen once you've decided," said the developer. Get a look at some of the beautiful early gameplay below.

The game is still in pre-alpha development, but so far there are eight playable characters (all from the card-style fighting game Yomi) and four levels with more in the works. There are several game modes, including arcade, local versus, and training mode (with online play starting this month).

"We're boiling down the genre to the fundamentals and cutting out everything that we don't need. Our game is so simple to play that even if you don't normally play fighting games, you still might love Fantasy Strike. And for fighting game veterans: this is a tournament, esport game," Sirlin Games said.

No Caption Provided

Anyone who contributes at Silver Level ($10/month) or higher gets access to the pre-alpha game and future updates. Fantasy Strike is scheduled for release in Q3 2018 and is being developed for PlayStation 4 and PC.

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Kalza

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Edited By Kalza

It looks ok not too sure if I'll buy it. It needs to show that it's different from like the big three (MK, SF, TK) right now I'm just seeing a mixture of all but still keeping a open mind about this so I'll follow what's going too happen

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thereal25

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Edited By thereal25

What a great idea.

I've long wished for a fighting game where strategy is emphasized over dexterity.

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mikajoakkinen

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Looks like shit.

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AzatiS

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Edited By AzatiS

Great news for newcomers into genre and fighting lovers in general. We definitly need more such games from bigger developers as well to make fighting genre again as big as in the old golden days. Though what im looking forward to is DB fighter Z as my casual fighting game ill keep an eye on this, looks okish

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LaSepultura

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I was going to fund it, but they want a monthly fee for tiers. I happily would have paid $100+ once to kickstart and buy the game, but a monthly fee? Forget that.

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fsLeontes

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@LaSepultura: Actually you can do that. Article was updated: Fantasy Strike is crowdfunding on Fig (like Kickstarter). The article does loosely mention the Patreon page at the end of it but that's another thing entirely.

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illegal_peanut

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Looks depressing.

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Mirimon78

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Hm, so if it works like a Rise from xbox you won't have to Do anything?

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LouiXIII

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I'm interested

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Red_hot_smasher

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Edited By Red_hot_smasher

"we automatically repeat your input for 8/60ths of a second to make sure it comes out" - Yeah, no, bad idea. Nintendo tried that with Smash Bros Brawl (10frames I believe, waaay too much) and people liked it so much they figured out how to mod it out as soon as they figured out how to mod the game at all, pretty much. See, heavy input buffering leads to "Come on, I stopped pressing B and started pressing A ages ago, why is he doing B attack? Shit controls, broken game!" type complaints from casuals.

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LTJohnnyRico

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@Red_hot_smasher: You are also a casual ! Pretty much all Gamers are ! ... Nothing hardcore about sitting in your pants in front of a TV/Monitor !

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mvilleguy88

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Edited By mvilleguy88

@ltjohnnyrico: That's why I sit in front of my tv/monitor w/o pants!

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LTJohnnyRico

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@mvilleguy88: its the only way to Game !

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twztid13

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@Red_hot_smasher: I thought casual would be who this feature helps. If not, why would they bother? It seems by your comment, you think the casuals would be the ones complaining about that feature? The other ideas seem good, but it seems that it has to serve the purpose of getting casuals into fighting games. If this is a tournament based game, not only will it be hard to get casuals into tournaments after they're converted into fighting game fans (big difference in my experience), but since it wants to serve multiple purposes, it will need to be complex & satisfying enough for tourney players to invest countless hours into. That's usually done to perfect moves, etc, but if they'll be so simple, & allow users to focus on strategy, I suppose it could pull off both purposes successfully. I bought street fighter 5 after it had a story mode. For gamers that like fighting games, like me, who don't prefer to get beat continuously online, there has to be something else that pulls us to the game. With SFV, it was history & characters. I played in the arcades & won almost all the time in SF2 & loved when it came to SNES. I'm much older, and don't have the reflexes, nor the time to invest in a genre that's not my absolute favorite, so I'm looking for story modes, or unique training modes that can help me recapture my love for the genre & get back into learning the combos & timing (I hope this has something for people like me, but I realize it quite a ways off. No way I will invest in a game's kickstarter that I'm not even sure I'll like).

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AzatiS

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@twztid13: I see stupid people ( hardcore my ass gamers ) complaining already why Dragonball Fighter Z has so few moves etc. I know casuals can be pain in the ass sometimes but people think its all about them.

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lunarsword

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Edited By lunarsword

Or you could just play Guilty Gear Xrd. Even gives you the option of easy combo control scheme which is essentially what this game seems to be after.

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tinyjotun

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Couldn't give us a name? I feel like saying "Ex Street Fighter Devs" is false-hyping.

Also, what is this $10 a month? Monthly fee for a fighting game? I don't get it. Who's going to even do that?

Your article gives more questions than answers. Next time more info please, cause right now, other that looks, I am so not hyped for this just because of this article.

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BigGamerDude

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looks cool.

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southsouthsac

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Not sure if I'd classify the guys that did an HD remix of an old Street Fighter game as "Ex Street Fighter Devs".
That implies that they were involved in the actual development of a SF game, and would understand the differences between a good fighter and a bad one.

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Richardthe3rd

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Loved HDR, I'll give it a shot for sure.

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D_

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I might’ve shown some support if it was coming to Switch

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Purpledust

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@d_: nice comment

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Avatar image for d_
D_

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@Purpledust: Thanks I thought so too

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meedokicky

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Cool idea! I've never really enjoyed 2D fighters due to complicated commands, save for MK games.

And look! Even in Alpha state it has arcade mode!

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Mirimon78

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@meedokicky: er... SF was complicated??

I remember some kid hanging himself for not being able to beat MK....

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videogameninja

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@Mirimon78: What!? Hanging himself? Please tell me that's a joke.

-SUICIDALITY NINJA APPROVED-

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Mirimon78

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@videogameninja: no joke, back in the day when the first MK launched in arcade, kid in his mother's basement killed himself because he could not beat the game, the news is so old it predates most internet posts. This is not like the kids who killed another using MK moves.....

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videogameninja

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@Mirimon78: Holly hell! Talk about a real life Game Over. Should have just changed the difficulty to easy.

-THAT WAS COLD NINJA APPROVED-

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Purpledust

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@meedokicky: the salt is real.

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