The Steam Fighting Games Fest is online!

We're celebrating with a whopping 70% off the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike!

Now's the best time to dust off the old arcade stick and grab all of those fighting games you've been eyeing over the years. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie developers during the sale by gifting your favorites to your friends!

Sirlin Games is a part of the Steam Autumn Sale! Save on the Fantasy Strike Core/Collector’s Pack, mainstays Yomi and Puzzle Strike, as well as the digital early access edition of Yomi 2 that we’re currently hard at work developing!

We're also doing a tabletop sale for our physical games! You can check out all the details at our blog post, here.

It’s time again for the Steam Autumn Sale! From November 24th until December 1st at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collector’s Packs for Fantasy Strike.

More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version:

The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes.

The Collector’s Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; they’re 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters.

Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!

Spooky times are here again! From October 28th - November 1st you can save 34% on the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike, our colorful, modern, free-to-play fighting game.

More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version:

The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes.

The Collector’s Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; they’re 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters.

Already own all of these games on Steam and you’ve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlin’s Patreon page, where we’re giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at what’s next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If you’re a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content.

We hope you have a safe and healthy Halloween this year. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies, too.

This is just a small hotfix to gamepad issues that started last week.

This is a pretty big update on technical and aesthetic levels. Aesthetically, we’ve changed the 3D shaders as well as the actual 3D models for several characters to improve their graphics. We’ve also added new costumes for Grave, Jaina, and Setsuki to the in-game store. We’ve updated our game engine to a version of Unity that’s three years newer than the version we were using and this allowed us to fix some long-standing technical issues with Xbox controllers as well as with fightsticks on Linux. We also added a new feature on Steam that allows you to assign which controller is player1 and which is player2 (especially important on Steam because of how we allow the keyboard to be both player1 and player2). Finally, there are some long-requested balance changes in this patch too.


--Graphics upgrade for many characters and costumes. Enjoy a new look for Grave, Setsuki, Rook, and more!

We have adjusted the shading style used on our characters. When using a cartoony style, there are often a few distinct shades of darkness in shadows. Before, we had the issue that the boundary between these areas (like between a shadow on the skin and a non-shadow part of the skin) was irregular and grainy looking. Worse than that, when the character is in motion, the boundaries between shading zones would “swim” around and appear watery rather than the hard lines you’d expect. These errors are all gone with our new shaders.

In addition to that change, we also changed the actual shape and sculpt of some characters so they look even better with the new shaders. Here’s an example with Grave:



Notice on his chest the crisp, hard lines of shading on the new version and the grainy, blurry regions of shading on the old one’s chest. Notice the highlights on the new one’s hair that makes it pop and shine, compared to flat, blah-ish shading on the old one’s hair. The new one’s face (and chest) have been re-sculpted to be more stylized too. We also extended his tattoo further onto his chest because it just looked cooler.

Rook is another example:



Rook suffered especially much from the problem of grainy, blurry boundaries between shading zones that would “swim” around when he’s in motion. That’s all gone now and his shadows and highlights look a lot more deliberate. The modeling of his vines has been greatly improved as well. As you can see above, the old vines were a bit of a mess in that they seemed to penetrate his body here and there, looked low poly in some places, and didn’t have shadow between the vines and his body. Now the fines are clearly separate from him and have pretty great shadows.

Here’s another example of Rook in his gameplay stance:



We’d also like to highlight the visual changes to Setsuki for you.



Setsuki’s hair was always a problem for us. We were never happy with the way it was modeled, but couldn’t really figure out what to do until now. As you can see, it’s a lot less “bananas” now, and more stylish. Her crazy hair colors show that she wants to have a style, so styled hair is just a better fit here.


Three new costumes available for purchase (on a rotating basis) in the in-game store: Grave Dojo Champion, Jaina Midnight Archer, and Setsuki Stealth Ninja.



Remember that we’ve taken the unprecedented step in the fighting game genre of making the gameplay of ALL our characters FREE in online casual matches, online ranked matches, practice mode, and 1p vs AI mode. We hope you support us by buying a costume here and there so that we know it was the right choice to take the risk of making the gameplay for all characters free.


--[Steam] You can now set which controller is P1 and which controller is P2 as you enter appropriate game modes. There’s a new screen to move pictures of a controller into those slots.

On Steam, we intentionally make the keyboard both player 1 and player 2. This makes it really easy to go into practice mode and set up various tests where you control both characters at the same time. Until now though, a single controller on Steam has always been locked to player1, which forced a keyboard player to be player2 (remember, the keyboard can always be p1 and/or p2). The new feature we just added finally lets a single controller be player2, so the keyboard player can be player1 if they want.

The feature is so robust that it even supports having extra controllers plugged in. For example, imagine you had two PlayStation4 DualShock controllers plugged in, and two fightsticks also (so a total of four controllers). Now, you can go into versus mode, then choose the two DualShock controllers as p1 and p2. Then you could back out, go into versus mode again, and choose the two fight sticks as p1 and p2 from then on. This allows a group of friends to easily swap controllers during a session without having to unplug/re-plug anything.



--Grave's ground super slightly pulls back its pushbox during the few frames before the cinematic hit, to avoid edge cases where the pushbox incorrectly prevents the cinematic hit.

Example: vs Argagarg's neutral A, which slightly extends its pushbox such that Grave's ground super can't cinematic-hit it for no apparent reason, when it can easily cinematic-hit idle Argagarg from further away.


--Fixed a bug with her fA attack, which wrongly made her invulnerable to throws for some frames.


--The 15th frame of ground C no longer has a white highlight, because only the first 14f are invulnerable.


--Ghost has 1 second longer cooldown between uses.

--Ghost no longer breaks armor. (Onimaru now has some hope using his ground C against DeGrey. Rook’s Landslide and C-throw are now better against DeGrey too.)

--Ground S has 3f more startup, 5f -> 8f. Now if he blocks Onimaru’s fA attack and Onimaru cancels that into B, DeGrey’s ground super parry will not be active in time to hit it. (And if DeGrey tries to parry between the fA and B, Onimaru can press B again to hit DeGrey with a 2-damage Spirit Fire.)


--Midori's empowered throw (when he glows yellow, after a parry) is no longer allowed to grab-and-instantly-destroy Quince real-illusions (illusions in Two Truths mode). It just looked too weird.


--Fixed a sound bug with Quince’s C (Dodge the Question) that made the initial split have no sound unless you did the f+C version.

--Super cooldown increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.

—His fall to the ground after doing air C (mirror) is reverted to the slower fall that it was during his pre-release testing.

--His back+A (Truth Geyser) can no longer juggle as much. Only one additional juggle hit is possible after it now, and it can no longer bounce victims who were already bouncing. The most practical effect of this is that Quince can no longer do 3 damage against victims who are somewhat cornered when he lands bA x 3 (only 2 of those will hit now) or bA, B, A (the final A punch no longer hits).

Developer comments: Quince seemed a bit too good, especially over time as players got better at taking advantage of his strengths. These nerfs still leave intact most of why he’s good, so they are kind of minor, but leave opponents with a little more leeway: more time between his supers, more time to act after his air C, and avoiding taking a third point of damage in some combos.


--His back+A sweep has more pushback so that when you cancel to C (Divide and Conquer) on block, it no longer forces the opponent to block three times total, which guard broke them.

--Reverting Onimaru’s nA hitboxes to the older version that was not great anti-air. It still has reasonable hitboxes to hit a jumper, but not “dragon-punch-like” immunity that he’s had for the last few months. The point of this change is so he has to save his super more for anti-air, rather than being free to use the super for reaction punishes only.


--Rook's "Landslide Plus" now hits twice, to match regular Rook’s Landslide now hitting twice.

--Setsuki’s “Starlight Sparkle” is no longer completely unblockable for no reason.

--Fixed a bug from a few months ago on Argagarg's "Fish are Friends" powerup (Rushing River now summons two goldfish rather than just one). It now actually summons the second fish.

--Valerie's CMYK "Black" attack is now allowed to correctly turn around when doing a double-crossup when Valerie also has the Quick Specials powerup.

--Lum's f+B cartwheel plus "Quick Specials" no longer uses Lum B's rolling recovery when it lands for no reason.

--Lum's Random Toss (improved air C) now throws both a melon AND an item, rather than just throwing an item (so it’s much stronger).


--New language available: Russian.

--Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select, that caused normal maps to be inverted for some costumes, such as Grave’s master costume and Quince’s default costume. This bug has been around for years, and we finally solved it. It made the affected characters look slightly wonky on character select when on the right side of the screen, meaning some of their contours and shadows were “inside out”.

--Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select that caused Valerie’s blue eye to be rotated incorrectly.

--Fixed a bug on character select that caused Valerie’s real-time shadows (such as shadows on her face from her hair) to look low res and pixelly.

--[Steam] The Mac version’s main menu now correctly blurs the background, so the aesthetics now match other platforms.

Let’s get the summer started off right with another Steam sale! From June 24th until July 8th at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collector’s Packs for Fantasy Strike.

More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version:

The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes.

The Collector’s Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; they’re 34% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters.

Steam sales are the best time to grab those games on your wishlist or gift your favorites to your friends. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale! We’ll see you online.

Happy Holidays everyone! It’s time for another Steam sale. From December 22nd until January 5th at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collector’s Packs for Fantasy Strike[/b].

More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version:

The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes.

The Collector’s Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; they’re 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters.

Already own all of these games on Steam and you’ve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlin’s Patreon page, where about twice a month we’re giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at what’s next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If you’re a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content.

Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!

This month there are lots of bug fixes, some balance changes for Quince, and the new ability to see how many gems (virtual currency) your account has on OTHER platforms than your current one. (By the way, gems don’t travel across platforms, as per Sony’s requirements, but the items you buy with gems DO travel across platforms with your account.)


The game now works on PlayStation 5! It is as cross-platform and as cross-buy as we could possibly make it by Sony's rules. (See the FAQ here: http://www.fantasystrike.com/crossplay)


--Quince's Dodge the Question (ground C) is no longer invulnerable during its first 2 frames. This allows you to pressure him when you get a knockdown and he can’t get away so easily.
--Quince air B no longer can cancel to air C mirror on hit/block. Reverting this buff from an earlier patch, he doesn’t need it. (He can still do air C mirror after air B ends, just not cancel into it.)
--Quince’s back+A no longer ground bounces when used as anti-air so that back+A into forward+C no longer combos. The 2 damage anti-air was a bit much compared to what other characters can do anti-air, especially considering how great and huge the hitbox is for back+A.
--Fixed a bug that allowed air S to cancel to air B on block. It can no longer cancel to air B. When it did, it prevented Quince’s illusion helpers from appearing.


--In the store screen, you can now see the amount of gems you have on other platforms.
--When you search for a player in the friends screen or for a Friend TV filter, the search results are now sorted alphabetically, same as your friends list.
---Fixed the practice mode dummy recording failing to correctly playback some moves, notably Setsuki's hold-C Starlight Tumbler.

--Fixed Lum turning blue when Onimaru strikes Lum’s dice with Spirit Fire (B then B). This move is supposed to turn the opponent blue briefly (for fun, with magical energy), but not when you just hit dice that are far away from Lum.
--Fixed Quince-reflected items from Lum's Slots of Items being reflected too many times.
--Fixed mini-Lum and mini-Rook being visually duplicated when they get destroyed by an opponent's projectile or strike. (Graphical bug only.)
--In Survival mode, Quince and Onimaru now have their own "jump-in" voice, rather than Grave's.
--DeGrey's wig in his master costume is no longer way too bright.
--Fixed some missing rim lighting on Quince's default costume.
--Fixed an abrupt camera movement at the start of Grave's forward throw.
--Fixed a few incorrect UI texts in non-English languages such as “Choose a friend!” on the Friend TV screen of Fantasy+’s replay theater feature..


Nintendo’s patch approval process is significantly slower than other platforms, so it will always lag behind other platforms in fixes. We feel that Nintendo should allow instant patching like other platforms in order to increase the software quality of games on their platform. The following are now fixed on Switch, but were already hotfixed weeks ago on PS4 and Steam.

--Fixed a bug in the in-game store when you attempted to add more time to your Fantasy+ membership. This bug caused some membership options (such as buying 1 more month of Fantasy+) to show up as “owned” so you couldn’t buy them, and could also crash the game.
---Fixed having the wrong input settings (like up-to-jump) during practice mode dummy playback. This would break the dummy’s ability to playback jumps if player1 and player2 had different up-to-jump settings.
--Fixed a blackscreen (hang) that could occur in Ranked Mode online.
--Fixed a bug where the friend list screen could never go to pages of your friends beyond the first page.
--The player search results screen and Friend TV friend search now sort players alphabetically, like your friends list already did.

The holidays are almost here, so it’s time for the Steam Autumn Sale! From November 25th until December 1st you can save 34% on not just the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike[/b], but also all quantities of Gems in the shop!

More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version:

The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes.

The Collector’s Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; they’re 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters.

Already own all of these games on Steam and you’ve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlin’s Patreon page, where about twice a month we’re giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at what’s next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If you’re a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content.

Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!