Fantasy Strike

Introduction

Fantasy Strike is a 2D-perspective fighting game designed by David Sirlin at Sirlin Games.

Characters

Grave Jaina Geiger Argagarg Setsuki Valerie Rook Midori Lum DeGrey

Notation

• - Forward (towards the opponent)
• - Backward (away from the opponent)
• - Jump *
• - Attack
• - Special 1
• - Special 2
• - Throw **
• - Super ***

* can be assigned to the "up" button, or any other button. By default, it is set to a right-hand button.

** Throw can be triggered either by pressing the designated button or by pressing simultaneously.

*** Super can be triggered either by pressing the designated button or by pressing simultaneously.

Mechanics

Health and Damage

Health is displayed in discrete chunks, making it easy to see exactly how much heath both players have and how much damage moves do. Most characters have 6 hit points, though some have as few as 5 or as many as 8 hit points. Most moves do 1 damage. When a player takes damage, their lifebar displays red for the chunks of life lost. This has no gameplay effect, but it helps show how much damage was done. There is no stun or dizzy state. Also, there is no damage scaling during combos like in most fighting games, so if a move does 1 damage by itself, it will also do 1 damage when used in a combo.

Block Damage

When a player blocks a special or super attack, one chunk of their lifebar will start flashing. It will continue flashing for 4 seconds. If they block another special or super attack during that time, it will start flashing faster for the next 4 seconds. If they block a special or super attack during the fast-flashing state, they lose that point of life.

If a player has a flashing life and then they get thrown, the 4 second timer is paused as they are thrown, then their next remaining point of life will be flashing. On the other hand, if they have flashing life but get hit by an attack, they will lose a point of life but their next chunk will not be flashing.

In general, normal attacks () do not cause block damage. All special and super attacks (, , and ) can cause block damage. Rook is an exception; his normal attacks do cause block damage because he is made of rock.

Movement

Simply press or to walk forward or backward. Each character has a different walk speed. There is no crouching in the game. There are no dashes or runs either.

Jumping

To jump, press . Players may map this to "up" if they prefer, but the default controls use a designated jump button in order to simplify the left hand's actions to only pressing and . Also, it’s often good to immediately follow up a jump with an attack in Fantasy Strike. This is a bit easier to do when the jump button and the other button both use the right hand, rather than coordinating it with the up from the left hand.

There are three kinds of jump: back / neutral / forward. Hold away from the opponent when pressing jump to back jump ( ) or hold towards the opponent when pressing jump to forward jump ( ). By not holding either direction when pressing jump, players will jump straight up. After a jump starts, holding a direction will not change the jump's trajectory. Holding longer will not affect the trajectory either.

After pressing , a character does not instantly leave the ground. All characters have 3 frames of pre-jump before they actually become airborne. These pre-jump frames are throwable (by normal throws, but not by special/super throws).

When landing from a jump, a character either has 0 frames of recovery if they didn't attack in the air, or a minimum of 2 frames of landing recovery if they did attack. Some moves have more than 2 frames landing recovery, but 2 is the minimum if they did any action in the air.

Players cannot block in the air, so jumping makes them especially vulnerable. That said, airborne characters gain access to new moves on all buttons in the air so sometimes players want to jump to access those moves.

Blocking

To block an attack, hold (This is not left, but away from the opponent). This usually makes the character walk backward, but if there is an attack on the screen that they can block, then they will block instead. While blocking does protect from attacks, it does not protect from throws.

Since there is no crouching in Fantasy Strike, there is no high/low blocking either. Therefore, compared to most fighting games, blocking in Fantasy Strike is simpler since high/low blocking is not a factor. However, cross-ups do exist, so correctly holding left/right to block is still important.