David Sirlin On What Separates Fantasy Strike from Other FGC Titles

With EVO 2018 now in full swing, Twin Galaxies managed to catch up with noted game designer and EVO alumni David Sirlin, to talk about his latest project, Fantasy Strike, and what separates it from other FGC titles.

We’re here with David Sirlin from Fantasy Strike. Tell me about the game and about its origins.

To give you some background on what we’re trying to do, my background is I'm a hardcore fighting game player from the beginning of the FGC. I helped run Evo for many years, I was a top 8 finisher at Evo 3 times, I was the lead designer for Street Fighter HD remix and a top player at that game as well. So again, I'm very hard core. With Fantasy Strike, part of the mission is to be a an esport game for experts. This isn't a game for babies or watered-down game or anything it's a real strategy game that is in my opinion is as deep or deeper than the other mainstream games like Street Fighter 5. 

Now the other half, the point is even though we're aiming for that level of depth we don't really see any reason to make it harder than have to be to get into the game, so we've gone to extreme measures to be the easiest game to get into, the most accessibility possible, something that I have not seen anywhere else in the FGC. You asked about the life bar that's one of many elements where we have a segmented life bar so it's super obvious how many hit points you have and if an arrack will kill you. If you've got 3 hit points left and someone does a jump in attack, lands the attack, special move, you know that going to kill before it even happens it's very understandable. The super meter fills automatically over time, that's understandable. The control scheme, we don't even have crouching we only have move left and right and all special moves are a single button press, there's no quarter circles or anything again so people who don't even play fighting games, they immediately get it.

So, we're aiming for a mass market that can bring new people into the genre who won't even playing fighting games, but also, it's for Evo top 8 finishers. We talk differently when we talk to one group versus the other.

Now you mentioned characters from the card game, tell me about that game as well.

It was back in 2010 when my first set of card games came out, the biggest one of those was called Yomi, that was the Japanese word about reading and knowing. That card game is like a fighting game in card form. At that time all those years ago I imagined the fighting game with all these characters, and we made a card game based on it, but we couldn't make the fighting game because it was too expensive, so now a decade later finally we're making the expensive fighting game. Some people think it was the other way around that we made the card game then we had the idea for the fighting game, but no it was it was the first way around. Those ten characters that are in Fantasy Strike are the ten characters from Yomi, they are also in my other card games, I have five card games out there.

It makes me think there was a Street Fighter / DarkStalkers game, and they had had like all those kinds of characters from across those different universes. Is this in the same vein where the fighting game characters are in a card game format?

It doesn't play the same, but it's the same concept.

It's on Steam early access when does it coming to other areas?

Right now, it's on Mac and PC on Steam early access, at some point we’re aiming for January 2019 to switch to regular steam not early access, and PlayStation and Nintendo switch. It will have cross platform play everywhere we can, except for Sony they won't allow it, so I would urge your viewers to tell Sony what they think of that

So, you've got new characters and things you've add to the game, tell us about that?

So, what's different from last year when we were at EVO, there's actually 5 new stages, arcade mode has story sequences, intros, endings, they are beautifully illustrated by Udon Comics, who do the art for Street Fighter. They're also fully voiced with motion graphics, there's a survival mode that works a little differently than other survival mode out there, there's a daily challenge mode kind of like a survival mode that you can play once a day and see how you stack up against other people, there's now voice acting for all the characters, excellent online play. The way online play works is it works differently than other fighting games, if I wanted to play against you on an online game I would have to set up a lobby then set up the parameters for the lobby, and I might have to setup a password or something. I don't like any of that it's always frustrated, me but here for us you press one button to bring up your in-game friends list in the UI and you can select them with one button from your friends list to send them a challenge.

Does it merge with your Steam friends list?

If you just go to the friends list and don't do anything special, it will be populated by all your platform friends. Steam, PS4, everything. In addition to that you'll be able to manually add friends who are on other platforms to that list.

So, here's the question, with crossplay available between switch and PC or PlayStation and PC at release, that will later play those friends?

That will allow the platform friends to be right on that list.

It makes me think of how fortnight is with your platform friends and then your epic friends.

Fighting games just been in a rut with this sad online UI. If you and I were in the same room playing on a local battle, we go to the lobby, we'd pick our characters, we do the fight, and then we would repeat over and over again. With this games online play, we’re put in exactly the same UI as a local battle, there’s no extra screens or anything to worry about.

Now with the Nintendo switch is there going to be the ability to sit next to each other and play on two Nintendo switches together?

Not in the same way as other games, you can obviously sit there and play but not like those other games. However, it does support the joy con, the controls will match to that. The other thing that's different for our game is if I want to challenge you but you're already in a game, I can't challenge you, so that one button press switches to an eyeball which will let me watch you play the game you're currently in, so anytime I want I can watch a match of any of my friends in spectator mode and that will actually follow your friends to all the matches that there are and as long as you don't back out at any point, you’ll keep watching them.

EVO 2018 is proving to be quite the entertaining event. For more on Fantasy Strike, check out the official website, here, and for more news out of EVO 2018, check out our interview with Mark “MarkMan” Julio, as he talks about the event, Tekken and Soul Caliber 6, and Razer Sticks.