Fantasy Strike News

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.

This month, there’s a new profile screen, facial animations for characters hit by cinematic moves, and lots of bug fixes.

[Update: facial animations during “get hit” animations have been removed as a hotfix. They caused faces to be bugged in other situations. We will fix this, then reinstate the get-hit faces next patch.]



There’s now a new profile screen, accessible by clicking the icon in the upper right of the main menu. This screen shows you how much you’ve played each character, your XP, rank, and progress in 1p modes. You can see the profiles of friend by clicking on them in your friends list and choosing “view profile” from the dropdown menu. You can also see profiles of any player searching for them on the “add friend” screen. That’s helpful if you’re searching for a particular friend, and several similar-sounding results come up. Looking at their profiles can help you figure out which the person you’re really looking for.



--When you have more than level 100 in XP, you now get a bronze star under the level. Level 200+ gets two bronze stars, etc. At level 600+, rather than 6 stars, you get a single silver star, and so on.



--You can now see the rank of your friends on the friends list (as in how good they are at ranked mode, not a rank of how much you like them). You can also see rank of each player in the search results on the “add friend” screen.

--When navigating through the friends list, going left to previous page had the correct behavior (selecting the player in the last column) but going right to next page didn't select the player in the first column. Both work the same way now.

--When you select a player on the friend screen, the highlight position now updates instantly, rather than 1 frame later.



MIDORI

--Dragon’s B torpedo is no longer throw invulnerable during the startup. (Was never intended to be.)

--Dragon’s C forward-moving throw no longer causes opponents to go into a blocking pose if they are holding back. (Was never intended to.)

ARGAGARG

--Slight adjustment to vulnerable boxes during B projectile startup so his head is a little less vulnerable.

--Slight adjustment to the vulnerable boxes as his arms extend during f+A so that it better matches the animation (slightly less vulnerable, but still pretty vulnerable).

--When you pop Bubble Shield, you can no longer always easily combo a normal attack right after for a second damage. It’s possible in edge cases to do it still (which is fine), but in general you can’t get the extra damage. It was never intended that Bubble Shield always do 2 damage, so this is a bug fix.

--If your character has horizontal velocity from something, like a pushback force from a projectile, that velocity no longer gets instantly cancelled if you got into proximity block, such as when a second projectile is thrown. This is a tiny thing that has no significant gameplay effect, but it works a bit more as you’d expect now.



--Fixed a bug when letting the countdown run out on the score screen after a casual online match. If you were previously in the queue for both ranked and casual, letting the countdown run out used to return you just to one queue, but now correctly returns you to both. (It already worked correctly if you clicked “ready.”)

--Desync fix: When you change your input config mid-match (up to jump, throw macro, super macro), it's immediately sent to the online opponent, rather than causing a desync.

--When you open the button config during netplay as P2, we no longer accidentally overwrite the P1 side (which are your real local inputs) with the online opponent's settings. (Oops.)

--Ranked Score screen: Now, if you press back or escape during the ranked score screen, it will skip to the final state (after all stars were granted/removed). If "Ready", "Change team" or "Leave queue" buttons are pressed before animation finishes, it will skip to the last state and wait a couple seconds before leaving the screen.



--All character now have facial animation during reacts to cinematic moves, such as getting hit by yomi counters or supers. [Update: temporarily removed, will return in a later patch.]

--Removed the debug options from screen from the game, now that we’re gearing up for release.

--Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a phantom button icon called “7” to appear in the practice mode’s input display when you pressed T or G if those keys were unassigned to game functions.

--In practice mode, when you switch between pressing "left" and "right" within a single frame without spending at least 1f in the "idle" direction, the input display now correctly displays the new direction input.

--When you switch languages, the text of the main menu character’s epithet (such as “Wind Warrior” for Grave) now actually displays text for the currently selected language.

--Fixed the sky in the Fox Den’s stage so it doesn’t show a giant missing area straight above, which was visible during certain cinematic moves such as the Dragon’s C throw.

--Fixed a bug after Daily Challenge, where mouse clicking on the “Escape | Back” tooltip sent you to a buggy state. (It already worked correctly if you pressed the escape or back keys on the keyboard or gamepad.)

--In the local versus character select screen screen, fixed character voice line overlapping with itself if character was locked in, then back was pressed, then character was locked in again quickly.

--When you choose "Skip Opponent" in Arcade mode, that opponent won't be crossed-out in in the ladder screen. You have to really beat them for their name to be crossed out. (From a suggestion on our forums, thanks!)

Don’t miss our huge sale. From November 21st (at 10am Pacific Time) to November 27th, you get 40% off just about everything Sirlin Games sells. That includes:

Tabletop games at sirlingames.com. Use the code FANTASY40 when checking out. Check out our top sellers here. Keep in mind that some products might sell out before the sale period ends, sorry!

Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike on Steam (as well as their associated DLC and soundtrack).

Yomi and Puzzle Strike on iOS.

If you're looking for a fancy gift, we suggest Pandante (either regular or deluxe), as it's joyful experience for both non-gamers and experts. Or, you could try anything else! Fantasy Strike on Steam is our newest and prettiest game. :)

Enjoy!

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.

This month, we updated Geiger, DeGrey, Midori (Human and Dragon Form), Lum, and Argagarg to our new hitbox system. This was a huge amount of effort, though from your point of view, it will have a mostly intangible effect of making hits with those characters feel a little more solid. Various edge cases where moves missed when they shouldn’t (or vice versa) have been fixed and the hitboxes are generally more precise.

We also reset online ranks for a new season (as a test of “seasons”), and we focused on fixing a lot of bugs, especially issues that affected online play.



GRAVE

--Neutral A knifehand attack was accidentally changed from 8/8/8 frame stats to 7/6/7 frame stas for no reason last patch. Now reverted to the correct 8/8/8 speed.

ROOK

--Thunderclap’s vacuum force is no longer 2x too powerful for no reason against all air moves other than jump-straight-up. It functioned correctly vs opponents jumping straight and opponents on the ground, but opponents who had any forward or backward movement in the air got 2x the suction force accidentally.

VALERIE

--Valerie has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Valerie struggles a little more when throwing him.

GEIGER

--During Time Stop ground super, fixed a stray single frame (after the start where the camera moves around, and just before he starts actually walking forward) where the opponent’s inputs were valid. The way ALL supers work is that during the cinematic for their activation, the opponent’s inputs are locked out for all frames EXCEPT the first 8 and the last 8. Geiger’s ALSO had one extra frame for no reason that didn’t lock out inputs. This extra frame meant that opponents who expected the Time Stop, waited for it, then started mashing throw the entire time to throw at the end of it, would accidentally input during the single bugged frame and could end up throwing the wrong way and whiffing. Now, the only time you can realistically throw the wrong way is if you pressed throw during the FIRST eight frames, which is not a bug because that means Geiger baited you to throw at a wrong time (you didn’t react to his Time Stop in that case, but rather tried to throw right as he did Time Stop). Once you see the Time Stop start, you can now react by mashing however you want, and all of it will be ignored by the game except your inputs during the last 8f of the Time Stop.

--Geiger has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Geiger struggles a little more when throwing him.

DEGREY

--Real hitboxes for all of DeGrey’s moves.

Notes on that:

--Air super has 2f invuln instead of 1f. Also, is higher priority.

--fA has more pushback, but this is just to make it work similarly to before when it had wonky pushboxes. Also it has less throw invuln so it matches the animation better.

--B->B tyrant crusher is no longer throw invulnerable.

--B->C justice kicks are now throw invulnerable during the frames they are off the ground.

--DeGrey has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, DeGrey struggles a little more when throwing him.

--Fixed a bug with DeGrey where he could lose the ability to hit the opponent with various moves (A-A, ground C, air C) after winning a round with a counter-hit Tyrant Crusher (B->B) that causes a wall bounce.

--Fixed a graphics issue that wrongly showed several dark polygons on the cape on DeGrey’s shoulder; it was especially visible on the character select screen.

--Reworked sounds for ground super now that the ground super pauses on the parried hit before cutting to the cinematic. The sounds better support the action on-screen now.

MIDORI

--Real hitboxes for all of Midori’s moves, both in human form and Dragon form.

--While Midori is in his “empowered” state (glows yellow, happens after you successfully parry a strike), his walk forward no longer accidentally shows an animation of him walking backwards. There’s no functional change here, it’s just that the graphics showed a confusing thing before.

--Midori has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Midori struggles a little more when throwing him.

LUM

--Real hitboxes for all of Lum’s moves.

--It’s now possible for opponents to hit Lum’s (super) dice out of the air as they fly across the screen. Opponents could already hit and destroy the stationary dice, but couldn’t destroy dice flying across the screen until now. We tried to set the dice this way months ago but had technical difficulties doing so, but we finally sorted it out. It’s not always easy to hit the dice though because moves with low priority might end up getting hit BY the dice if you try.

ARGAGARG

--Real hitboxes for all of Argagarg’s moves.

--Argagarg has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Argagarg struggles a little more when throwing him.



--The first “season” has ended. After release, seasons will be about 3 months long, but we’re resetting it now as a test. Your rank is reset to the lowest possible (bronze E), but you get bonus stars based on your best rank last season. You get one bonus star for each RANK up you achieved. For example, if your best rank last season was Silver C, then you’ll get 7 bonus stars immediately at the start of this new season (the 7 rank ups you achieved were to Bronze D, then C, then B, then A, then Silver E, then Silver D, then Silver C). Also, the crown markers showing which survival modes you beat are reset for this new season.

--Frame advantage visual effects now work correctly with rollback. In the previous version, a technical error caused them to be a little more flickery than all other types of effects.

--Fixed a bug in Ranked mode which could sometimes cause a certain character wrongly appear twice on a team.

--Fixed a bug that could cause some Master rank players to be the “0th” best. The best possible rank is really “1st” and the next best is “2nd” etc.

--Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the server and your client to disagree on the results of your ranked match (e.g. the server counts it as a loss, but your screen accidentally could show a bracket screen where you won).

--Fixed a bug that sometimes cause you to be matched with yourself online.

--If two players are matched for a Casual or Ranked game, but they join the queue again before finishing the match, they won't try to connect to each other again immediately. It means their connection failed at some point, so they will first try to match with other players before trying again.

--Fixed long FantasyTag names overlapping level / platform info on ranked team battle screen.

--Expanded the online "presence" state so it's more descriptive. Before, the three possible states were "Offline", "Playing Fantasy Strike", and "In menus". Now, it says which game mode you're playing, or "In menus".

--From the search results screen when trying to add a friend, clicking on one of the search results then choosing “View Steam profile" for that player will now actually view their Steam profile, rather than doing nothing.

--If you do not currently have an active internet connection, or if there is some problem connecting to our servers, we now mark various features with a “disconnected” icon if they require an internet connection. If you attempt to access an online feature while in this state, the game will try to reestablish a link to our servers, and if it can’t, a popup will say that it can’t connect to the server. All of this is functionally similar to before, it’s just more clear what’s going on.



--The team battle screen before each match now animates faster, meaning a shorter duration overall.

--Team Battles now correctly resolve mirror match colors. For example, if you put Grave with color 4 on your team, the opponent is now unable to put Grave with color 4 on their team. It used to wrongly allow this in some situations.

--Jumps. If you initiate a jump (meaning reach the first frame of pre-jump) with a command to jump forward or back, you will now actually jump forward or back, respectively, regardless of what inputs you do during the rest of pre-jump (you used to be able to input, for example, jump forward then a couple frames later before you leave the ground, change it to jump back). In our old system, sometimes players intended jump forward, but accidentally got a jump straight up, and this should address that.

--In practice mode, the frame step help text in the upper left corner of the screen now shows button help for controllers OR keyboard, depending on which mode you’re in. This was accidentally disabled before for controllers, and it only showed help text for keyboard.

--When characters are in a spinning-through-the-air hit react, they now have a spinning sound effect. (For example, if you hit with Degrey’s B-> B Tyrant Crusher when it’s not a counter-hit.)

We’re getting in on the Halloween fun with a 25% off deal for all of our digital titles, Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike! This deal includes 25% off both Shadows expansions for Yomi/Puzzle Strike and the soundtrack for Fantasy Strike.

Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike all feature the same characters from the same universe, carrying their signature playstyles across totally different genres! Love dominating your foes as a fearsome dragon in Fantasy Strike? You can do that in Yomi and Puzzle Strike, too. Enjoy the thrill of damaging yourself for powerful effects in Puzzle Strike? Jaina does the same thing in the other games, too!

You’d better act fast though; these spooky deals only last until Thursday, November 1st. Buy one for yourself or as a gift for a friend!

Game Director David Sirlin talks about the ranked mode in Fantasy Strike. He covers the tournament structure that ranked mode uses, the team battle format of the gameplay, and the point system used to adjust your rank.
https://youtu.be/U3_QbZtTHfg