After we speculated about it coming, Fantasy Strike the fighting game from Sirlin Games is now officially available for Linux.

It's currently in Early Access, with a full release scheduled for "Q1 of 2019", they've also confirmed that online play is compatible with Windows and Mac.

The developer was kind enough to send over Steam keys for review. It does need a fix, as it seems to incorrectly get your screen resolution and ends up giving a screen width and height of 1—which breaks it of course. To fix it, you can add this as a launch option in Steam (right click on it, go to properties, hit set launch options and put this in):

-screen-height 1080 -screen-width 1920

Adjusting for your resolution of course. Or you can edit the "prefs" config file in "/home/user/.config/unity3d/Sirlin Games/Fantasy Strike"

From the press release:

Fantasy Strike is a fighting game that has re-imagined the genre with its emphasis on elegance in gameplay as well as in user interface. The gameplay streamlines fighting games to their essence, making their depth more apparent and accessible. As a piece of software, Fantasy Strike aims to excel at features where others have struggled: a single click to challenge a friend, a single click to watch a friend play, best-in-class netcode (GGPO), fast loading times, and more. The development team is led by Super Street Fighter 2: HD Remix lead developer and former fighting game pro David Sirlin. “For years I’ve been frustrated by the sorry state of usability in most fighting game software. You can’t even use the mouse in the PC version of Street Fighter 5—in 2018—and good luck challenging a friend,” Sirlin said.

After playing through some of the tutorial section, I'm actually pretty impressed. Lovely colourful visuals and accessible controls with some seriously cool moves available!

I did have a few issues with the tutorial, especially with the combo when you need to jump, hit twice quickly and then do a special. Took forever to get the timing correct. They also need to make the blocking section clearer, as the prompt at the top doesn't tell you to attack after which confused me for a bit. Only minor stuff though, it's actually a pretty great fighting game from the time I've spent in it so far.

The Steam Controller worked perfectly, without any adjustments needed. When in-game simply hold two buttons like A/X on the main menu and it will come up asking you to set the buttons. It only seems to have PlayStation icons for gamepads, so it's a wee bit confusing, something I hope they address in a later update.

I've let them know about the resolution issue, they're looking into it. Find it on Steam.