Fantasy Strike, a Highly Accessible Competitive Fighter, Free to Play This Weekend

Fantasy Strike is a competitive fighting game that aims to appeal to more casual gamers by stripping away the needlessly complex directional and button inputs and distilling the genre down to its very basics: timing, mind games, distance management, poking, and strategy. This game was designed from the ground up to be an accessible and purely competitive game by Sirlin Games, the studio behind Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. This weekend, you can play the game for free.

"The free period will take place worldwide beginning July 28th at 11am PT and end on July 30th at 11:59pm PT. Simply download the Free Weekend build of the game, unzip it, then run the Fantasy Strike app. The build will be posted here once the free weekend begins.The app will not function before or after the Free Weekend period.

"The pre-alpha build will provide full access to eight playable characters and four stages. Online quick match play supporting cross-play between PC and Mac gamers, a local versus mode, a full-featured training mode and an arcade mode will be available in this preview."

Because the game is in pre-alpha, you can expect a few hiccups here and there, and you'll have to keep in mind that the game won't be feature-complete. The game is still very much in the oven, and being developed by a team of loving artisans who want to create the best fighting game experience they possibly can, so try not to rage when you discover that the characters aren't balanced perfectly quite yet.

We were lucky enough to go hands-on with Fantasy Strike at PAX East, and we really enjoyed our time with it. The controls really do work. Similar to games like Super Smash Bros., the characters in Fantasy Strike only have a few attack buttons at their disposal. You have a basic attack button, two special attack buttons, and a jump button. That's it. Walking backward will block, and to counter throws you don't press anything at all. You read that correctly: grabs are countered by reading your opponent and going completely hands-off when you anticipate a throw.

It all comes together brilliantly, and you owe it to yourself to check it out this weekend!