Blade Strangers, New Japanese Fighting Game, Coming to Consoles and PC This Year

Nicalis Inc., who you probably know for publishing games like The Binding of Isaac and Cave Story+ on Nintendo Switch and Steam, announced a brand new fighting game today called Blade Strangers. Blade Strangers is a 2-D fighting game from veteran Japanese dev suit Studio Saizensen. Some of you may recognize this studio and some of its characters from Code of Princess, a 3DS game published by Atlus. Check out the very first screenshots in the gallery below.

As is the trend recently, Saizensen and Nicalis are boasting a model and animation style reminiscent of what you’d see from a hand-drawn cartoon. “The stunning character animation in Blade Strangers is created using a proprietary process,” the press release states. “3D character models are used to render individual animation frames, which are then rasterized into sprites and manually touched up by experienced 2D artists. The result is smooth and realistic animation in which every single frame looks like a gorgeous anime illustration.”

These guys will have some pretty high standards to live up to now that Arc System Works has spoiled us all with the smooth animated style of games like Guilty Gear Xrd and Dragon Ball FighterZ. It’s an attractive style, though, and Blade Strangers looks to take up more of a pixel-art aesthetic, which is a nice and unique twist. As for the gameplay, Saizensen is hoping that simplified inputs will attract more casual fighting game fans.

“The game uses a four-button control scheme in which all attacks are triggered by various combinations of action buttons. By avoiding the use of traditional quarter-circle and half-circle input commands, Nicalis and Studio Saizensen hope that the less complex controls of Blade Strangers will allow new players to get into the fighting game genre. The development team’s goal is to revitalize a once-mighty fan community that has the potential to grow even larger.”

“The first time I played Blade Strangers, I couldn’t believe that both the control and game mechanics were so intuitive,” says Nicalis president Tyrone Rodriguez, himself a longtime competitive fighting game player. “It was immediately fun. And even though it was just an early demo, I could see that it already had the gameplay depth of a classic 2D fighter from the 1990s.”

Look for Blade Strangers on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam later this year.