Factsheet
Developer and Publisher:
Sirlin Games
Based in Emeryville, CA
Founded: 2005
Fighting Game site:
www.fantasystrike.com
Tabletop games site:
www.sirlingames.com
Press contact
media@sirlingames.com
Assets and Press Releases:
fantasystrike.com/media
Sirlin Games has always specialized in asymmetric games—the kind where players control different characters, each with different abilities and personalities. The company has developed and published both tabletop games and video games.
Before founding Sirlin Games, David Sirlin was lead designer of Capcom's Street Fighter HD Remix and Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, as well as Kongregate.com's Kongai. He is also the author of Playing to Win, a book about e-sports and self-improvement.
The Yomi and Puzzle Strike tabletop games are spiritual successors to the Street Fighter and Puzzle Fighter video games that Sirlin worked on earlier in his career. Yomi is a fighting game in card form while Puzzle Strike translates the unusual comeback mechanism and "crash gem" system from Puzzle Fighter into tabletop form. Both games are set in the Fantasy Strike universe, a fantasy-themed martial arts world populated with colorful warriors, Pandas, fishmen, and transforming dragon masters.
Fantasy Strike was always intended to be a fighting game, but Sirlin Games started by developing the characters in tabletop form. They appear in Yomi (fighting game themed), Puzzle Strike (puzzle game themed), and Flash Duel (sparring practice before a fighting tournament).
Sirlin Games is currently developing the "Fantasy Strike" game itself. This is a fighting game (video game!) that the tabletop series is based on, so the series has come full-circle. Fantasy Strike is designed to push the frontier of just how accessible a fighting game can be while still retaining the fundamentals of what make the genre great.