Blade Strangers

Blade Strangers was announced on June 12, 2017 during E3 2017. New characters were revealed gradually in the months leading up to the game's release.

The game was initially developed independently by Studio Saizensen, and primarily featured characters from games they had previously created. When Nicalis became the game's publisher, they offered additional suggestions for potential playable characters, and worked with each character's rights holders to include them in the roster.

The game's character sprites were created by designing three-dimensional models for each fighter, rendering them in individual animation frames, then rasterizing those frames and performing additional cleanup by 2D artists.

According to director Toshinobu Kondo, the development team initially struggled to maintain balance due to some characters possessing weapons that gave them extra advantages. The decision to simplify player inputs was due to a desire to make the game more accessible to those who do not normally play fighting games, as well as to reduce the data transfer and resulting input lag during online multiplayer battles.

The game's soundtrack was composed and performed by American rock band Ridiculon, with additional vocals performed by Siobhan Magnus.