Stun Games and Kiss Ltd., have announced that Slashers: The Power Battle has entered into Early Access on Steam. The game is being billed as an old-school fighting game with hand-drawn characters.

The game’s Early Access run currently features four playable characters, two different stages, online play with ranked challenges, rooms, leaderboards and even replay channels. I have to admit that the online portion of Slashers actually seems to be a lot more fleshed out than I thought it would be for a indie-made fighting game. Usually netplay is one of the hardest things to implement for smaller studios because of the amount of time and quality assurance testing required to get it up and working right; you have to make sure that the game’s stay synced, use proper packet distribution to compensate for latency, and also attempt to create a proper matchmaking system that doesn’t put people in a match where there’s hundreds of ms separating the ping between players.

So in a way, one of the hardest parts of the game’s design has been completed. The Early Access version also featured a color editing mode, a tutorial mode, full controller support, and subtitles for multiple languages.

You can check out the actual gameplay for Slashers: The Power Battle with the Early Access trailer below.

Galip Kartoglu, founder of Stun Games, commented about the release of the game into Early Access, saying…

“Slashers: The Power Battle is extremely fast paced, chaotic, challenging fun that really captures the spirit of the old-school fighting games” […] “We’re so excited to be bringing Slashers to PC gamers at the earliest possible opportunity, and can’t wait to start engaging with our community.”

It reminds me of the old Three Kingdoms fighting game Sango Fighter.

The game is actually inspired by classics like The Last Blade, Guilty Gear and Street Fighter III.

The developers designed the game to have easy to learn combos and a fast-paced combat system. The full version will feature 11 total playable characters, multiple stages, a story mode, an arcade mode, all new netplay modes, and an advanced character color customization mode.

Slashers is expected to stay in Early Access until the second quarter of 2018. The current version is available for $6.99, but during the first week of being on sale it’s discounted by 15% off the normal price.

You can learn more by visiting the Steam store page.