About
Shantae and Asha: Dream Fantasia is a free fan-made crossover between WayForward's Shantae and SEGA's Monster World IV, built in GameMaker Studio by solo developer XBuster Zero. It is an open-world 2D action-platformer with RPG elements, letting players control both Asha (a weapons-and-Pepelogoo fighter) and Shantae (who relies on magic and transformations) across a large interconnected map.
Set a year after the events of Monster World IV, the two heroines team up to gather ingredients for an elixir. Version 1.0 launched in February 2020 and the project has continued to receive substantial content updates.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- shantae-and-asha.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- proton_experimental
- Winetricks
- —
- ProtonDB
- ProtonDB Pending not enough reports yet
⚙ Setup notes
Game: A free fan crossover (XBuster / Wonder x Boy) of Shantae and Monster World IV's Asha, built in GameMaker Studio — a 30+ hour open-world 2D action-RPG. Latest build is v2.1.0 (the older v2.0.1 is what most mods/guides target).
Proton: As a GameMaker Windows .exe it runs reliably under Proton on Deck (the official Shantae titles are Gold/Platinum). Add as a Non-Steam game pointing at shantae-and-asha.exe and force proton_experimental (or GE-Proton if a menu fails to render).
Display: F4 toggles fullscreen.
DRM: No DRM/GFWL — it's a free fan game.
The one thing to know
Free fan game: Not WayForward/SEGA. No dedicated ProtonDB entry yet (tier pending), but GameMaker exes run well under Proton on Deck.
Controller: Don't count on native gamepad detection — multiple players report the pad isn't recognised at all in this fan game. Plan on a Steam Input keyboard layout as the reliable path (default keys cover everything: arrows/WASD move, Z/jump, with menu confirm split between Enter and Z).
Fix: If it refuses to launch (a GameMaker Direct3D issue), dropping dgVoodoo 2 (D3D8.dll/D3DImm.dll) into the game folder can stabilise it.
Binary: shantae-and-asha.exe (as stated by the release; the exact GameMaker exe name should be confirmed against your downloaded build before marking working).
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.