Level 99 have specialised in transcribing video games into their card and board game equivalents. Guilty Gear: Strive is the latest example. It's based on the long-running Japanese beat 'em up video game published by Arc System Works. If you don't know the Guilty Gear video game series, think of them as an anime-style Mortal Kombat with an underlying storyline.
The board game is designed by David B Talton Jr and it's built around Level 99's Exceed fighting system. It involves head-to-head combat using cards for attack and defence but, as with video game combat, you'll do best if you can boost your attacks by using card combos. Cards indicate their Speed, which functions like initiative in determining the order in which simultaneously played cards are activated. Attacks have an indicated range, so players will be moving their characters into range for an attack and, where possible, out of range for their opponent's attack. Movement and some of the more powerful attack cards have a cost to play them, met by discarding other cards from your hand. All this means that you'll have to plan carefully to make use of your most powerful cards.
Each character is represented with a double-sided card, so there's a more powerful flip side that you can progress to. Shown here on Board's Eye View is a demo pack produced for Guilty Gear: Strive's recent run on Kickstarter. The demo pack utilises just two characters but the full game comes with 20: each with their own unique decks of cards. That makes for a bewildering range of duelling options.
Tho' the KS has finished, you can still click here to pre-order the game. Even the standard edition comes with a neoprene playmat (not the paper playmat shown in our Board's Eye View 360) and the Kickstarter has included the option for a Collector's Edition with character standees and an Ultimate Edition with even more characters and standees.