Guilty Gear’s board game perfectly translates virtual fighters to tabletop

polygon.com:

I never imagined that Guilty Gear’s iconic pre-battle bark, “Heaven or hell? Duel one! Let’s rock!” would show up anywhere but in a video game. But now I’ve found myself saying it out loud whenever I start a match of Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game. Adapting video games to the tabletop isn’t new, but the way it’s done here translates the fighting game into something I never thought possible.

Developer Level 99 gave Polygon an exclusive sneak peek at the in-development game using a special demo deck, featuring fighters Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske. That same deck is available for free, while supplies last, on Level 99’s website. It even comes with a commemorative coin engraved with “heaven” on one side, “hell” on the other. The set will also be available for attendees at this year’s Evo 2023.

This new expression of the Guilty Gear franchise doesn’t just throw a bunch of familiar characters on a board and ask you to play Monopoly or whatever you’re thinking of. It quite literally breaks down how fighting games are played, expanding on the thought processes you have to use to play them well. The result is a surprisingly tactical tabletop experience.

The very concept of a board game adaptation seems daunting, especially with a highly technical fighting game series like Guilty Gear. You’ve got features like basic attacks, special attacks, counterattacks, special meters, EX attacks, frame data, blocking, movement, install transformations, and space control, just to name a few. Level 99’s design takes all of that and more, distilling it down into a slower-paced experience where each element is made to represent a separate game mechanic, directly mirroring its virtual sibling.

“There’s a lot of tactics in fighting games,” Level