Borrow or Rob

[A world ruled by machines. An enemy attacking from the future, against the flow of time.] The artificial intelligence Pantheon judged humanity to be meaningless — and perfected the technology to move against the flow of time. No matter how flawless the resistance's plan, it changed nothing. Pantheon lives through the battle once, then sends its forces back from the future into the past. The enemy that arrives has already fought you, and it comes holding the answer. Humanity has never won. Not once. [Seize the machine that travels back through time. Strike back.] Descendants from the future stole Pantheon's technology and sent it back to the past. The machine is called BORROW or ROB. At last, humanity can enter the battle against the flow of time. Boss battles are split into two phases. PHASE 1 — FORWARD. You fight normally, along the flow of time. Every action you take is recorded to the Timeline. PHASE 2 — TIME INVERSION. You retrace the same battle backwards. The cards you played in Phase 1 begin to replay in reverse. This is not a simple rewind. The whole battle becomes a single structure that locks front to back. Every boss fights in its own way. One retraces its position, another the order of its bombardment, another its splitting and merging. Phase 1 is your time to read those rules. [Two agents. The Temporal Pincer.] You deploy two agents to a single battle: one to fight along the flow of time, and one to be sent into the battle that runs against it. The record left by your Phase 1 agent returns to the Phase 2 battlefield as a hologram. The moment you attack, the agent from the past retraces that attack and strikes down alongside you. This is the TEMPORAL PINCER. Step onto the square where the past agent stands — BORROW triggers. You inherit the Block and buffs that agent built up, exactly as they were. Attack the same position as the past agent, and a crack in time tears open for an instant, letting you choose a Temporal Pincer maneuver. What you did in the past decides what you can do as you move back through time. [Reactive turn-based card combat] The instant the pincer attack lands, the reversed clock begins to turn — and you must input as the hand reaches twelve. Your judgment decides how powerful and how high a grade of Temporal Pincer maneuver you can choose. Between the card you played in the past and the card you play now, nearly 100 different maneuvers are on offer. [Roguelike deckbuilding with limitless possibility] Every agent differs in everything — the color and concept of the cards they wield, their equipment, their Temporal Pincer maneuvers. (Close-quarters destruction, corrosion, data manipulation, defense, and more.) Which two agents will you pair to plan your pincer operation? A roguelike deckbuilder where the combination opens up endless variety in cards, equipment, and skill builds.