Into the Breach

Playing billiards on the chessboard.

The creators of chess were reincarnated in this time era to give us this masterpiece of a game.

It's probably the most "fair" game I've ever played. You're given near-perfect information every turn and yet the game still provides a satisfying challenge that feels incredible to overcome.

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Overview
Into The Breach is an isometric turn-based strategy game about pilots in time-traveling mechsuits trying to correct Earth's mistakes during an alien invasion.
The Good
Intuitive controls
Strategic options
Multiple difficulties
Brilliantly presented
Save and quit at any time
Adjustable combat speed
The Bad
No description of map icons
No previewing abilities of unlockable squads
No tutorial for each squad
No undo if misclicking an attack on your last building
No sense of ultimate victory for the story
Some squads arguably inferior to others
Buy or Try
Buy at full price
Stability
No crashes, graphical anomalies, sound issues, or frame rate drops
My System: Windows 10, i7-7700 @ 3.60GHz, 16GB ram, 1060 3GB, played at 1920 x 1080
Gameplay
Into The Breach is a turned-based combat game where you control 3 mechsuits in a strategic conflict against enemy units. Maps consist of a randomly generated 8x8 grid, with each square representing terrain upon which a building, mountain, enemy, hazard, mech, or other object may reside. Each turn your enemies telegraph their next attacks, with you choosing how to move and control your mechs to prevent damage to buildings, complete in-map objectives, and hurt foes. Your healthbar consists of a power grid, depleted with every building attacked. The game is lost should your grid hit 0.
Combat encounters are spread across 2-4 islands comprising a campaign. Objectives and rewards vary depending on what you choose. Examples include protecting a train, killing enemies, or preventing them from spawning. Rewards include grid power, reactor cores, and reputation. Completing enough battles presents a final challenge for the island. These play out the same as others but include a boss unit with special traits. Upon completion you are granted access to a shop to spend accumulated reputation on grid power, new abilities, and reactor cores, as well sell back abilities and pilots for more reputation. Completing all the objectives for an island grants an extra reward from three options such as an ability, pilot, or grid power. Beating 2 or more islands allows entry into a final encounter, a multi-level test of skill and endurance marking the campaign's conclusion.
When you begin a game you select your mech squad and one starting pilot. Each mech is controlled by a pilot and every enemy killed by it earns the pilot experience. As you play the game more pilots will unlock, each with a unique starting trait and additional benefits upon levelling up. Should you fail a run, a single pilot still alive can be carried over into the next one, including any experience it had previously accumulated. If a mech is destroyed during combat the pilot dies, but the mech can still be used in future encounters just with no pilot to gain experience. New pilots can be found during in-level events or offered as a reward for a perfect island victory.
Controlling a mech consists of moving it on the board and using abilities. You can choose to have a mech do nothing, move only, use an ability only, or move and then use an ability. Using an ability prevents movement. Only one ability per mech can be used per turn. Abilities vary across mech units and include such things as repairing the unit, attacking and pushing a unit next to it, launching a projectile to damage and/or move units far away, and much more. Key to the game's strategies is that directly attacking enemies is often less useful than using your mech's abilities to move enemies instead. This can prevent damage to your units, cause enemies to commit suicide, or even force enemies to fight each other.
Mechs are powered by reactor cores which can be purchased, earned, or granted as a bonus upon levelling a pilot. Some abilities are mech-type specific, some are passive, some take reactor cores to function, and most have further upgrade options. You have one squad to start with consisting of three mech units. An additional 8 mech squads can be unlocked by spending coins, earned through completing a variety of tasks all linked to specific Steam Achievements. Apart from these squads, you also have the option to create a custom one consisting of any combination of units you've unlocked. You can also randomize a squad, with both customized and randomized squads possessing their own coin challenges.
Map layouts, objectives, enemy types, and rewards, are all randomized. A variety of weather and other events can also be encountered, being both a blessing and a curse in equal measure. Examples include tidal waves, lightning, earthquakes, and air strikes. Just like enemy attacks, all of these events are known in advance and can be used to your advantage should you create an effective strategy.
Critique
Into The Breach is hard to describe but easy to judge. The game is beautiful but I'm less impressed by its looks than I am by its thoughtful presentation. Every visual element serves a purpose. Every grid space can be clicked on providing immediate access to names, status effects, enemy traits, damage numbers, and more. It took me hours to write the gameplay description because of how intricate the mechanics are. That the controls are intuitive, the graphics are functional, the move predictions so simplistic yet comprehensive, I'm truly blown away by how such a complex package can be made so accessible by such a minimalistic design.
Getting good at the game required I find a squad that felt natural to play. I did (The Rusting Hulks), but this will vary depending on your preferences. My biggest gripe is that you can't preview the attribute descriptions of the mechs in a squad you haven't unlocked yet. I feel this is the game's biggest oversight as it turns finding a squad you like into a complete gamble as to which you choose to unlock. Though difficult, the game is lenient in that it allows you to undo moves and reset your choices for an entire turn. Without these options the game wouldn't be as easy to recommend, feeling overly punishing and not as enticing for as wide an audience. Grid power also provides a bit of an RNG defense, as sometimes an attacked building will resist damage based on its power percentage.
In just under 29 hours I've unlocked 30 of 55 Steam Achievements. As you get better at the game, you'll discover you can unlock several at a time once you come to grips with particular squad strategies. Considering how Achievements are tied to proficiency for each squad, I'm thankful you aren't forced to complete them all to unlock the bulk of them (the 9th squad is demanding but optional and not linked to an Achievement). I've beaten the game a few times with a 2-island victory, and once with a 4-island victory playing exclusively on Normal. I continue to go back to it for more Achievements. When you start, you won't have any unique pilots unlocked. Know that they can and will make a huge difference. One notable pilot I've begin using almost exclusively, as it allows me to turn an otherwise non-combat mech into a damage-dealer.
Verdict
Though lightly referencing their previous game FTL: Faster Than Light, I like Into The Breach more. It blends turn-based combat with strategy in the same way I felt Desktop Dungeons blended a traditional RPG with puzzle-solving. Both games are simplistically presented, have core mechanics honed to a tee, offer infinite replayability, and somehow manage to make complex systems entirely non-threatening. That the artwork and presentation are solid is just a bonus.
In A Word
"Timeless"

Into the Breach is amazing for it's price point ($14.99 and $7.50 for the steam summer sale as I'm writing this. If it's still on sale as you're reading this, BUY NOW AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER). The only thing lacking in this game is that there isn't more of it.
This game is a rogue-lite where you control 3 mechs fighting giant bugs on an 8x8 grid, defending buildings and objectives, while also trying to kill enemies. Each turn the enemies move a few spaces, and project their attack that will occur next turn. When your turn starts, you want to attack enemies while also defending the cities, objectives, and your own mechs. You can kill them, displace them, or decide to let them proceed with their attack and sacrifice whatever they're attacking. The game is simple, but the decisions are not. Many times I've stared at a board state forever, that seemed like I was guaranteed to take a lot of damage or fail a mission, only to figure out the perfect move that would kill one enemy, move another enemy over to a different tile, and have the other enemy's attack go straight into one of the other bugs, instead of hitting a friendly building.
The game rewards thinking and cost analysis, you think "I can sacrifice some damage to my mech's health if it saves damage on the city" or "I can take some damage on the city, as long as I don't lose the objective on this mission" or "shooting this missile will damage the nearby cities, but this enemy needs to die now before it causes even more trouble." It also makes you decide between displacing enemies so that they miss their attacks for that turn, but leaving them alive to attack next turn, OR outright killing an enemy for good, cutting your losses but knowing you don't have to deal with it anymore.
HOWEVER I don't want people to think the game is TOO complicated and headache-inducing, and forces you to think about every turn like a difficult math problem. You can take your time with each turn, change difficulties, and play different mechs to suit your playstyle (there are 33 different mechs to choose from, each with their own uses, you unlock 3 at a time as certain "squads" but you can eventually mix and match custom squads of 3 mechs as you unlock more) You can also undo movement actions you've done with your mechs for free, or reset your whole turn once per mission if you messed up. (This came in handy a lot when I thought I made all the right moves, only to realize the train I was trying to protect would crash right into my main character mech, simultaneously failing the mission by destroying the train and killing my pilot... whoops) The game is pretty forgiving on normal difficulty, you can spend a lot of time getting the "perfect" turn but if you want to be more casual, you can still do a decent job without losing too much.
Into the Breach is honestly the most relaxing rogue-lite I've ever played, while still being fun and satisfying. After playing intense VR games on my Oculus I would just lay on my bed and play this until I was too tired to play anymore. It's the perfect game to play on an airplane, backseat of a long car ride, or to kill time in a place without a good internet connection. (other than Faster than Light, the developer's other game, which I would recommend even MORE than this game)
The only thing I would want from this game is MORE CONTENT. I've only played this game for about 31 hours and have already unlocked all the different mechs. In FTL, I have over 100 hours and still haven't unlocked all the mechs as of yet. The game is fun, and has a lot room to grow, honestly. It is by NO MEANS an unfinished game like many other independent steam games, or games in early access, (this game is VERY MUCH worth your money, don't get me wrong)... I just wish my playthroughs were a little longer, either by larger maps, more islands/missions, or being able to dictate how long I could stretch my playthroughs. In FTL: Faster-than-Light, the enemy fleet would slowly catch up to you as you traversed the zone you were in until you warped to the next zone. The enemy fleet was hard to escape from or defeat, and you never got any loot from them, so it was on you to decide if you want to spend more time exploring and gathering money and resources, and deal with the powerful fleet on your way out. Other times, you'd just mis-time your travel pattern and end up having to fight the enemy fleet because you took a long path through the system or because you decided to search an extra planet in search of more loot, or instead rush to the end of the zone because you need to get to friendly territory asap because your ship is falling apart. In Into the Breach, your "island" always ends after you complete 4 missions.. In FTL, your decisions were more permanent, and had more consequences. Your ship's health stayed the same until you found a place to repair it, your crew members stayed dead, and you could change your ship's loadout and equipped weapons/gear on a dime, whereas you can only significantly change gear, stats, or loadout at the end of each island, giving it less of that "rogue" feel. A lot of playthroughs of FTL involved me going into the final boss fight limping, a bunch of my crew members dead, crappy weapons, and my ship's hull about to fall apart- only to beat the final boss by the skin of my teeth, with a lot of luck involved. There aren't a lot of "despair" moments in Into the Breach like there are in FTL, BUT, this trait will be a positive for a lot of people.
This game is a strategy game, with SOME rng and luck involved, but mostly revolving around how well YOU play. A lot of rogue-like games make you feel bad for getting unlucky, or feel like you got the shit end of the stick with rng, but this game never makes you feel like that. Most situations you'll be able to fight your way through, or find a way to make it work. Sometimes you'll have to sacrifice some "health" in order to get more spending money, in more dire circumstances you'll have to sacrifice an entire mech and its pilot in order to protect an important objective or prevent an entire game over, and other times you'll get extremely lucky and stand on top of enemies emerging from the ground, stopping their spawns onto the map and have literally 0 enemies to fight and clearing the mission with ease, or get an overpowered item loadout that lets you destroy all the bugs with ease without much effort, leading to an early and easy victory. In the end though, my hours spent on this game flew by, it keeps your attention, entertains you, and satisfies you.

Buy this game if you teach game design and use it to teach your students game design.
Or, alternatively, buy this game to learn what good game design looks like.
Or, if you don't care about game design, then buy it because it an absolutely fantastic game and everyone should play it.

It's like playing chess with three queens and 25 kings, and your opponent just decides to summon 15 dudes before you can even start to move. I've heard of analysis paralysis, but this game somehow manages to put you into an analysis coma every single turn.
Still, that means you feel like a god of gaming when you manage to pull off the perfect turn. There is no excuse that you can come up with for loosing, and that means the only object between you and victory is your own mental capacity. So I guess it's fitting that I usually don't win on my hard runs, and find it especially hard to perfect an island on anything above easy. Still, this game is fair and one of my favorite games to play to engage my mind. Each map is a self-contained mini-puzzle. Absolutely worth the price for the sheer amount of content available in this game.
That said, if you don't like games that halt gameplay entirely while you look at a bunch of red lines and decide how to prevent the 12 damage incoming to your grid on any given turn, you'll probably want to play something faster paced else like FTL. I for one love both kinds.
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