Into the Breach

Playing billiards on the chessboard.

Fun little tactical experience, suitable for all devices, short & long sessions alike.
A charming little tactics experience that doesn't seem quite as magical as its predecessor FTL, but has more than enough content for the price asked. The combat is weighty without feeling clunky, and the randomly generated levels never seem too unfair towards you, even on higher difficulties. Backed up with interesting unlockables, a charming artstyle, and superb performance, ItB is a game that can keep you busy & retrying for a hell of a long time.
Conclusion

It's an absolutely solid recommendation for puzzle/strategy enthusiasts. Overall: good replayability, able to unlock new teams and squads, pretty addictive at times.
My rating: 9/10


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A very deliberate and thoughtful turn-based puzzle game. You can stare at these boards for 15 minutes at a time before you hit on a perfect, elegant solution that carries your mechs out of danger and protects all the buildings and makes you feel like a genius. Won't take as long to get your first victory as FTL; you'll only get your money out of it if you intend to replay it several times with all the different squads, but the core gameplay loop is really fun, so provided you like puzzles that won't be an issue.

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.

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.