# Into The Breach



## tommers (Feb 8, 2018)

New game from the people who made FTL. Small scale bite sized strategy game. You control a team of mechs who have to defend a city from giant monsters, a la Japanese monster movies.  Apparently it is focused on moving the enemy about the map in order to stop them achieving their goals and you unlock different teams of mechs to use against them.

Everybody who is playing it is raving about it and it is probably the game I am most looking forward to in the whole wide world.

They said yesterday that it will be out on Feb 27th.

Kaiju & mechs clash in ace FTL follow-up Into the Breach


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## tommers (Feb 26, 2018)

Into The Breach Review - Out Of This World



> individual battles are so swift and satisfying that they become a craving that you'll want to keep feeding over and over.



The really interesting thing about it is that you can see what the opponents are going to do before they do it.  So your job is to defend and disrupt their plans - not necessarily kill them.  That's pretty revolutionary for a tactics game.  Usually you take your turn, the enemy take theirs.  With this there's no chance or randomness.  You know the outcome of your actions, and your opponents', before they even happen. That turns the whole game mechanism on its head. 

It unlocks at 3pm tomorrow.  Aarrghh.


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## tommers (Feb 26, 2018)

Into the Breach review - tactical greatness in glorious miniature



> And pretty soon you're lost in the detailing and you realise that - yes! - alongside being billiards and Whack-a-Mole and chess and American Football and all the rest of it, Into the Breach is also FTL, in its delight in the glinting clockwork of failure, in its fascination with difficult choices, in surprising victories, in drastic variation that works its strange magic within tight restrictions. And all of these games come together to make Into the Breach, which is precise and brutal and complex and dizzying and utterly thrilling - and Into the Breach is, somehow, entirely its own thing too.



I can keep going with this.


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## yield (Feb 28, 2018)

What's the gameplay like tommers ? I loved FTL


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## tommers (Feb 28, 2018)

yield said:


> What's the gameplay like tommers ? I loved FTL



It's not really like FTL, outside of it being randomly generated, and the progress system is quite similar I guess. I saw that Chris Avellone was involved  in the writing but I'm not sure what he could have done - there isn't much of it.

It's pure small scale tactics. You have four small islands, with different teams of mechs to choose from - all with different abilities. So some push and pull opponents, some do damage, some put up shields or whatever.  The enemies spawn every turn and at the start they show you what they will do - attacking a building or a mech etc.

You then have to manage the battle. The enemies' actions stay the same so if you move them one square east they will miss the building and maybe hit their mate instead. Or you can push them into fire, or water. Ideally you get rid of all of them cos otherwise you quickly end up with loads and you can't stop them all. So then you start making decisions about what to lose. Different enemies have different attacks too.

You get the chance to improve your powers as well, add weapons - that kind of thing.

It's the sort of game you could probably complete quite easily if you sat down and went through each move. I'm enjoying just trying things out and seeing what things do.

I really like it. It's a lot deeper than it looks and I think it's the kind of thing that I'll be playing for a while - like FTL.

If you get it buy it off Humble or GOG - cheaper than Steam and you get an FTL key for free. Just in case anybody in the world doesn't already own it.


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## tommers (Mar 5, 2018)

I know that you lot only believe something if your beloved Guardian tells you, so here you go:

Into the Breach review – an impossibly elegant sci-fi strategy game

I've played it for about 40 hours now and it's the best thing.  I've realised over the last couple of years that what I like about games is their design - so things like FTL or Hoplite or Kingdom Rush - where the design is ingenious and tight and well balanced.  This game is the very definition of those things.  There is no fat on it.  It's great.


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## Mordi (Mar 5, 2018)

I am not enjoying this and am still trying to figure out why. 

I've put quite a few hours in, and will put plenty more in but I think the relentless 'you are going to lose something' and the pressure that comes with it to solve the puzzle really set my teeth on edge.

Which is interesting, as I loved FTL not to mention lots of old school Roguelikes and Dwarf Fortress in which losing really is fun. I think it must be the theme, which I've seen some folk describe as ludo-nihilism. Every new game is a new timeline, the ones you've failed in are consigned to their horrible fate. Because the theme embraces that aspect of video games (you can carry characters between games due to time travel magic) it makes it oddly affecting.

It's a great game, but I'm not finding it fun.


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## tommers (Mar 5, 2018)

I struggled a bit at the start cos I found I was spending ages staring at the screen trying to work out how I could save everything and I was worried that the game was a bit of a chore. But then I realised that you can't save everything all the time and sometimes you have to sacrifice something in order to get anywhere. Losing a building isn't the end of the world and I regularly use my mechs as shields.

Now I'm a bit more easy going about it and accept the odd bit of damage if I can't see a way to avoid it. I think that part of it is making choices about what to lose and what it's worth taking a hit to kill.


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## tommers (Jun 29, 2018)

The 50 best strategy games on PC

RPS have decided that this is the best strategy game ever made. 

Not sure I'd go that far (it's still X-Com for goodness' sake) but still....


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## Fez909 (Jun 29, 2018)

tommers said:


> FTL or Hoplite or Kingdom Rush


Seems like we have the same taste in games. 

Will have to get this, cheers!


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## tommers (Jun 23, 2022)

You absolute fucking beauties. They did this with FTL too. Cannot wait, so excited.


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## tommers (Jun 23, 2022)

July 19th is my daughter's tenth birthday so I'll have to think of some excuse why I can't go. (joking.)


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## Crispy (Jun 23, 2022)

Oh this will be FAB on phone. What excellent news


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## tommers (Jun 23, 2022)

Crispy said:


> Oh this will be FAB on phone. What excellent news


Five new mech squads Crispy ! Five! Forty new weapons! Hee hee hee.


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## tommers (Jul 21, 2022)

Been playing this.  Haven't unlocked all the new squads yet (there are 5 I think!) but have been using Mist Eaters (who create loads of smoke), Heat Sinks (who set everything on fire, including themselves) and a bomb squad (who are less aggressive than they sound).  There's a new thing called Boost, which doubles your damage.  There are a whole load of new monsters (Starfish!  Triffid things! Mothras!) and a LOT of new weapons.  And it's free! and you can get the whole game for free on your phone if you have a Netflix account!

There's a really annoying new beardy weirdy pilot (and lots of others too) and it's all great really.  Having a lot of fun with it, working out the new strategies etc etc.  Amazing really that they just give you another half a game for nothing four years after the original released.


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## Crispy (Aug 16, 2022)

It is indeed fantastic on the phone. The interface works really well.
I've been loving the Arachnophiles. Get the ACID upgrade on the spiderbots and they absolutely own.


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## tommers (Aug 16, 2022)

Crispy said:


> It is indeed fantastic on the phone. The interface works really well.
> I've been loving the Arachnophiles. Get the ACID upgrade on the spiderbots and they absolutely own.


Yes. Having it available on my tablet is wrecking my new job. What an absolute fucking beauty of a game.


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## Kid_Eternity (Nov 4, 2022)

Such a great game!


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## Crispy (Nov 4, 2022)

It's one of the few games to ever give me the Tetris Effect, getting into my dreams when I sleep and my thoughts any time I look at things on a grid. Not even Slay the Spire did that to me.

Which pilots do y'all like? I find it really hard not to bring Kai with me for every new run. +1 damage for free is so useful, especially with so many "if lethal" abilities on the newer squads.


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## tommers (Nov 4, 2022)

Crispy said:


> It's one of the few games to ever give me the Tetris Effect, getting into my dreams when I sleep and my thoughts any time I look at things on a grid. Not even Slay the Spire did that to me.
> 
> Which pilots do y'all like? I find it really hard not to bring Kai with me for every new run. +1 damage for free is so useful, especially with so many "if lethal" abilities on the newer squads.


Whoever the one is who escapes webbing.  Or the guy who gives a free reroll.  I avoid the ginger prophet guy.  Just don't like him.


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## Crispy (Nov 4, 2022)

Ah yeah, Camila I think her name is? Goes great in your tip-of-the-spear melee mech.
Now I want to play it again. Just one battle while I have a cup of coffee. Won't disrupt my work day one bit. I've got it under control.


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## Kid_Eternity (Nov 4, 2022)

Crispy said:


> It's one of the few games to ever give me the Tetris Effect, getting into my dreams when I sleep and my thoughts any time I look at things on a grid. Not even Slay the Spire did that to me.
> 
> Which pilots do y'all like? I find it really hard not to bring Kai with me for every new run. +1 damage for free is so useful, especially with so many "if lethal" abilities on the newer squads.


Hah yeah I know what you mean!


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## Flavour (Dec 7, 2022)

Crispy said:


> It's one of the few games to ever give me the Tetris Effect, getting into my dreams when I sleep and my thoughts any time I look at things on a grid. Not even Slay the Spire did that to me.


This was me in lockdown in 2020


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## Crispy (Dec 7, 2022)

tommers said:


> Whoever the one is who escapes webbing.  Or the guy who gives a free reroll.  I avoid the ginger prophet guy.  Just don't like him.


I'm rolling with Gana quite a bit now. Deploying into their midst with AOE damage can be very powerful, especially when there are 1hp leapers or robots. But just in general, it forces the enemy to line up attacks that aren't pointed at the "inhabited side" of the board.


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## tommers (Dec 7, 2022)

I completed an "unfair" run a while ago, but using mist eaters which makes things easier. 

Also successfully resisted using the Steam Deck as just another thing to play Into The Breach on, which is probably the bigger achievement tbh.


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