It’s been a hectic past month for me, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been out of the loop on that latest games. And because of that, I thought I’d take a second to talk a little bit about what is certain to be a comfort food game for me for some time to come. That game is Into The Breach. Developed and published by Subset Games on February 27th of 2018, Into The Breach is the clear next step in the evolution of the studio that brought you Faster Than Light.
And there’s really no way we can talk about Into The Breach without first mentioning FTL. Hell, the developers know that: they’ve put that fact front in center in half of their marketing material, including the official logo on Steam. FTL was something of a real time space adventure simulator with a Star Trek mindset, and its fingerprints are all over Into The Breach, which I would count as a good thing.
Into the Breach is a turn-based strategy game, that has you leading a small team of futuristic mechs against an alien insect race called the Vek bent on domination of the world. “The world” being a small cluster of geographically unique islands that are run by various super corporations. You fight your way from region to region, attempting to protect cities and achieve other victory factors like destroying dams, protecting coal plants, and defending sentient robots that still might try to kill you if you aren’t careful. There are a lot of ways to slip up and fail in Into The Breach, and when you lose, your team accepts their defeat at the hands of the invading Vek by traveling through time in search of another dimension that still might have a chance at surviving. It’s a pretty great conceit for a game: particularly one with this many roguelike elements.
And that’s where you see the influence of Faster Than Light here loud and clear. Into The Breach shares both the try, try again method of roguelike gameplay along with a real love of sci-fi camp and action.
Just like FTL and a number of other roguelikes, as you lose and try again, you unlock new mechs, pilots, and a hoard of special weapons and gear that’ll make your next venture at least a little more manageable than before.
There’s a lot of potential for Into The Breach to be quite a time sink, but it’s built for that, and fans of turn based strategy and exploding alien terror bugs should definitely give this one a look.
Notes From The Conquistadork 