Another Timeline Lost

The planet has been plagued by an infestation of giant alien bugs. As the commander of an elite squad of mech-piloting soldiers, it is your job to exterminate the threat and save humanity. Subset Games, the same studio that brought us the brilliant FTL: Faster Than Light, is back again with Into the Breach—a small-scale, rogue-lite strategy game with a heavy emphasis on methodical, albeit simplistic, combat.

FTL offered an in-depth combat system with a strong narrative presence. However, if you buy Into The Breach expecting the same level of depth, you may be disappointed. So, why not end the review there?

It may be simplistic, but I have 30 hours invested in Into the Breach and can’t help but keep playing. If this doesn’t intrigue you, let the rest of this review be a personal penance, justifying the long playtime.

What Is Into The Breach?

The giant bugs are back, but this time we don’t have Chrono here to stop them. We’re going to have to rely on ourselves and these big ass mechs to crush these insects from destroying our timeline. That’s the premise, and you will be hardstuck to find Into The Breach deviating from it. Each run of the game, you start in your ship’s hangar with an overview of your three mechs, your pilot, and various difficulty options.

Upon pressing start, your three mechs fall from the hangar straight into a selection of four islands, with the final island revealing itself once you have completed two islands. Each island has its own leader and terrain type, the second of which plays heavily in the combat.

To earn upgrades in Into The Breach, you need to earn energy, a currency earned from completing missions. Once you have defeated the island’s boss, the shop appears. The shop has new weapons and cores to upgrade your mechs and give them a better chance of making it to the final island.

So, what about the enemy? How do we fight these bugs and get our mechs upgraded? Let’s look at the combat.

Combat in Into the Breach

Although the combat in Into the Breach is straightforward, it is extremely satisfying and by far the most enjoyable part of the small experience—which is good, seeing as the combat makes up roughly 90% of the game. However, if you don’t enjoy simplistic strategy and the thought of playing anything other than a 4X game makes your brain cringe, you will be sorely disappointed. The meat of the combat is positioning your mechs in a way that allows you to outsmart the bugs and try to save the surrounding buildings and civilians.

The base mechs of the game (which you must use until you complete your first run) consist of an artillery blaster, which allows you to shoot long-range over obstacles; a standard melee mech, which does more damage yet has the disadvantage of needing to be up close and personal; and a tank mech, which can fire in a straight line but won’t fire over obstacles. Players must use these mechs to push and damage the bugs while moving and repositioning them around the map.

Before your turn begins, the enemy will ready their attack while choreographing their next move. This allows you to plan a way to rearrange or destroy the bugs with minimal casualties. For example: There is a giant dung beetle, which charges in a straight line toward buildings and mechs. By simply pushing the dung beetle into a line with another bug, you can watch as the turn unfolds and the crushing blow of that beetle is redirected from a building into the side of his buggy friends.

As I mentioned before, I’d be lying if I said Into the Breach wasn’t satisfying. I could make the argument that this combat could be recreated on a piece of paper like Tic-Tac-Toe. Yet, somehow, I don’t see this as a bad thing; it helps push the game to people like my grandad, who could play Into The Breach instead of that damned Bejeweled Blitz. And, by god, that’s an impressive feat.

Great Risks, Great Rewards

I haven’t even scratched the surface of the smaller parts of each encounter—the little caveats that make each uniquely generated run feel slightly different. First of all, if you die it’s not the end of the world, well… I mean it is, but only for that timeline. But don’t worry about the eight billion people you let die; there’s still another timeline and another eight billion you could let down. (Dear god, how do these pilots not have severe mental issues?)

Each mission also has a main goal and a secondary goal. The main goal typically consists of protecting “X”; fail to protect it and your run ends. Secondary goals, meanwhile, are optional and give more rewards but require you to go out of your way to achieve them. For instance: One mission told me to destroy a dam, which was on the other side of the map, but my main goal was to protect a building on my current side. Though difficult to achieve, making that roundabout trip is almost always worth it, especially for the unique weapons you can unlock, like an electric whip that damages whole groups of enemies. Have I mentioned just how satisfying this combat is?

Beauty in Simplicity

Developer Subset Games is known for its quirky art style and menus, as evidenced by FTL’s memorable, if simplistic, pixel art style. The team sticks with this design philosophy for Into the Breach, opting for visuals that serve to communicate rather than compel.

Although the visuals are hardly breathtaking, they do what they need to by conveying key information and numbers to the player. No, you’re not going to find insanely detailed animations here, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The functional art of Into the Breach allows players to focus less on the vistas, and more on the action at hand.