Into The Breach Review

'You hear a giant thud from outside, moments later all light is blotted out by shadow. Moving to the window you see a giant mechanical fist whizz past as it connects with the fleshy belly of a 100ft hornet.'

This is the world Subset Games' latest creation Into the Breach places you into. A world where gigantic time-travelling mecha try to save the world from the giant kaiju-esque insectoid race, the Vek. Your task, as one of a number of selectable squads, is to prevent the Vek from wiping out humanity by travelling back in time to before the Vek succeeded and wiping them out in a series of turn-based battles.

These battles are chosen from a strategic map which features four islands. Each island, as well as providing new terrain, has its own unique hazards and challenges such as dust clouds which prevent combat on particular tiles or ice that melts under fire. Each sortie shown on the map can provide extra resources, such as more power (which acts as a life bar of sorts) or reputation (which you use to purchase upgrades) and will allow access to connecting missions as you progress. 

Each battle takes place on a small eight by eight map grid occupied by civilian buildings, hazards and critical infrastructure all with a strict five turn limit. You get to place your three unit squad's initial drop position and then the Vek attack. Each unit of your squad has unique abilities and it's up to you to determine how best to use them to protect civilians whilst also trying to complete any sub-objectives.

Any collateral damage sustained by civilian buildings reduces your score and causes civilians to die, you monster! It also reduces your power grid bar which upon hitting zero results in a game over. There is an inherent chance, the Grid Defense rating, that buildings will resist damage but it's never a high probability. This makes protecting buildings and infrastructure your number one priority. 

This plays into the five turn nature of each battle, the Vek withdraw after the timer hits zero, often causing you to focus less on killing the giant Vek and more on ensuring buildings aren't in the line of fire whilst you wait out the timer. Which brings us onto your units: their movesets often involve pushing and pulling enemies around the map whilst also doing damage.

The default squad, the Rift Walkers, has a bipedal melee mecha that has a hard-hitting punch; a tank-like unit that can fire in a straight line and an artillery unit that can bombard a target and pushes anything in adjacent tiles. 

As you progress you'll complete certain achievements with your squad of mechanical death-dealing machines which earn you tokens you can use to purchase other squads with differing abilities, mixing up how you play in really interesting ways. The Blitzkrieg squad for example has a unit with no offensive capability but can pull enemies towards it or itself around the map.

Into the Breach has a pretty steep difficulty curve but that plays into the game's time travel mechanic, when you fail you can nominate one of your three mecha pilots to travel back in time for when you restart next time. They keep any experience they've earned during their previous run and this helps to offset failure feeling too punishing.

The procedural nature of the game makes every run different enough that it helps stave off the feeling of repetition, successfully completing battles is extremely satisfying thanks to the tense timer which gives them an almost puzzle-game feel as you try to work out the best possible outcome.

Into the Breach is totally different in execution than Subset’s prior title FTL: Faster Than Light but it’s just as accomplished. It has some lovely elements of polish, like civilian speech bubbles commenting when enemies are nearby or your squad drops in, that give it a lot of charm.

The difficulty curve might be a little punishing but it at no point feels unfair. The game also has wonderful pixel-art visuals and a fun sci-fi aesthetic. if you enjoy turn-based strategy there is little reason to not give this a look. It’ll eat a lot of your time.