A very tactical little game
Into the Breach it's a really well done game, it accomplishes a very clever try on a type of puzzle-strategic gameplay.
You have a squad of three mechs, and you place them on a 8x8 board where you have to fight for survival and defend the civilization, which are you source of energy. Each mission adds a twist as side-mission for you to earn extra rewards. The game is a roguelike (or roguelite, whatever), where the plot tries to make sense of the gameplay loop, you are a type of special forces that can open breachs to go back an type. Your objective is keep going back in time (playing through the camapaign) and winning your battles so you can change the outcome of the war that is going on.
The game gives you one squad to start and you can unlock other 7 trios by earning more coins, which you get by completing achievments of very diverse forms. From having a unique type of run to putting a third of the board on fire. You then can go on to customize your own squad, picking up three mechs from any of the 24 available. And I loved the loop of going through it, learning the new squads each time I unlocked them and then doing a few runs with a customized one. But that's how far the enthusiasm went.
After about 12 hours of gameplay, and having beaten the game about 8 times, almost all of them on easy, I started to lose the will to keep going. I started with the idea of "I'll test all the squads to learn the mechs, while playing on easy, to get the grasp of the game and then take up a notch". But after playing the game so many times, moving up to the normal difficulty and playing a few more runs, I started to wonder what was the incentive to keep going. The game wasn't offering me anything to keep going for more runs, my first run in the whole game was a completion. It wasn't like I was improving to finally be able to beat it. And I think the idea of replaying the game on hard mode would make me angry or sad that I probably wouldn't manage to beat it. So, for now at least, I can't find any reason to keep playing, maybe I might pop in as a podcast game, since you can play relaxed and without sound. But I feel the game should give you more to accomplish, besides the Secret Squad for all the coins, which obviously I'll never manage to unlock.
