Into the Breach: A Gem of Constrained Design
Fans and critics have likened Into the Breach to chess, and it's not just because the battles take place on an 8x8 square grid. Subset Games (primarily the two-person team of Justin Ma and Matthew Davis) have thoughtfully and with scalpel-precision trimmed away everything unnecessary from Into the Breach's game design, crafting an elegant and focused game.
Unlike Subset's previous game, the well-received spacefaring roguelite FTL, Into the Breach (ITB) is not loaded with systems upon systems. ITB contains only a few lean game systems, but they are carefully balanced to interact in ways that reveal greater depth. There are just enough unique squads, pilots, and weapon systems to provide variety as you progress through the multiple playthroughs necessary to unlock everything. Your team of up to three pilots and mechs have only a handful of abilities at any given time, but these simple verbs (combinations of move, damage, push/pull, apply status effect) add up to complex interactions on the game board.
There are a few innovations that set ITB apart from typical turn-based tactical games. There are (with one exception) no random die rolls in combat. Every attack does a fixed amount of damage. Numbers are pleasingly granular, with all health and damage quantities rarely exceeding single digits. You can see all enemy intents and -- by hovering over a button -- you can see the exact order in which everything will happen when the turn plays out. This means that a single screenshot contains all information about the state of the battlefield, so you can send a screenshot to a friend and ask if they can figure out what to do. The entire field of play is visible on screen without scrolling, a quality that I love but don't see very often in tactical games.
Another clever mechanical twist involves the buildings that dot every map. If buildings are damaged, you lose a point of grid power. Once you lose all grid power, it's game over. So defending the terrain sometimes becomes more important than defending your mechs, because your hit points in a sense don't reside in your characters but are scattered across the map.
Even the story is minimalist, communicated just a few lines of dialogue at a time (some contributed by prominent CRPG writer Chris Avellone). Each pilot has unique chatter which appears at context-appropriate moments during missions and hints at dystopian alternate timelines twisted by time travel. Gameplay and narrative combine cleverly, with the conceit of time travel explaining how a pilot can escape one playthrough and continue into a new one, explaining your ability to see enemy intents, and your ability to undo moves in combat. The use of giant bug enemies fits the narrative, as they're presented as a neverending swarm that follows simple instincts and can be tricked into attacking each other or stepping into obvious traps.
Into the Breach contains just enough of each component: narrative, characters, mechs, foes, and strategic choices. Everything extraneous has been cut, and the result is a masterpiece of constrained design.
