Quick Look: Into the Breach

ONCE MORE BAY BAY!

Giant Bomb is here!!! We're saved!!!!

You had to know, didn't you?

@fishwitheadphones:

Into the Breach in a nutshell:

FYI with the ramming guy, you don't actually have to be immediately next to your target.

Watched in the app... But I just had to come here to say, NOICE!!!!!!

Rusting Hulks 4 lyfe!

I sunk 200 hours into ftl, really looking forward to losing my weekend to this.

Can't wait for the OSX version!

I want that soundtrack

I got put into an unavoidable first turn power grid loss my only move due to mines blocking my route was to artillery push a bug away but it would push into a grid. I lost 3 grids on opposite side of instakill mines. Love this game but the rng has screwed me several times.

@steveurkel: i've been playing a lot of this game and I dont think rng plays a factor in this. Its a game about positioning and thinking ahead. Also you need to take into consideration that you cant save everyone. A lot of times I purposely used a building or a mech to just push a bug and get a kill. The only rng is the grid defense really and its saved me a couple of times.

@almeida69: The RNG he's talking about is about the scenario generation, not the combat itself.

This game is pretty awesome. It's almost more of a puzzle game than it is a strategy game, because you have perfect information on every turn as to what is going to happen and can precisely plan out all your moves with no randomness to deal with the attacks. Every individual turn is a challenge to figure out how to optimize your moves.

I'm not sure if it's by design or not, but so far in my experience if you think about something long enough you can get out of most turns with no damage to your buildings. It's much different from FTL, where randomness in encounters/attacks/drops meant you easily could be screwed for any particular battle and you need quick action to keep things afloat when it got hairy. I've never felt anything was impossible here - I've had very difficult battles where I needed to take some damage or barely scrape through, but every battle has felt winnable.

That would be the one comment on the video (though I imagine Alex was playing much more quickly for the video than he would in normal circumstances) - you have unlimited time, so you need to spend that time to plan out all three of your moves and figure out the best way to get through a turn. If you move hastily, then little mistakes letting things take damage unnecessarily or missing attacks will add up quickly, especially on normal where you have more bugs that deal/take more damage. The easiest way to get in trouble is to commit to one move without knowing what you're going to do on the next two moves - even if an individual attack looks good, you might find out that you needed that mech in a different place, needed to use it somewhere else, or should have used a different mech for that task.

This is like a new version of Front Mission! I love it!

Yes some scenarios have spawned time pods crushed before I can react, buildings being unreachable after sea drops (first turn) ... but my goodness is this game polished.

I could never get into ftl on pc despite the fact I bought it day one I've never made it past well anywhere really...but like why can't I just play FTL on my android tablet? Like it's on iPad and it makes me sad I don't have an iPad but I have a Samsung tab s2 which would be awesome on. Of all the games that need to be on tablet it's FTL and my god this game needs to be on switch!

I'm really liking this game

I believe the devs specifically said that Android piracy was the reason they never ported it from IOS to Android.

@matthewgm: Ok. I guess I just havent found the scenarios to be unfair. Ive fckd up a lot of times on the first turn just because my units where not placed correctly. The only exception I would say is the final battle but I think that battle requires you to lose grid power no matter what.

I really liked FTL, but this game somehow looks too tactical for me. Seems like you really have to be on your shit and every mistake gets punished pretty hard.

urg

This game looks so fucking cool.

@paulunga: no shame playing on easy. I think I got through easy with buildings taking only 1 hit total. Also the pilots only level up twice, so losing and starting over isn't that big of a deal progress-wise. You also get to rewind the whole turn once (twice if you have the pilot with a perk) every battle.

"Can you get any Newtypes?" Dan's already way into Gundam now too! The man is going full anime.

Very excited to wait for the iOS version

@paulunga: The game kind of lets you have your cake and eat it too in that regard. What Alex was playing on Easy really doesn't require a ton of effort as you can mostly just make the obvious move and progress just fine. Normal and up can require some real lateral thinking though, often requiring setting up very precise combos of attacks, setting up for the next turn, and then just knowing how to mitigate your losses when some damage is unavoidable. It's pretty satisfying though when you stare at the board for 10 minutes thinking the situation is impossible and then stumble into the right set of moves that allows you to come out unscathed, but if that's not your bag, then Easy is definitely the way to go.

You can even "beat" the game after only finishing two of the four islands if you want (though there's achievements for going for 3 or 4). It's basically like giving you the ability to do Easy, Normal, or Hard difficulty with Short, Medium, and Long campaigns.

I know Alex was dialing it back to easy so that he could move the video along, but don't be fooled - you can definitely spend 5 minutes on a turn trying to puzzle your way out of it on harder difficulties.

One thing I'm curious about is whether the bug moves are specifically designed in such a way that they can always be countered (assuming perfect play), or if the design is just so tight that it always feels like everything is perfectly solvable if you play well enough. I'm honestly not sure which would be more impressive.

Anyways, mechs own, soundtrack owns, aesthetic owns, design owns, game owns.

Also, my headcannon is that the Rift Walkers (starting mechs) are named after Austin 'Rift' Walker. No one tell me otherwise, please.

@aben: The bugs can't always be countered because you can really get screwed if you position poorly for the following turn. In other words, I don't think the A.I. purposefully sets up puzzles each turn that can be solved every time. You have to make hard decisions sometimes.

On that note, getting movement upgrades is pretty much the best thing you can do in the early game.

I've been wondering that myself. It certainly seems like every turn can be challenging and force you to use every tool in your current arsenal, but it rarely leaves you absolutely screwed. Almost always if I had to take damage it was because I didn't position things right, screwed up an earlier turn, or didn't play optimally. But I can't tell if that's intentional on the AI or that's simply because they give you enough options to deal with whatever gets thrown at you. I'm interested to try some upgrade-less challenge runs and see if that's still the case, given that every victory seemed to require me to use all of the things I acquired along the way.

And I agree that everyone should at least try to play on normal, at least once you've gotten a hang of the mechanics. The entire fun of this game for me is puzzling my ways out of the crazy, unwinnable-looking boards you get with 5+ bugs threatening to kill your mechs and multiple buildings.

@karlhungus01: Yeah, you can definitely dig yourself into some very deep holes if you completely screw up your positioning. But, you also see the emergence points and know the move radius of the bugs, and can presumably plan for it (if you're smarter than I am).

Another early game tip is to remember that your mechs repair after the battle - definitely you should prioritize getting hit and losing health over letting a building (and the power grid) take damage. Sometimes literally tanking the damage is the best move.

Bugs are like zombies, they want to give you something you don't feel bad about killing.

In addition to being bad at this game, I'm struggling to understand the reactors and spheres ad upgrades. Once you get a spere, don't you have to install it to a mech's reactor to have power for other upgrades? Or am I missing something?

@aben: Yeah I was definitely sticking to easy both for the pace of the video and because honestly, outside of the Rift Walkers, I hadn't had much success putting together strategies for the other mech teams. I've started playing on Normal more at home, and obviously that slows down the pace of play a lot, but I really think starting on easy is vital for learning the different mechs' abilities and figuring out how the trios work together.

@alex: Yeah, I think you can try to learn on normal, but you'll end up starting over/resetting turns a lot. Also just being pissed off at yourself (and bugs). Normal can lead to some super satisfying moments, though.

I wasn't trying to bust your chops - I think it was definitely the right way to go for the QL. Thanks for running it!

@asmo917: Yeah, once you get one, you have to pick a mech to install it to. Then you can assign that power to a system. You can assign/us-assign power in a mech freely, but you can't remove installed cores.

Watching this after Austin's stream on Waypoint is a pretty... stark contrast, haha.

Thanks for showing what it'd be like if I played this game instead of someone who's already played it for 40 hours, Alex!

Did someone say "a mech in a cowboy hat?"

In all seriousness, I might get this game sooner rather than waiting for a sale. This Quick Look and Waypoint's stream are really selling it to me.

this game is so good. Subset Games is quickly becoming one of my favourite independent shops!

This game rules

Not a huge fan of tactical war/combat games that are puzzle-like but Subset have definitely delivered a wonerful game here.

It may not be Front Mission, but it's damn good.

Absolutely amazing game.

RUSTING HULKS!

@lead_farmer: Can be bought on Ben Prunty's Bandcamp page.

this would be great on the switch

Boy, Alex wasn't kidding. He's really not good at this game.

This game is cool, though. And to both Alex's and the game's credit, if you were not up into the mechanics of FTL, even Easy was unplayable. Even assuming Alex is better at this off-camera, it's cool this game starts less ruthless than FTL but still ramps up to insanity.

Also, how close after seeing Pacific Rim do you think they started developing this game? 5 minutes? 10?

My mech, my back...

Got it on GoG as soon as i saw it was from the FTL creators (i love, love that game). Gotta somehow reduce the backlog and then jump into it!

@apparaat: There's actually a way to install it on a mac! All you need to do is wrap it in wine. Here's a tutorial! It's real easy!

This game is fantastic.