Into the Breach

Into the Breach is Subset Games' follow-up to FTL, a tight turn-based tactics game in which three mechs from the future defend civilian cities from giant insectoid Vek breeding under the earth. The signature design choice is that every enemy attack is telegraphed at the start of the turn — you can see exactly where the Vek will hit, with how much force, and against what — and the entire game becomes about manipulating that telegraphed input until it doesn't damage your buildings.

Civilian buildings power your mechs. Lose enough of them and the timeline collapses, but failure isn't quite the end of the game: when a run fails you send a single surviving pilot back through time to try again in a fresh timeline, carrying their accumulated experience into the next attempt. Each timeline rolls a new procedurally generated set of missions across four Corporate-Nation islands, with their own terrain types and additional objectives.

The free Advanced Edition update is included in the current Steam build and significantly expands the original. Five new mech squads, nearly forty new weapons, more enemies, more bosses, additional mission objectives, four new pilots, and roughly triple the original pool of pilot abilities. An Unfair difficulty was added on top, pitched at players who've already mastered the existing levels and want a tactical environment that doesn't forgive nearly as much.