Oh Yeah, Into The Breach Is Back, Baby

Into the Breach is one of the greatest turn-based tactics games of all time, so it was an absolute joy to hear earlier today that it is about to be updated with all kinds of new stuff.

With Netflix about to release a mobile version of the game—a blessing for public transit users everywhere—every edition of Into the Breach, regardless of platform, will be updated to the Advanced Edition

The news was announced in an oddly-worded tweet from developers Subset Games:

Big Into the Breach news!

– The new Advanced Edition free content update will be coming to all platforms!

– A mobile version will be available through @Netflix!

Both will be available on July 19th!

Plus one more surprise announcement below!

Info in thread! 🧵 1/5 pic.twitter.com/U6PNcYQeG8

— Subset Games (@subsetgames) June 23, 2022

So, a mobile edition is coming out on July 19 for anyone with a Netflix subscription, and it’ll have all the Advanced Edition content included already. And on the same day, the Advanced Edition will be released as an update for all other platforms, making sure everyone gets to be playing the same game.

What’s actually included in this update? Loads of stuff (see the pic above). There are 40 new weapons, five new mech squads, new bosses, new enemies, new music, new pilots, new mission objectives, and an “Unfair” difficulty mode, which sounds downright ominous. Oh, and the mobile version is getting an interface tweak so it works better on smaller touchscreens. Here’s a trailer for the Advanced Edition:

If you’ve never played it, here’s Riley’s wonderful review of the game from 2018:

Into the Breach requires thinking through the consequences of your actions, not just one turn or round but across the whole game. It lets you see into the future, knowing what each enemy will do. With its fluctuating power grid, it lets you see into the past, to remember what you’ve done. But the present—my present, my mindset, rather than the state of the game—always remained murky and unpredictable. Not knowing what you’ll do is part of the fun, the teasing-out of possibilities of a strategy game. But I also didn’t know what I would do to mess it up, what mistakes I’d make, what consequences I’d overlook. You can undo moves before you commit to an action, and once every round you can reset an entire turn. These options seem like a machine’s affordance to your own human nature, but they never quite erased the reminder of my mistakes.

And it’s a game that very comfortably made it into my “Best of 2018″ list:

A puzzle game with turn-based tactical trappings, Into the Breach has the most agonising “end turn” button in all of video games. It’s a wonder how it’s able to distill both genres down to their essence, with narrative and rewards that encourage endless replays.