The terrain conditions on each are fairly consistent: For instance, you’ll always see breakable ice and freezing storms on the wintery island, water and flammable foliage in the green island, dunes that can spawn dust clouds when hit and lightning storms on the desert island, and acid pools and conveyor belts all over the tech island. Then you pick which of the four islands you’ll visit first, which takes some thought. (The other two pilots you start each run with are relatively expendable, but can gain experience and level up for small bonuses.) Or, if you place Silica in the Boulder Mech, you can launch two long-range attacks in a single turn that - if you’re positioned correctly so you don’t need to move - can obstruct two squares. If, for example, you put Abe Isamu in a unit like the Zenith Guard’s Charge Mech, which can ram enemies from any distance, his armor trait will negate the damage that mech would deal to itself by doing so. On top of that, you get to pick one special pilot from an unlockable set of 13 who add a unique ability to whichever mech you assign them to, amplifying the potential starting combinations through the roof before you even begin to upgrade your team. You can even build your own squad by mixing and matching mechs from any of the ones you’ve unlocked in search of brand new strategies. Or the Flame Behemoths or Frozen Titans, whose specialties you can probably guess but come with some unexpected twists that make them great to experiment with. But then you can unlock the Blitzkrieg, who have a Lightning Mech with an electrified whip that hits everything adjacent to its target in an unlimited chain of damage, a Hook Mech that grapples enemies and moves them adjacent to it, and the Boulder Mech which launches giant rocks that deal damage, push back horizontally adjacent units, and can obstruct a tile.

Each squad of three mechs has a unique set of abilities: you begin with the straightforward Rift Walkers, who have a simple melee bot with a damaging knockback punch, a tank with a damaging knockback shot, and an artillery unit that damages a tile and knocks back all adjacent tiles. On one of Into The Breach’s semi-roguelike runs (meaning there’s no saving and reloading if something goes wrong) every choice you make feels important, especially after you’ve played a bit and unlocked some new starting options.

Download switch into the breach