Home » Fez » Into The Breach is a mech tactics game from the creators of FTL

Into The Breach is a mech tactics game from the creators of FTL

Subset Games, creators of FTL: Faster Than Light, have announced their second game, Into The Breach. It’s like Pacific Rim, but isometric and tactical.

Giant monsters called the Vek are emerging from the ground, and the last remnants of humanity must stop them using giant mechs. Does it sound a bit cliché? Well, that’s fine, because in the hands of the devs of the marvellous FTL: Faster Than Light, even a cliché set-up can be rife with tension and imagination. After running around in spaceships trying to put out fires, Subset Games is giving us Into The Breach, a tactical game with mechs that is not MechCommander.

Into The Breach has much in common with FTL already. It’s got a very similar aesthetic, particularly in its UI design that speaks of its FTL pedigree. On the gameplay front, it once again features randomly generated challenges in each go. An interesting twist here is that dying lets you send help back in time into another timeline, which means each subsequent playthrough will offer you some kind of bonus.

The gameplay itself is good ol’ turn-based tactics, and if studio founder Justin Ma’s Twitter avatar is any indication, there’s a healthy influence of Final Fantasy Tactics at work here. You will accrue more pilots over time and improve your mechs, while the moment-to-moment battle gameplay seems to be about countering telegraphed enemy attacks.

Apart from Subset Games’ Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, the game will feature the talents of Ben Prunty, who also composed for FTL. Writing and worldbuilding is being handled by Chris Avellone, the legendary ex-Obsidian designer known for his work on Planescape: Torment and Fallout: New Vegas.

No release date has been announced for the game, with the studio insisting they’ll release it when they feel like it’s done. Platforms have been announced: Into The Breach releases on PC, Mac and Linux, although not at the same time. There’s a Steam page up, too.