Watch us play Into the Breach, the subversive strategy game from the makers of FTL

VIDEO: Our senior reporter, Steven, takes a quick 10-minute look at Into the Breach, the new strategy game from the makers of FTL.

How to follow up a big success like FTL

Last year, we sat down with the duo behind FTL, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, to talk about how they planned to follow up their huge indie hit with Into the Breach. Be sure to check out the full interview here.

Into the Breach might look like a 16-bit turn-based strategy game from the Game Boy Advance era, but beneath that cute exterior is one of the most innovative strategy games I've played. Unlike FTL, the first game from developers Subset Games, Into the Breach is all about deterministic strategy. Not only will attacks always hit their intended target, but you can even see and respond to enemy attacks before they happen.

That doesn't sound like the formula for a rich strategy game, but Into the Breach uses that conceit to do some brilliant things. Each battle is a tense stand-off to survive a certain number of turns while swarms of insectoid Vek storm the field. Outnumbered and outgunned, your best approach is to mitigate incoming enemy attacks rather than fight fire with fire.

But describing Into the Breach isn't easy, which is why I've recorded 10 minutes of a new campaign to show off how the turn-based battles work and how each mission plays into the overarching campaign. The video above will give you a basic insight into Into the Breach and how it separates itself in a competitive genre.

The good news is that, if you like what you see, Into the Breach is out February 27 on GOG and Steam and is only $15. Check back next week for our full review.

Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.