'FTL' successor shows off adorable mech battles
'Into the Breach' promises more pixellated sci-fi action.
If you've played FTL: Faster Than Light, you know that it's a sublime gaming experience, well deserving of its high ratings and devoted fan base. Developer Subset Games has just launched a teaser trailer for its follow-up title, Into The Breach. FTL provided players with perfectly-balanced chaos-management activities that made building, defending and upgrading a spaceship and its crew incredibly fun. Into The Breach looks to be as enjoyable, and the gameplay on display has even more of the same retro-pixel sci-fi mayhem.
Once again, the art-style looks adorable, with an isometric viewpoint on a small gaming grid that's populated with darling little monsters and heroes. The music is by Ben Prunty, the guy that made FTL's distinctive soundtrack (which you can buy on vinyl, you hipster), so you know it's going to rock.
While Into The Breach may look and sound similar to FTL, which focused on chaos-management and real-time strategy, the mechanics on display in this teaser lean more toward turn-based combat with RPG-like upgrade systems.
The conceit here is that you're controlling a fleet of powerful mech warriors to beat back an encroaching threat of giant bug aliens called the Vek. Your battle mechs -- think Pacific Rim only cuter -- are powered by nearby civilian buildings, which the Vek are there to destroy.
Into The Breach will come to Windows, Mac, and Linux (though not in that order nor even at the same time). Subset Games is pretty firm about the release date, too, with a snarky post on Steam (hint: "Available: When it is finished").
