Into the Breach is my shoe-in choice for game of the decade. Released in early 2018, it’s an impeccably designed tactics game that pits you, with your team of three mechs, against a horde of alien bugs. Your chances don’t look good — you are always outnumbered — but the game gifts you with basically perfect information on each round of turn-based combat: you can always see exactly what your enemy will do next, in what order, and what effect that will have on the battle.
It is, in my honest opinion, the most elegantly and best designed game that I’ve ever played.
And right now, it’s completely free on the Epic Game Store. Free! Even if you are a baby tactics gamer like I was, that’s a very hard proposition to pass up.
I know I’m probably this game’s biggest fan (as of this morning, I have 1891 hours racked up in my steam save, and probably another hundred or so in the Switch version). But I’m hardly the only person who thinks it’s a triumph of tactics design (and an example of excellent, spare storytelling in a genre not necessarily known for weaving great yarns). Go give it a shot. It’s free! What do you have to lose?
(Besides 1891 hours, that is!)
