Into the Breach

Into the Breach makes an enemy's coming attack visible in advance. On a small map, three mechs must protect buildings from giant creatures. Before acting, you know the direction of the strike and can assess whom it will hit. The question is how to change the pieces' positions with the actions remaining.

Damage is only one tool. You can push an enemy away from its target, place it in another attack's path or block an emerging opponent. Sometimes it is better for a mech to take a hit and preserve the city's power grid. Victory requires surviving a set number of turns, so killing every creature is not always necessary.

In its development postmortem, Subset Games connected this arrangement to reducing randomness and making situations readable. Revealing enemy intentions allowed the threat to shift from the mechs themselves to defenceless buildings. Each mission became a short problem about preventing damage. After failure, one pilot can travel to another timeline, joining separate attempts through the shared framework of saving the world.