I’m not sure if this counts as a “patient gamer” because I played them to death years ago…but I’ve been playing both again recently and they’re just perfect little games with a ton of replayability. They’re not retro (FTL 2012, ITB 2018) but they’re old enough to regularly go on sale which is great!
Highly recommended if you like roguelite strategy games.
If you have any similar games to suggest, please leave a comment. I’m sure there’s tons of great strategy games I’ve missed over the years
I hate strategy games but I love Into The Breach. It’s a perfectly executed game packed into a single screen.
Only game I’ve ever 100%'d
Is it even winnable? I always get killed before clearing all the islands. Still love it, though.
It definitely is, but yeah you’ll die a lot at first. Once you know your squad’s (and the enemies’) abilities it becomes like chess, where you spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of a single move.
It plays a lot like a puzzler on the surface.
I‘m saving Into The Breach - like many excellent 2D pixel games - for when I get my Steam Deck, gonna be later this year hopefully, looking forward to it
That was actually one of the first games I broke out on the Steam Deck, after sleeping on the game for years. It’s perfect for that system and just a great little game.
Great couch game for sure. If I had it on a mobile device I’d play it all the time
Weirdly the Android version is included with a Netflix subscription, and I think it’s entirely offline so you could install it, log in with someone else’s creds, then deny it internet privileges and use it indefinitely. Theoretically, that is, I play on Steam Deck so haven’t needed to try!
That is… Very weird. But hey, if it lets more people try one of my favorite games, I’m all for it
Yeah it’s a bit odd, I assume that Netflix covered the cost of doing the mobile port in exchange for exclusivity. I made a post a while back which talked about it and linked their spiel.
You’ll be thrilled. I’ve got many many hours logged playing this game on my Deck after buying it on Switch and only playing a few minutes.
I must have poured hundreds of hours into both of them, amazing games!
I’ve got about the same. A few weeks ago I was house-sitting with nothing to do so I played FTL pretty much the entire time I wasn’t working or sleeping lol
I’ve only found two games that scratched the itch since - Frostpunk (2018) and Against The Storm (2023?) but neither are turn-based. Hopefully someone can suggest some others!
Ooh I’ve got Frostpunk but haven’t played it yet, good to know it might be similar!
Just so you aren’t going in with the wrong impression, it has very little in common with the gameplay of FTL/ITB. It just hits the same buttons for me and I’m sure there’s a ton of fan crossover. I mentally put them in the same made up category of “atypical strategy games that really get you thinking”
Into The Breach took me a while to get into but now I also have it on my phone and it’s just so good and replayable. Would also love to have suggestions of similar games.
Turn based tactics games. Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics. All slightly different but def in the same genre.
I feel like these are missing the very exact puzzle feeling that Into the Breach has, where all of the information of what every skill does is there, the range of everything, and you can even see exactly what the enemies are going to do next turn. That ideology in the design is missing from a lot of other games like that and makes it feel very different to play.
Into the Breach is so good and well-made, but depressingly, I’m just not smart enough to get addicted to it.
By that I mean, it is legitimately challenging. Battles take a bit longer because I need to really think through my moves, and require long-term strategic planning so I can’t just put it down and pick it up with the limited 15-30 minute blocks I can spare for fun. If I was better at making quick, correct decisions or had better long-term memory for a detailed battle plan, I’d enjoy it a lot more. As it is, I just keep looking at it for month after month and thinking, “when I have more time.”
I get that, you absolutely do need to be thinking a move or two ahead.
Back when I first played it, I was beating it on the max difficulty…but when I came back a few weeks ago, I had to knock it down to easy
If you have enjoyed FTL and are looking for more of the same, check out the multiverse mod package - adds a ton of content including overarcing story elements and unique ship and race unlocks.
Whoa, I didn’t even know there WERE mods for this game! I’ll take a look tonight, thanks for the tip!
I’m assuming mods are PC-only? I have it on Steam but my friend has been replacing it on Switch
Yeah, the mods are pc only. Multiverse feels like it quadruples the size of the game. Not every single element of it is fully fleshed out but there’s some really cool and unique stuff. They add new ships, crew, quests, sectors, weapons, and secrets
Two of my favorite games ever. Can’t wait to see what subset does next
Me, too. It looks like they’re developing prototypes for several games at the moment (no sequels) but haven’t decided which to focus on.
I hope their library is like Supergiant Games where every game is unique and interesting
I adore FTL, can’t believe nobody else tried to do something similar all these years.
Well, there have been many games that have been influenced by the whole point to point event based rogue like map ideas, but most games don’t handle the combat the same way exactly, or have that same extremely punishing balance.
I’d love to see a full on FTL 2.
Can you recommend some good ones?
I don’t play the genre much, I didn’t even get that far in FTL itself, but Convoy is one I know of off the top of my head, if I think of any others I’ll come back and edit.
I’ll check that out! Pretty much every game getting recommended is new to me, this is great lol
Cobalt Core is a newish one that’s very inspired by FTL.
Cobalt Core went on sale and I picked it up - it’s fantastic! Thanks again for the recommendation
Awesome! Glad you’re enjoying it. 😀
Added it to my wishlist! (I’m a patient gamer, after all)
Well, not 1-to-1, although there were some clones.
But plenty games took on the idea behind it. The most direct would probably be Crying Suns, which features a type of character-to-station assignment, real time placement element and roguelike generated galaxy traversal. It changes each element, but the pieces are all there.
Other games take more indirect inspiration. The Bomber/Space/etc Crew games focus on the move-people-around-the-ship part of FTL, clearly. There were a few games where something chases you through generated levels so you cannot linger and explore it all.
Maybe not so similar but more like Xcom is The last Spell.
Can highly recommend that and it is weird not many people are covering it.
I think FTL might have been my overall favorite game of the 2010’s. Anything with a space setting can immediately get my attention, but I think it also managed to be just the kind of roguelite gameplay I love, too.
Fights in Tight Spaces and Nitro Kid are the closest I’ve seen to Into the Breach’s puzzly/must-think-ahead style. Both are card-based battlers, though.
It’s not exactly the same, but Slay the Spire scratched some of the same itch for me. It’s got the same meta-structure as FTL, but the fights use a deck-builder format. It’s really well done.
One Step From Eden seemed like it should be even better for me, since it borrows the positional strategy stuff from the Mega Man Battle Network games, but I couldn’t get into it. Mostly I remember it being just way too fast. I really wanted to like it, but basically didn’t.
And yeah, as someone else mentioned, Advance Wars is good, too. The thing that Into the Breach did that Advance Wars didn’t, for me, was that Advance Wars basically depended on the AI being a bit crap so that you could overcome an initial disadvantage and work up to victory. Into the Breach gets around that by making the enemy wholly predictable instead, which is arguably more fun. The only other game I know of that worked that way was an Android game called Auro, but I don’t think that’s playable anymore and I believe the dev has abandoned it. It’s a shame, as it was really well made.
Other than that… you could try learning Go (aka igo, baduk, or weiqi). It’s a board game with very simple rules, but very deep strategy that emerges from those rules. The main disadvantage is that it’s multiplayer only, but there are puzzles, problems, and AIs you can use to turn it into a solo time killer.
