Tactical Breach Wizards

Tactical Breach Wizards is a masterfully crafted tactics/puzzle game, backed up with brilliant writing and a genuinely gripping story. You play as a team of wizards, each with a unique tactical/magical role, and breach your way into a series of rooms filled with enemies to take out, cover to hide behind, and windows to tactically defenestrate enemies out of. Gameplay wise, what at first seems like a typical tactics game gradually reveals itself to be more of a puzzle game (it reminded me of Into The Breach in that respect). You have to complete your objectives, but are given a lot of freedom in how to do so, especially when it comes to inventive use of your wizard’s abilities. Each mission also has optional “confidence” objectives, which provide an extra challenge for specific party members (such as completing the level in a certain number of turns, or use an ability in a certain way) in exchange for points you can use to unlock cosmetic rewards for your wizards (the idea being that they already have the outfits, but need the extra confidence to pull them off). As you progress, you earn experience points for you wizards for use in unlocking new modifies for their abilities, sometimes radically changing them and opening up new play style options and even more creativity. Each level is handcrafted and offers unique challenges, and solving each puzzle remains deeply satisfying throughout the experience. The game has strong visuals, combining stylistic, simple faces with outfits and environments with a surprising amount of detail when you take a closer look. I particularly like Zan’s gun, which upon closer inspection isn’t actually a gun, but a wand in a combat stock. The game is also backed by strong audio design, both in terms of the music, which provides the required thriller vibes whilst staying comfortably in the background while you are planning your next moves, and general audio design, with each shot and spell having great audio feedback. There is no voice acting, which is a shame, but that’s a minor gripe compared to the whole package. I had an absolute blast with Tactical Breach Wizards. It is both satisfying to play and incredibly well written, and I was excited to see what new twists and challenges I would be facing next. It doesn’t take too long to beat the main story, but there are also plenty of extra challenges to take on, from the confidence goals mentioned above, to additional challenge missions and a survival mode, so if you love the game there is plenty of extra content to keep you entertained. Great game, strongly recommended.

Amazing game how calm and relaxed it makes me as I carefully do the planning. Completely obliterated my stress after work, time flies whenever I’m on it. It’s low cortisol XCOM with tons of fun and humorous dialogues.

PUZZLE. That is the first tag the game has on the store page. Something I wish I was more wary of before getting the game. It is done well, though. After progressing some more I was more open to solving the puzzles (Spoiler: they give you cosmetic incentive for doing cool stuff). Was bummed at first but now excited to play more. So, yea, this review is an extra warning that it is one of those puzzle turn-based strategy games. Alright I beat the game. It's actually so peak. the game becomes everything you want it to be halfway through(Act 3). You have more characters, and everyone is getting more perks. I started finishing levels in 1-2 turns with these extremely cool abilities. It's actually, genuinely genius how the pacing of this game was designed. Early on, it appears barebones, but you get introduced to cool outfits, and you need to basically play perfectly to unlock points to get the outfits. Then, by the time you have the outfits you like for everyone, the game opens up like crazy. You get two paths: do you want to kind of start playing like it's XCOM, or do you want to play like a perfect completionist puzzle master? I picked the former, and was super happy to do so. Some extra notes: The world/lore is really cool, the characters are written quite well (but dialogue specifically can be shaky sometimes), and they lean into their concept so well. I would play a million iterations of this contemporary wizard SWAT game.