Buy Into The Breach, get free FTL

This is perhaps a slightly perverse offer, seeing as so many folks who have been jonesing for Into The Breach have the jitters and the sweats specifically because it's the follow-up to the revered FTL.

However, if you've managed to come to this backwards, i.e. got all hot'n'bothered about Into The Breach's ultra-deft, ultra-lean apocalyptic turn-based strategy without ever having played its brutal star-trekking predecessor FTL, good news! If you buy Into The Breach via Humble or GOG (and the former delivers you a Steam key, FYI), you'll get a free copy of FTL.

The offer for this double-whammy of Subset Games gold only runs until March 6, so try not to spend too much time deliberating about it. In my Into The Breach review yesterday, I declared that I can think of no reason why I would even consider uninstalling this remarkable wee thing any time soon, and I promise you that I am not completely mad.

Into The Breach tears away all the flab and downtime of strategy games while retaining all of - and even amplifying - the tactical tension, as well as applying a ludicrously appealing time-travelling robo-tanks vs Godzilla-sized bugs theme to it. Alternatively, it's a puzzle game with mechs and aliens. It is, I think I can say, a masterpiece of design elegance.

So was FTL (also one of the best space games on PC, for our money), in its own way, though its random cruel events and manic real-time combat can make it a significantly more demanding and less fair game. Two for the price of one is a brilliant deal for two of the best PC games of the past decade - if you've never dabbled in either before, both have my full-throated endorsement.

The two-for-one offer isn't available on Steam, but as I say, buying via Humble gets you Steam codes for both games anyway, or alternatively you can go DRM-free with the ever-so-slightly pricier GOG edition. In either case, the offer expires on March 6.