FTL follow-up Into The Breach is finally out this month

For the past couple of months, we've been bragging shamelessly about how we've already got beta copies of Into The Breach, the XCOM vs Pacific Rim vs Advance Wars-y follow-up to the timeless FTL: Faster Than Light. This ugly crowing has an expiration date, you'll be glad to hear - and that date is the end of this very month.

Yep, Into The Breach lands on February 27th, though only for Windows - if you're part of either the lah-de-dah coffee shop or the shed-filled-with-old-motherboards crowd, you'll have to wait, as will consolefolk. (A Switch version of this would consume my entire life, I suspect).

Into The Breach, to summarise, is a fast'n'tight turn-based strategy game in which you pitch your team of three time-travelling mechs against an army of giant, insectoid aliens who destroyed the Earth. But, if you can stop them in the past, maybe you can change the future. It lacks the choose-your-own-adventure element of FTL, but shares the random enemy line-ups and unlocks, as well as permadeath and a cruel-but-not-too-cruel streak that makes every experience with it a pressure cooker of tension and decision-making.

I did a sort of after-action report on it a while back that hopefully explains how it works in practice, while some of m'esteemed colleagues had a big ol' geek-out about how much they dig it.

It's not clear what, if any, additions will be made on top of the chunky amount of turn-based good times already in this beta build (gloat!), and nor would I argue it's in need of much bug-fixing, so I suspect polish and balance will be the main order of the day.

And oh look, an update just arrived for the beta version that's on my hard drive and that I can play whenever I like and you can't, no matter how much you desperately want to.

Not until February 27, when I shall become a nobody once again. It'll be sold via Steam, GOG and Humble - no price details or pre-orders available yet.