Tactical Breach Wizards News

XCOM and Into The Breach fuse in high-octane new Steam strategy game

Few things are quite as satisfying as pulling off the perfect turn in XCOM, transforming impossible odds into a winning position with just a few clicks. The likes of Into the Breach and Invisible Inc implement that feeling into a more puzzle-style roguelike format, each making you feel like a tactical genius. Yet new strategy game Tactical Breach Wizards may be the coolest such setup yet, combining slick, speedy combat scenarios with snappy, witty dialogue.

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Demo patch: Flashbacks and Credits

Thanks to all who jumped to the nextversion branch to try our new patch. All looks good, so it's now live for everyone! Just a lil one:

[h3]Patch Notes (2024-06-05-2-Demo)[/h3]

Did you know you can re-play earlier levels with your current perks? Well you couldn't, because it caused a black screen. Fixed that.
Our credits were a) spilling off the screen due to Unity adding extra line breaks to them every time the file was saved, and b) ugly as sin. We've made them nice now, they even have tabs!
Fixed a volume issue and an animation desync on our main titles, after the prologue.
Using Chain Shock would create a redundant rewind state where nothing had actually changed. Now it doesn't!
We made the Wishlist button on the end screen look 400% more clickable, cos it is clickable.
The difficulty options menu layout would glitch sometimes. We decided it shouldn't.

Wizard responsibly, where practical.

Our demo is out! Try the next patch if you're brave?

Update: patch is now live for everyone. Feel free to stay on the nextversion branch if you're happy to get changes early!

In a rare case of us doing a thing exactly when we said we would,* we did indeed release our demo on June 3rd. Now we have a patch for it that we'd love for you to try, so we can check it works before we force it on everyone. Here's how to access it:

Right click the demo in your Library and go to Properties > Betas
Click the dropdown list and choose 'nextversion'
The game should update, and you'll see patch notes in-game to confirm it

As always, you can hit Esc any time in game to report a bug or give us some feedback.

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]
Here's what we hope we've fixed:

Fixed a volume issue and an animation desync on our main titles, after the prologue.
Did you know you can re-play earlier levels with your current perks? Well you couldn't, because it caused a black screen. Fixed that.
Our credits were a) spilling off the screen due to Unity adding extra line breaks to them every time the file was saved, and b) ugly as sin. We've made them nice now, they even have tabs!
Using Chain Shock would create a redundant rewind state where nothing had actually changed. Now it doesn't!
We made the Wishlist button on the end screen look 400% more clickable, cos it is clickable.

[h3]* Dates[/h3]
While we're here, sure, let's clarify this. Generally if we do a news post announcing the date of something, with an actual date, you can expect us to hit that - we only really do it if the thing itself is basically ready.

But when we casually refer to something as 'The February beta' or 'a two year project', then yes, you can laugh in our faces, due to our track record with such things. Test change.

June 12th: Hbomberguy plays Tactical Breach Wizards

The first playable demo of Tactical Breach Wizards will be in the June Next Fest, sneaking out a little early on June 3rd. Then at 10am Pacific on June 12th, special guest hbomberguy will be livestreaming the full game on our store page, continuing on from roughly where the demo leaves off.

Tom, designer, writing this, hi, will also be on stream to answer his & your questions, and desperately try not to backseat-game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1043810/Tactical_Breach_Wizards/

If anyone's not familiar, Harry makes meticulously-researched deep dive videos on games-adjacent stories that you think you're not going to watch all of but then somehow you have and you don't regret it.

Obviously, a collaboration of this magnitude has been years in the making, and some day Ben Affleck will direct a movie dramatising the untold story. But briefly, it was like:

Him: Can I play your game?
Me: Sure.
Me: Actually, can we stream that?
Him: Sure.

(I actually quite liked Air, for what that's worth.)

First playable demo launches June 3rd

Tactical Breach Wizards will be in the June Next Fest, which starts on the 10th. So why is our demo releasing at 10am Pacific on June 3rd? Because a good breach (launch) takes your enemies (customers) by surprise, and nothing's more surprising than your door exploding a full week before your door was scheduled to explode.

Given that, why are we telling you a week in advance? Sorry, but you already used up your one question in the intro. We have quotas for a reason, it wouldn't be fair to the others to let your agenda dominate this announcement.

[h3]Demo features[/h3]

The first 3-ish of 21-ish missions in the full game
A little something extra at the end that's demo-exclusive
Takes around 1.5 to 2 hours to play
When the full game comes out later this year, your progress will carry over if you like

If you'd like to be notified when the demo comes out, why not Follow the game on our store page? Does that change what kind of updates you see even if you've already Wishlisted it? No-one knows, and we're not going to check because it's in our interests to pressure you to express enthusiasm for the game on every axis you can.

And that's four questions now, we've called security.