I’m The Harvey Dent Of Video Games
Hey, everyone! It’s been a while, huh? I’m trying to get back into the swing of publishing stuff again with this, the first of a biweekly series I’m calling “Medium Dispatches” because I can’t think of a better name yet! I’ll be writing loosely and informally about my experiences with media.
Into the Breach is a game from the developers of FTL: Faster Than Light, that came out for PC last February. It’s a strategy game where you control a group of mecha pilots who jump across timelines attempting to save what remains of humanity from an invasion of giant bug aliens. I’m unable to confirm whether Subset Games got their inspiration by reaching a hand into a jar labeled “Things Olivia Likes,” and grabbing a big handful of stuff, but that’s what I suspect happened.
So it felt a little weird when I didn’t connect with Into The Breach as much as I thought I would. I put about 10 hours into the game, but nevertheless felt like I was tapping out early. I hadn’t even unlocked all of the mech squads you can use, and many of the ones I did have access to, I hadn’t really learned yet. I felt like I really should enjoy this game more, but I couldn’t see myself putting any more time into the game than I already had. I put it down, and I moved on to other things.
And then something happened about a week ago, which was that Into the Breach came out again, for the Nintendo Switch. I impulse-bought it for full price on the new platform, and started playing ravenously: on my commutes, before I go to bed, once while editing this piece already. I can’t get my Switch to tell me how many hours I’ve logged in this version of the game, but it’s definitely more than 10, and I’m on my way to many more. The other day I caught myself thinking it would be a fun project to try and 100% this game, which I never want to do. Something about Into the Breach on Switch has clicked for me in a way it never did on PC.
I remember when I used to roll my eyes every time Games People I followed would say X game is pretty good, but if it was on the Switch it would be great, and even after I bought one myself I promised I would never become that kind of Switch owner, and yet here I am. I’ve become exactly what I once hated, and all that’s left is to own it. Learn something from my fall, and play Into The Breach on Switch if you‘re interested. I do think it’s the superior version of the game.
I’ve been trying to set aside my tragic failures and drill why exactly I enjoy Into the Breach so much more on Switch. Part of it is just game qualities. The game translates really well to Switch, with some of the UI elements coming out a little nicer-looking, in my opinion, and losing none of its control functionality in the move. I’ve also played Darkest Dungeon on both PC and Switch, and found myself constantly frustrated by losing my mouse control and a few keyboard buttons I depended on in that game. Not so here. Into The Breach just happens to be made it a way that works really well on Switch, in the way that other ports I’ve played don’t.
Portability on Switch is a big factor too. Into The Breach is a game I play in little chunks. I can do a single battle in a maximum of five minutes, or I can beat one of the four corporate islands in maybe 20 to 30. It’s a great commute game, it’s a great taking a break game, it’s a great right-before-bed game (some people think I’m weird for that last one? I think history will vindicate me), and on Switch it’s so much easier to play in any weird setting. I picked up my Switch and played another battle while editing this paragraph, just because I could! Technology sure is amazing.
These are all nice pluses, but what I realized the more I thought about it was that there’s on feature of the Switch that makes Into The Breach such a classic for me. When you press the Switch’s power button, by default the system goes into sleep mode, and will boot right back up where you left off next time. I’m probably the only person on Earth for whom that’s a significant feature, but it has helped me tackle one of my biggest flaws with games like these and allowed me to dig Into The Breach in a way I couldn’t before.
One big piece of Into The Breach advice I got from a twitter thread back at the first launch was to never hit the “Abandon Timeline” option in the middle of a run, no matter how bad things got. It counts as a loss for your stats either way, so if you stick through a tough situation to the end you either turn it around and pull out a win, or you learn a lot of strategy for your next run on the way down.
It was good advice that I absolutely could not follow, because when I would screw up in this game I would immediately want to get out and try again fresh. I’m the person who whom XCOM missions take two hours because I save and reload constantly. If I lose a character in Fire Emblem, you better believe I’m heading for the power button to restart the fight. I like these kinds of tactics games, but I want to play them through perfectly, and I’m willing to ditch an hour or two’s progress chasing that perfect run. At first, I did the same thing with Into The Breach.
But that approach doesn’t really fly with this game. It’s a roguelike, or a roguelite, depending on your term preference, but the point is you play the game a lot and you lose a lot, and you learn by losing. You have the ability to reset a turn once per battle (twice if you have Isaac piloting one of your mechs), but that’s it, and it won’t redo enemy movements, or save you from damage that happened last turn. Ironically, its a game that keeps you in the present moment and forces you to try and salvage your misplays if you want to keep playing, or else abandon the run entirely and start again. At first, I was always willing to take the second option, not realizing that it was stopping me from really discovering what I could do with my squad when my back was to the wall.
On Switch, I came back determined to change up my mindset and dig intothis game, and it worked. A big part of that success, I owe to the fact that I could put the game in sleep mode instantly and pick it up again just as fast. In general, I find that I come up with my best solutions for problems while working at something else for a while, and the sleep mode function made that approach really easy to apply to Into The Breach. I would come to a hard board, and if I couldn’t figure it out in the moment, I would ride the rest of my commute, or get back to whatever else I was working on, or even go to bed, and come back with fresh eyes some other time.
The other day, I’m going for a three-island win with the Rusting Hulks squad. I take a particularly difficult “High Threat” mission and get myself into a huge jam. If I do nothing I’m going to lose Mechs, buildings, and mission objectives all in one turn, but I don’t see a way to save everything at once. My stop’s coming up, so I put the Switch to sleep, put it back in my bag, and go to work. I work my shift, thinking about my board in the background as I go about my day. I start to get an inkling of a plan as I boot the Switch back up on the way home, and a few minutes of staring at the board confirm I’m right: there’s no perfect solution, but I can do some fancy maneuvering and save all my Mechs, all my mission objectives, and limit the damage to just a lost single building, which I can make up for in later missions. I still have the screenshot of the victory screen, and the satisfaction of what would go on to be my first three-island win.
I’m not sure I can really explain why this works for me on Switch when it couldn’t on PC. I think the key ingredient is the physicality of the Switch, of having somewhere in your hands that’s a dedicated game device, of having to turn it off and put it down to do something else with my hands that refocuses my brain in a way clicking around on a computer screen doesn’t. Maybe that’s not even the real reason. Whatever the mechanics are, the method works: I put much more time into the game the second time around, I solve boards I would have quit before, sometimes even without taking a break, now that I’ve had enough practice with my squads and learned what they can do. It took two tries and a change of medium, but I’m finally enjoying Into The Breach th way I wanted to the first time around.
