Breachway

Platform(s): PC
Genre: RPG/Strategy
Publisher: Hooded Horse
Developer: Edgeflow Studio
Release Date: 2024

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'Breachway' Reveals New Game Mechanics And Tug Ship

by Rainier on March 7, 2023 @ 5:31 p.m. PST

Breachway is a space strategy game that mixes deck-building, roguelite mechanics, and tactical turn-based action.

Explore a procedurally-generated galaxy in this turn-based tactical game mixed with a strong dose of deck-building.

Assemble your crew, load out your ship, and explore the galaxy in this deck-building space roguelike. Your deck is determined by your spaceship's loadout, mix and match equipment to discover different powerful card synergies, and obliterate your enemies in tactical space battles. As you level up your modules, you can unlock new cards to take into future battles. 

Breachway doesn’t stop there either - there are many ways you can attack your opponents, from targeting individual hardpoints, to causing the enemy ship to overheat, or simply using a good ol’ fashioned missile barrage. You will need to make snap decisions based on what’s in front of you.

Building on the work done earlier in the year, the development team has finished introducing the new equipment targeting mechanics into the game.

Adding an extra layer of strategy, the space game’s turn-based combat is now less about how quickly one can deal out damage to an opponent, but a more thoughtful game of mitigating the opponent's actions to buy the time needed to take them out for good.

The targeting system is accompanied by other improvements, such as visual overhauls, new ship skins, and a new ship type. The latest ship type added to the game is a small industrial tug ship that has both a compact and an extended form. Designed to work either alone or in a formation, these tugs are common enemies in raiding and piracy missions, and are not to be underestimated.

Equipment targeting

The main thing we’ve been working on is refining the Equipment Targeting mechanic. We have changed the way precision attacks work; instead of giving you a percentage chance to damage the equipment based on hull damage dealt, to dealing 1 durability damage per point of hull damage dealt.

AoE attacks like Flak and missiles still have a percentage chance to damage random equipment durability based on damage dealt. This makes damaging and disabling enemy equipment more predictable and just feels better when playing.

We also added a targeting reticule highlighting the equipment on the ship when firing on it with precision attacks.

Bugs and testing

We also started putting out test builds a couple of week ago, first internally, and one to a small early tester group, and we immediately saw how unstable the builds are at the moment.

We acquired a lot of technical debt as we were changing the game’s design to find what works and what feels fun to play, and now that we've found a formula we really like, it’s time to do some bug hunting.

This will be our main focus for March - a feature freeze, and making sure what we already have is stable and balanced.

We should be able to put out some stable builds soon, and let testers get to play the game more than 5 minutes at a time. Once that is done, we can also slowly add new people to our Discord tester group to get more feedback

New ship and a new skin

We finalized another ship this month, a small industrial Tug ship that has both a compact and an extended form (for carrying cargo).

The one you see below belongs to our industrial space mining faction, but you will see it with different paint jobs and components for the other factions as well.


Designed to work either alone, in pairs, or in a formation depending on the size of the payload, you will be fighting these guys mainly in raiding and piracy missions. It might look small and relatively harmless, but it can still pack a punch thanks to having two weapon hardpoints.

Talking about piracy, we also played around with a pirate skin for your starting player ship. Additions like these are really fun to do, and don't take all that much time. We'll look into doing more skins in the future, and other small things that will work well as a meta-game progression unlock, or when finishing a certain quest line, FTL style.

Other cool stuff

Oh ,we also added small astronauts to the hangar, representing your crew, as well as people tinkering on the ship.

Gives a nice scale reference to the ships (we design them with human scale in mind), and we can also send some of these little guys tumbling into space as you unleash some devastating combos on the enemy.

Lastly, we’d like to show you a preview of another one of the factions you will meet in Breachway, the Numen. Seeing the inadequacy and frailty of the human body in space, they aim to transcend flesh and merge their consciousness with their ships.

Key Features:

  • Complex Ship upgrade system - Acquire powerful equipment for your ship, further enhancing its performance with a multitude of subsystems.
  • Diverse tactical choices - Hack enemy equipment or disable it with precise rail-gun attacks, overwhelm your enemy with flak barrages, or cook them alive with laser attacks. 
  • Uncover powerful card synergies - Test out new card combinations and approaches to combat by mixing and matching equipment and cards in your deck.
  • Assemble a rag-tag crew - Each crew member has their own quirks and allegiances that have an effect on how you react to encounters and deal with various factions.
  • Unlock new ships and factions - Unlock special faction-specific ships as you play and experience the story and events from different angles.
  • Carve your own unique path - Your crew and previous choices determine how you can interact with the varied events you encounter on your journey, while tense narrative encounters force you to grapple with morally grey decisions.

Breachway is due out later this year in early access for PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.


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