Tactical Breach Wizards

[00:00:09] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of The Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Cameron Warren and I'm joined as always by the pixel professor, Jacob Price. It's January 30th, 2025 and we're back to talk about video games. Jake, have you beaten Metaphor Re-Fantasio yet?

[00:00:32] Cameron, I am here to report that I have not yet beat Metaphor Re-Fantasio. Do you even care about video games? I haven't cared about a video game my whole life. Jake, I'm going to be honest with you. I have like 15 hours in Metaphor. I've said this on like the last three episodes and I'll just say it again. I'm still stuck. I thought about playing some more today. I thought about it.

[00:01:01] That's progress. This is progress. I thought about it briefly and then I was like, nope, I need at least like three hours where no one can bother me and I can just focus on this game and no one's going to talk to me and I only had like an hour and a half. So I didn't do it. That is nothing short of a shame.

[00:01:27] It is. I apologize to all you Atlas stans out there listening to this who have dumped so many hours of your lives deep into the throes of Persona and now Metaphor Re-Fantasio and you're currently on your third playthrough of that game. Metaphor is great. I only play it once a week. Oh, really? Because there's just too much going on. Yeah.

[00:01:56] So it's a weekend game where I can dedicate like a longer play session to it. My spouse and the two oldest are out of the house. So it's just me and the baby. Me and the baby. Me and the baby as an early bedtime. So one of these nights I think I'm going to just hunker down, have like, I don't know, four sodas next to me and just make barely a dent in the progress of Metaphor Re-Fantasio. So here's the thing.

[00:02:26] Here's the thing. There's something about being a man. Every man in their mid to late 30s to maybe early 40s. I don't know about you old men out there, 45 plus, right? Every man has this experience where he has a beautiful family that he loves and cares for, but they sometimes leave. And sometimes you find yourself as a bachelor for just a couple days, right? Like a couple nights or even one night. Yeah.

[00:02:56] And it's a sweet experience. It's a sweet experience to have the feeling of I have literally no commitments in front of me whatsoever. I have no one asking me. You order your takeout. You get your sodas or your favorite snacks. And you just have unlimited, pure, unadulterated consumption. It's a pretty good feeling. Yeah. So this is what we got planned. Me and the baby. Okay. So you do have the baby.

[00:03:24] So it's not quite to that level, but the baby goes to bed. Baby goes to bed. And thankfully, this baby sleeps really well. This is what we're doing. This is our Saturday night. Me and the baby. Okay. All right. Let's hear it. I'm grilling some steaks. Well, off to a good start here. I'm grilling some steaks. I'm going to have a nice. For the baby? Is the baby like ribeye? Baby likes steak. We got tri-tip. Tri-tip. Nice. That'll do. Marinate that sucker.

[00:03:53] We are grilling some steaks. We're going to have a little bit of salad on the side. I might even go out. Don't need that, but it might help. The fiber is good to have. Need the fiber, right? If I'm feeling crazy, maybe I'll buy some really buttery dinner rolls to go with it because I don't feel like baking them. And then I got a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Milk chocolate and cookies.

[00:04:22] See, this is what I'm talking about. These are the moments, right? And not only. So Ben & Jerry's has this new line. They've taken a bunch of their flavors and they're topped, right? So they have like, I don't know, the centimeter thick of just like frozen ganache on top of your ice cream. So this is a topped milk, chocolate, and cookies. Or chocolate, whatever. Whatever the flavor is. I don't care, but I'm thinking about it. I love it. And that's going to be dinner and dessert.

[00:04:50] So basically, and then I'm going to have like three Coke Zeros while playing metaphor re-Fantasio. And this is... Can't do it without Coke Zero. This is actually what Paradise is, folks. Paradise is here on Earth. Your family is gone. Just... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you're listening, you understand. You understand, right? It's like, it's just... You need... You just need that time sometimes. You know what I mean? Sometimes you just need to be alone. This actually reminds me of something.

[00:05:20] I shared this story with my spouse. Folks, we are going to talk about Tactical Breach Wizards, but we need to talk about this. I saw this story and I thought it was hilarious. There's... It's this couple and it's a heterosexual couple, male, female. And the woman realizes that her boyfriend sometimes will lie about where he's going to.

[00:05:49] And she is, you know, distraught. What is happening? Is he cheating? He's definitely cheating, right? And so she goes... Seven, for sure. She goes to figure out what he's doing. And what he's doing is he's going to McDonald's with his laptop. He orders a Big Mac, two giant things of fries, and he sits there in complete silence with headphones on and enjoys a movie in his meal. Like that... That is a beautiful thing.

[00:06:18] That is what he's doing. And so this was some like Reddit relationship post board. And she's like, what is wrong with him? Like, what is he doing? Why does he want to watch the movie with me? Ain't nothing wrong with him, man. And it was just funny because a bunch of men started posting and they're like, you know, it's not that he doesn't love you. It's not that he wouldn't enjoy watching a movie and eating a Big Mac with you. It's that this man is just looking for time alone.

[00:06:45] He just wants three hours with nothing but a screen and food in front of him. So they're like, honestly, just let him do it. Dude, I'm not going to lie to you. A Big Mac and like a hot McDonald's french fry sounds like really good right now. So that hit extra hard. But yeah, men need some solitude.

[00:07:09] And I think for a lot of men, myself included, like having some nice food in front of a screen, enjoying something you like, it's a great feeling. It's a great refresher. You know? It's a great refresher. And that's all it is. And then you know what? You don't do that every day. Like you get bored of that, right? You get bored. You want to get back to the regular stuff. And you want to get back to your family time and your time with your spouse. But you got to have that mixed in there. Just the dedicated refresh moment, right? Yeah.

[00:07:38] Sitting in silence, if you do that every single day, then you might become depressed. But you need it every once in a while. Couldn't tell you how often it is, right? So anyway. Well, speaking of depression, Jake, I think I have video game depression. Oh, no. I'm laughing. I didn't mean to. Yeah. We shouldn't speak lightly of depression. Depression is a very serious issue. But on a joking note, I have video game depression.

[00:08:08] No, I got like 20 hours in Kingdom Come Deliverance. And then I was like... No, Cameron. I'm too close. No, no. It's... You know what? I still like it. But I'm so close to the second one. And I see like all the upgrades in the second one. I'm like, oh, man. Those upgrades look really nice. And it's a very similar game. And so I'm like... I think I'm just going to play the second one. The combat is not the most amazing thing ever.

[00:08:38] So I'm like... That's when it gets hard for me to keep going. When that's like a core part of the game, it's hard to just repeat that over and over and over again. And then especially like when you run into roadblocks. But... I don't know. I don't have anything. I'm kind of waiting for something. I'm waiting for something big to drop or something. Which I think the next thing is going to be Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

[00:09:05] And then Avowed is shortly thereafter. So I'm kind of in the waiting room for those two things. It's dabbling in random things on my Steam library that have been in the backlog. But other than that... I saw Citizen Sleeper 2 came out. Jake, are you going to be playing that soon? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I'm so excited for Citizen Sleeper 2. Citizen Sleeper is like one of the best sci-fi stories. Like in recent memory that I've played through.

[00:09:35] That comes out... Should I go back and play the first one? Yes. I do highly recommend it. And what's great about it is that it has... Think of it like almost... I mean, okay. It is different. But it's like Disco Elysium in that you're using dice rolls to kind of get through specific scenarios. And that's kind of the extent of the gameplay. But it's just a phenomenal story. With some of the best character portraits I've ever seen in a game.

[00:10:03] And so I'm really looking forward to the sequel. I think I'm going to give it another shot. Is it still on Game Pass? It's got to be, right? It might be. I know that the developer, Jump Over the Age, has had a really positive experience with Game Pass. Citizen Sleeper 2 is releasing on Game Pass. So I'm actually... I will be playing it on Xbox. I'll probably buy it though too. Just because I love that developer.

[00:10:30] They've got some really just wonderful story writing and wonderful games. Yeah. I'm super looking forward to Citizen Sleeper 2. That is probably going to be tomorrow night. We'll be playing a bunch of Citizen Sleeper 2. And then Saturday will be Mercantazio. But let's see. I've been streaming The Stone of Madness. And man, I want to love this game so bad. Oh no. But I can't.

[00:10:58] I just think... You don't love it. I don't love it. You want to. I want to. Yeah. And you... So that... You guys need to remember when Jake says he wants to... When he doesn't love something, that's a big deal because dude, you play and beat a lot of video games. You give everything the good old college try. I'm like bouncing off in the first like 10 minutes if I don't like it.

[00:11:27] You're like really going for it. So that's something. That sounds like... I try to give every game a fair shake. And my kind of general rule of thumb is get through the tutorial in chapter one of a game before making a call. Here I want to say that I'm through the tutorial and a few of the preliminary missions. Now I do think I made some poor decisions. This is a mild spoiler for the Stone of Madness. But after the tutorial, you have a really crucial decision to make.

[00:11:55] And it will significantly impact how the rest of your game plays out. And I, in retrospect, wish I would have picked the other option. Because the characters I'm getting are excellent. There's a lot of really good stuff happening narratively. I love the setting. It's super fresh. It's original. I love the concept of what it is that you're trying to be doing. And I think I would have found more enjoyment out of the other story. Like the other version of the campaign.

[00:12:26] Right. And then there's a few things about the game design that I think work just sort of against what the game is trying to do. But I would say that if you were a fan of like Desperados or Shogun or what was that? The tactical stealth. The tactical stealth stuff. Like it is amazing. There's a pyro one. Yeah. Yeah. Like those, like this is a wonderful game for that. It does make me wonder,

[00:12:55] like maybe there's a reason why the genre or this genre is more niche than or it's hard for it to become mainstream. Maybe is what I'm getting at. Yeah. That tactical stealth genre still has a few games that pop up every now and again, but it definitely has not like blow it up. And all those games, Desperados, Shogun, and the recent,

[00:13:24] most recent ones like a pirate one. They're all really good games, but it's just, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of like an old, it's built off the back of the old school, like commandos games. Yeah. Did you ever play those? Um, no, no, I didn't. Okay. But yeah, anyway, it's, it's kind of that style, but, um, yeah, I don't know. So it's, it's one of these games I'm actually going to write on steam,

[00:13:54] a positive review for it because I actually don't think there's a whole lot that's wrong with the game. Like, I think it is a really good game, but the further I get into it and as it's sort of building up on more difficult mechanics, the more I'm like, you know what? I just don't have the patience for some of this stealth stuff. And then when you don't have the patience, you know, you get punished and then you have less patience and you have more restrictions on what it is that you can do. Um, so yeah, I,

[00:14:23] I'm going to give it like I was streaming it and I'm going to stop streaming it cause I'm just not enjoying it. Um, I might give it a few more goes and then we'll see. So, and now you're just going to stream Marvel rivals. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems, that seems to be the next, the new current stream hotness. Yeah, that is the new hotness. No, I have a few, um, 2024 indies that I'm going to catch up on that now are really cheap.

[00:14:53] Um, so I scooped up a bunch. That will be that, but yeah, stone of madness. I just got to let it go. Dang dude. That's disappointing. Um, that was very disappointing. Well, in other news, I want to quickly give an advertisement. Uh, if you haven't seen, you can now get star Wars stuff in destiny too. It's official. Oh, nice. And it's actually pretty dope. They've got some like cool armor in there. They haven't got some cool finishers and like other really dope stuff.

[00:15:24] Um, so yeah, get in there and check that out so that I can keep my job to bungee. Thanks. Uh, let's see. I did see these. I think that's it. I saw these. The Hunter one looked really cool. Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty, they're very well done. They're dope. I think no major news at all. Um, there was an interview with Phil Spencer that went out. Um, he didn't really see anything new. I think everything's coming to PlayStation. We already knew that.

[00:15:54] That was basically kind of the confirmation. Like everything's just coming to PlayStation, which I don't care. That's fine. Yeah. We talked about this at length in our Indiana Jones episode. So I would say if you want to know what you think about that, give that episode a listen. Well, with that Jake, then let's get right into our episode on, uh, to our conversation on tactical breach wizards. Uh,

[00:16:18] this is a tactical strategy game that came out on steam late last year. It is in the vein of XCOM with a little bit of a twist. It's a, it's, it's like XCOM meets into the breach sort of with some other like fantastical elements mixed in. Jake, how are we going to break this one down? We will be talking about tactical breach wizards in three categories. The first of which will be the narrative.

[00:16:48] We will discuss the characters, the themes, the story, um, how that story is being told and kind of what's going, just going on with the different characters and, and, uh, tactical breach wizards and their political situations. Next, we'll be talking about the game design. Uh, Cameron said, this is, you know, a tactical, it's a grid based tactical game and we'll be discussing sort of how those, how those mechanics work and, just how you sort of progress through the game. And yeah,

[00:17:16] all that jazz will be incorporated in that. And then finally impact on the industry. Um, this game. So it was a pretty big hit. I want to say, and in the indie scene from 2024. And so we'll be talking about a little more on the indie side of things, but it did get some pretty big praise. I want to say. So, um, yeah, that's how we're going to talk about tactical breach wizards in this episode. Let's dive into the narrative. Tactical breach wizards.

[00:17:46] This is a, this is a, uh, current day fantasy. So how do I describe this? It's like current day geopolitical thriller mixed with a dash of wizards and medieval stuff

[00:18:15] and wizards and magic. And like, it's like Harry Potter meets Tom Clancy. I mean, yeah. Yeah. As I was, uh, yeah. Let's see. As I was playing through it, they do explain where they get their magical powers from. Um, and it feels a little, it's interesting. It feels a bit X-Men in a way, like all these characters. I've forgotten that part of the dialogue, but yeah. Yeah. Um,

[00:18:45] but I mean, it very much is like wizardry. Don't get me wrong. Right. I just thought it was interesting that one, they decided to kind of explain it, but, um, two, that it was kind of explained like, uh, when you really needed something to happen and you were like in a life or death scenario, sometimes some sort of magic would like manifest. And that's why everybody has these super random and hyper specific abilities. Um, but they're all wearing like wizard cowboy hats, not all of them, but that was like one of my favorite things. I was like, yeah,

[00:19:14] this is totally bonkers, but they make it work. It's super sincere. They've got a great like sense of style too. I mean, so I'll just say right off the bat, I think the story and the plot are not the most, most interesting thing in the world. It's sort of like your run of the mill sort of imagine like a geopolitical Tom Clancy style thriller, but what they do is they don't get super into the weeds and that stuff.

[00:19:44] It's more about the quippy, really smart dialogue between the characters. That's like the main draw here of the narrative portion of the game. And the writing is really well done. and they introduce new characters throughout your play time and they have like fun interact. They just have like, just, it's hard to describe. Like they just have like really smart conversations and like, they have really kind of down to earth,

[00:20:14] real world, relatable conversations about the stuff that's happening as you're playing the game, like as maybe real people would talk about them. And that's what makes the writing just feel like smart and on point. Like an example would be one of the guy, the main guy who you play as his power is that he can see what's going to happen. Like a second before it happens. Right. And so they have a conversation. Like this is the beginning of the game with the private investigator,

[00:20:41] which character who has a broom pair of power and has like a witch powers. Right. She talks about that, like implications of being able to see one second into the future. And they kind of have a quippy discussion on that. And this all takes place in like text blobs that pop up on the screen. And that, that kind of pulled me into like really liking these characters, even though kind of the story and the overall plot, I wasn't really, I didn't really care about it. I wasn't that interested in it, but I was like, Oh,

[00:21:11] these are fun characters and the designs are really cool. Jake mentioned it's like, you know, it's like a dude in like modern tactical gear, but he has like a wizard hat on. Right. That's, and that's fun. It's like a really fun style. And like kind of, an interesting world that they created. Yeah. The characters are my favorite part. They are super well written. They have good, you know, in not all characters that are well written are characters that you like necessarily. So I didn't, I, but I like how they were written.

[00:21:41] Like they were just well developed. They had good motives. They had great conversations. Like, um, there was a lot of banter back and forth between them, but it wasn't like always that really annoying, sarcastic banter. Like there's plenty of sarcasm in there, but I just thought there was this really great balance of, there was like a sense of maturity in their conversations, even though they were being super sarcastic with each other. Um, yeah. So I, I was a really big fan. Each of those characters, they were developed well individually.

[00:22:11] They had something to say and they had something to contribute. And they all had their sort of motives as they get entangled in this giant geopolitical, um, you know, conflict, which revolves around mana. So essentially mana is, is it a fuel source? Is it like some sort of energy source? Is it a drug? Like what exactly does it accomplish? What is it supposed to do? And then some people figure out how to harness mana in really powerful ways. And that kind of kicks off a lot of political, you know, fighting.

[00:22:40] People want control over this mana or some people want to destroy it. You know, there's a lot of different perspectives on sort of how this, this energy source, uh, how mana should be used when it comes to the geopolitical stuff. I actually did think quite a lot of metal gear solid, but if you can imagine metal gear solid without Kojima, which maybe we does land us somewhere near Tom Clancy, right? Like, yeah, I think that's,

[00:23:07] but they had a lot of commentary on like, um, for profit military, non-national military organizations, which to me was like, that is very metal gear solid. Right. Like what happens if you just have this giant army of mercenaries for hire? Like, what do you do with that? What happens if suddenly, uh, they want political power or if they don't, you know, so those types of questions are very much baked into how the story plays out. I agree with Cameron.

[00:23:35] I was super invested in the characters and who they were and their characterization more than it was over this geopolitical structure or, you know, structure and conflict, but it all worked, you know, I thought it was really packaged well. And, um, I would say that this game very much has well, well done world building where there just seemed to be like a logic to why people behave the way that they did. And so it was super easy to just kind of go through that story, even if it was, you know, wizardry or, you know,

[00:24:05] science fiction fantasy. It was great. Yeah. And if you don't know who Tom Clancy is, he's an American writer, been around for, he's, he's since passed away a couple of few years ago. Uh, but he writes, I don't even know what is it the right name for it. It's military, uh, drama, military science fiction or like military drama or military fiction,

[00:24:33] which is obviously Ubisoft bought the rights to make games like with the Tom Clancy name. So anytime you see like a Ubisoft game, that's got that, that's like, you know, it's going to be like a milit, like a militaristic centered thing. Right. Like, um, and so that's the idea here. Although Tom Clancy gets like really into the weeds on being very specific about like the types of guns that are being used and the missiles and like the aircraft carriers. And like,

[00:25:03] it's, it's all like the, my dad has read every Tom Clancy novel, like five times he's like addicted to that, like military industrial complex fiction. And I've actually read a few of them and they're good. Um, this doesn't go that deep. This is definitely, this is very much like kind of video game structure, although they do do some good. I like that. They have the map board and they make you take a few moments to connect the different elements of the story. So you,

[00:25:31] at least it's kind of the game's forcing function for me and like, Hey, here's some different, here's all the components in this multi-organization, multi-country mystery that you're trying to solve and the conflicts that you're involved in. And here's how they're all connected. And you, and it forces you to kind of make those connections and like read the descriptions of the different people and places. And that kind of keep helps you keep everything in your head. That was a really nice addition on the narrative front. I agree.

[00:25:59] I thought sort of introducing that we're kind of bleeding a little into game design here, but this very much has to do with the story. Um, it kind of forces you to go through these sequences so you can keep track of what's happening. And honestly, I really appreciated that. Like one, I think it was kind of, uh, exposition just wrapped up in a specific mechanic, but that mechanic, like the board and connecting the strings, it wasn't hard. And you can ask for a hint if you didn't want any major thinking, but people just explain,

[00:26:29] Oh, the reason why these missions played out the way they did is because of this, or, Hey, this is the consequence of us doing these missions. And so even if you were just there for the gameplay, you were still able to follow the story. Right. And I just liked that, you know, especially, especially with a game like this, where there are lots of names and places and, you know, they're all fictional and it'd be really hard to keep track of all this stuff in your head.

[00:26:54] Just having a nice clean map with some pins and with some string connecting things together. Really, really worked well. Should we talk about design? Let's talk about design. So tactical breach wizards takes the tactical strategy. Combat and puts it into rooms.

[00:27:24] And why that's interesting and why it's called breach wizards is because every encounter is a breach into a room, into a like scenario that you need to solve. And this game does a couple of like really smart things. So first of all, it's, it's turn-based grid based movement. You can only move like a certain amount of steps, like within a given turn, you have a certain number of moves that you can make within a given turn.

[00:27:52] And then you have abilities that you can use in your turn. What this game does. It's a really awesome for this because in strategy games, so much is the setup and then figuring it out how you like, where exactly you're going to execute. So you can get the highest efficiency move. And this game like really leans into that and gamifies the efficiency of how you complete the level

[00:28:16] by giving you bonuses based on advanced objectives that if you complete, you will get points that you can use to buy cool cosmetics for your characters. And so right off the bat, it gives you this kind of carrot. That's like, Hey, like you could just jump in this room and kind of kill these guys and have fun. If you want to take it to the next level, here's the advanced objective.

[00:28:42] Do it in less than two terms or defenestrate. You're going to see that word a lot. Yeah. It means shoot people out the window. Yeah. Cause all of these rooms in the game, they have windows on the edge or they have some kind of, and you can make people fly out of those windows when you shoot them. And that's, you get what's called defenest, defenestrations, defenest. Um,

[00:29:10] and then the best part about all this is that within a given turn, as you move your characters around and as you perform actions, you can rewind every single move that you make throughout the entirety of your turn. And so if you don't like you get to the end of the turn and you hit and turn, and then it shows you everything that's going to happen. And you're like, I don't like that. You hit the rewind back, back, back, back, back. It's all happens super fast, super high performance. And then you just get to kind of rethink it.

[00:29:39] And so it's this really brilliant way to design. It's something that I wish, like, frankly, XCOM, which is a game I really like. It is a lot bigger scale than this game. And obviously it's not like room to room. And so I don't know how you'd even do it, but the ability to kind of rewind midterm and rethink your decision. It's just so brilliant. And I think it opens up, it just cracks the game wide open in terms of how you get a pull, the levers that the game offers you. Yeah.

[00:30:07] There's so much I loved about this game. So you just heard me talk about a tactics game at the beginning of the episode stone, the stone of madness, which honestly feels entirely different than something that is term-based and grid-based. Right. And, and, and tactical breach wizards really isn't that stealthy like at all, you know, there's no stealth really in here. but yeah, this infinite rewind is super friendly for anybody who is new to the genre.

[00:30:36] And like Cameron says, there are some hard points where you can no longer rewind. And that is if you like commit to your turn, to all the actions that you have designated as they play out, then you can't rewind anymore. Then you're into the next turn and you have a new, I mean, and then, you know, you can take a bunch of actions and rewind all of those ones. Again, I really loved that because I'm the type of person that if I'm playing a game like this, I need a quick save, you know? Oh yeah.

[00:31:05] Yes. Because you're juggling so much information and having the rewind option, like some of the later encounters, there is one stretch. I want to say an act three, there's a stretch of like three levels where you're up against some really tough enemies. They, you know, they're really stable. So you can't give them knock back. You can't toss them out of a window, giving a defenestration, which by the way, I think my final total count was one 54 or one 55 defenestrations in the entire campaign. Nice.

[00:31:35] So if you think you could, if you think you've topped that, I want to hear it. I want to hear your numbers, everybody. Did you go for the, like, were you a overachiever and like try and get everything, all the, the extended achievements? No, not all of the, like the trophies. You mean, I, I tried to a hundred percent this game. Like I try to get every trophy on every level. Oh, and it became like a thing. It became like a thing where like, I,

[00:32:03] I would feel like anxious if I wasn't going to beat the level and I get it. And there was a couple where I like, I can't do this. I got to come back, but not that many. And so I tried to do it every single level. That is amazing. I, I didn't really go for the additional objectives for, well, for some characters I did because I really liked their outfits. There's some, the skin, the skins are, the skins are like excellent. I think incentive for a lot of these characters. Right. Um, especially Dessa.

[00:32:31] Dessa had the coolest ones by far. Oh yeah. Those are amazing. But like, um, so no, I, I streamed this whole game. And so I, the running joke was just to go for defenestrations over anything else, which honestly, I mean the defenestration is an incredible tactic because if you have like a really problematic character, but you can get them out of a window, they're instantly out of the level. And so it's a super important tactic. But anyway, what I was getting to is like an act three,

[00:33:01] there's some really difficult characters or enemy types that you have a few like rooms that you have to deal with them and being able to rewind. Right. Because it was so crucial because there'd be some things that I'd forget. These characters have like five or so different, uh, unique characteristics about them or different stats that you need to keep in mind. It's not just a simple health bar and it's not even just like a simple health bar and then shield, you know, there's a bunch of things going on.

[00:33:30] So having that rewind mechanic, which is so nice to be like, wait, if I do, if I do this in this order, am I going to get a result that kind of makes sense? Like, and it wasn't, it was almost like checking your math more so than just doing a trial and error. And I think that speaks to the brilliance of the game design of tactical breach wizards, because it was a very easy game to learn, but it had a lot of information to learn. And so there was this like grace that it kind of offers to you with the

[00:33:59] rewind where I rarely did. I feel like I was doing just doing trial and error. It was almost always checking my math. I think that this is going to happen. Is this what is going to happen? Oh wait, it's not. I forgot to take into account this factor right here. Let's rewind a few steps. Now that I have that factor in mind, I could probably do this more efficiently. And so I just love that. I thought that was a wonderful mechanic and it's kind of one of those things. It's like, you know, Prince of Persia,

[00:34:29] the lost crown, how you could screenshot different locations. Yeah. It's like, dude, I want that to be a feature going forward and Metro vanias. And I kind of want the rewind feature to be something that's present in similar games in the future. Yeah. It's, it's such a well-executed mechanic. Some other things the game offers. So it's got a robust campaign. Pretty, pretty long. Uh, I mean, not crazy long, but like,

[00:34:57] I'd say what easily 15 plus hours. Yeah. I was surprised. I was looking at this game news and indie game and I was like, Oh, eight to 12 hours. But no, I think I want to look it up. Um, but yeah, I think if you're going into this game, expect 15 hours minimum, especially, especially if you're going to try and go for the like completionist run for sure. Yeah. I got 20 hours in this one. Yeah. I mean, solid. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's pretty chunky,

[00:35:27] uh, significant campaign with multiple levels, uh, and chapters. And then there's also bonus levels, which are kind of more funk, funky designed levels with, you know, maybe they give you tons of enemies or they give you like, you know, just weird scenarios that you need to accomplish to kind of extend the, the like tactical strategy elements of the game,

[00:35:54] which basically the incentive to play those is just having more kind of interesting scenarios. And then you also get more points for the cool cosmetics for the character. So they have the, the whole like point system for accomplishing these extra objectives. The incentive they give you is just, you get the points to get cooler outfits for your characters, which is kind of, I think it's a, it was a fun way to incentivize like getting outfits. There were some scenarios that would give you unique perks to your characters.

[00:36:24] Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. The ones that were, it was, I thought this was really interesting. So you'd have like these anxiety dream scenarios. And in most of these, it was just one character, but they'd have a double of that character, whoever it is. Yeah. And you could choose to kind of go through the anxiety dream sequence or not. And you would be rewarded with unique perk to that character because it kind of overcame some type of stress. You know, it was some sort of psychological victory in there. Um,

[00:36:54] I ended up skipping some of those, but yeah, some of them were like, my brain can't handle this right now. I can't. Yeah. Cause they're like so hyper specific rather than being like, Hey, here's the grid. Here's your team work through it. It's like, yeah. Yeah. These super funky scenarios. And I remember I came across one and I was like, I don't want to deal with this. Only this character, you know? And, but thankfully you can skip them. You know, I was kind of shocked that you could,

[00:37:23] but I was grateful that you could. And there's a progression system here as well. So each of the characters are unique. They have super unique abilities and you have to learn throughout the game as you progress, like how to synergize them. And they are designed to like synergize together and you have to learn the better you get at that, like synergizing the different abilities and you can upgrade them. You can, and there's quite a few of them, right? And they all do kind of different things.

[00:37:53] They're built around giving yourself extra, extra, um, extra action points. You can do more stuff in your turn or being able to attack people multiple times or making people vulnerable to getting hit. And then they fly further back and they make them easier to defend a straight. And so it's, you have all these like tools in your toolbox for figuring all that out and, and making that happen. So, yeah, man. Yeah.

[00:38:23] Abilities were super well done. Yeah. The abilities were incredibly well done. Um, you do get like XP and you can get like a point to upgrade some of the perks that you have. Um, I thought that there was a really interesting balance in there. I think it would be possible to max out all perks on all characters, but if you just kind of play through the campaign, you'll probably be able to unlock like 80% of them. I want to say, um,

[00:38:50] and I'm like that because it made you make some decisions, you know, and I think it also allowed you kind of cater towards specific abilities that you use. So for example, I was going for defenestration. So like anything with knockback, um, was like a high priority perk to choose. And that was a totally viable way to play the game. You could have leaned into something else and kind of selected other perks, um, and done that. And you just got a different route. I was really just really impressed.

[00:39:16] There was a really good synergy or just like cohesiveness between this weird, you know, wizard SWAT team that you're running and what wizard. That's a great way to describe it. And like what abilities everybody would have that kind of makes sense for people who have magical powers, but also are just like, you know, military ops. Jake, any other thoughts on the design? I mean, I just thought it was really brilliant.

[00:39:46] I thought it was really fun. I think I've already mentioned it, but somewhere in act three, that was probably the one bottleneck, but the rest of that, I thought the rest of the game, I thought had really good pacing. Um, and I think this game is designed super well for both newcomers to like tactical grid, grid, great grid based combat and people who are well-versed and really like the genre. Yeah, I agree. It's, it's like, you can just go in and play it, but then it gives you that.

[00:40:17] If you're a tactical sicko, you can really flex your muscles here. Let's talk about the impact on the industry, tactical breach wizards. I, I think this game has flown under the radar. Uh, I have not heard it talked about on pretty much any podcast. And I've listened to several, no, this is like really flown under the radar. I think PC gamer, those guys got ahold of it. I think the PC crowd is kind of sort of aware of it,

[00:40:44] but this definitely has flown under the radar, which is a shame. Cause I really think it is one of the best games of last year, like for sure. And it's only, I'm looking at right now, it's 15 bucks overwhelmingly positive on steam. It's got, it looks like a little over 8,000 reviews. So I think it did, it did pretty well. Uh, this game did pretty well has an 87 on Metacritic, um, which is just awesome.

[00:41:13] And then let's look at the, yeah, I mean, this is, this developer has done some other like really small games, but nothing, this is like their first sort of, I think significant like effort here, but yeah, I mean, small team, I imagine, um, yeah, really impressive achievement, but yeah, I mean, I, um,

[00:41:41] I think what I can see coming out of this game is this tactical genre has like a lot of legs. You know, I think there's, there's a huge PC crowd that really digs super deep into these tactical style games. And I love the fact that like, this is out there and exists and like did really well. I think respective to it being an indie title and a tactics title. That's like on PC only, I would love to see this come to consoles.

[00:42:10] I think it would actually work quite well. Um, yeah. Yeah. Is this going to light the world on fire? Is it going to be like a game pass contender? Is this going to like change the face of any games now? I think it has minimal impact on the industry, which is interesting. I feel like it's one of the first ones we've talked about. That's probably just kind of sits in that like nice space of like, probably did pretty well on PC. It's indie. It retails for like 20 bucks. It's really kind of in that like boring spot,

[00:42:40] which I think is a pretty good place to be. I mean, right now in the industry, no news is good news kind of, right? But from what I understand from tactical breach wizards is that this is, let's see the, they had said that they, this launched near black myth, Wukong and it, Oh yeah, that's right. Light of August. Yeah. But however, it was the third bestselling item on steam and that was behind black myth, Wukong and steam deck.

[00:43:11] Now I don't know how long it sat in that position up there. I kind of feel like tactical breach wizards was a bit of a flash in the pan, but that flash was a big flash, you know, like you said, there's like nearly 8,000 reviews, which is phenomenal for an indie game getting over 500 positive reviews to hit that overwhelmingly positive. That is massive for any indie game. So this one has 8,000, but I think you've talked about some of the restrictions here and this is just kind

[00:43:41] of the reality. I think of the genre and just indie games on steam and it's only on steam, you know? Yeah. It's been, yeah. I mean, PC don't get me wrong. Obviously there's a huge crowd of gamers on PC and those people saw this game. They bought it, they played it and they liked it. But I think part of the reason why you're not hearing anything about it is, is because there's just, you know,

[00:44:05] the huge market place of console gamers who have probably not heard of this game and probably never will hear about this game because steam isn't their main storefront. And so I think it kind of speaks to this weird reality. You want steam and you, we envision steam as being this wonderful place for breakout indies and it can be, but at the same time, can you really only be a PC only game and hit complete mainstream attention? You know what I mean?

[00:44:37] No, but it's proven that on, on PC in particular, you can create an audience. You can find a niche audience and you can kind of live there and you can make a living. I think there's plenty of developers like making a living, like in just in that, like a little space, they don't necessarily have to go multi-platform. They probably want to, and they would like if they go bigger, but some, something about like certain games are built for PC, right?

[00:45:05] Like they're designed for PC. I think this is one of them. Although I do, again, I've been saying this a few times now. I do think this would actually work really well on consoles. It'd be a great like switch to thing or Xbox thing. This would be a fantastic game pass thing. But like I said, like it's under the radar. I do think it's popular enough where I would not be shocked to see this at game pass, like relatively in the super near future. But yeah, I mean, yeah,

[00:45:34] I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a switch to port, right? That to me seems like a pretty, I don't know. I, I've been thinking about this, right? Is there any sort of metric of success of an indie game on steam where you can guess the probability of it coming to switch? Because it's typically the route that a lot of these games take do super well on steam, get a port over to switch. And so could this game come to switch? I really hope it does. Cause,

[00:46:05] uh, it plays from my understanding. It plays really well on steam deck and this would be a wonderful game. This year, 30 minutes before the bed. This is the perfect game for that. I mean, it needs to be fantastic steam deck game. This is like mommy steam deck game for sure. It's gotta be on handhelds for sure. So I hope, I hope it at least makes it out there. We'll just kind of see. Yeah. I think it did well. I hope to see more from this developer, hopefully some DLC or something along those lines.

[00:46:33] I think it looks like it did well enough that we should see more tactical pre-tresors in the near future. Yeah. I mean, this game is totally ripe for a sequel. I think the world that they've built is robust enough. You can come up. I just feel like there's so much creativity in the game design and in the characters that you could, you could make a sequel to this game. Um, fairly like without, I'm going to say without too much friction, but what I mean that is from a creative standpoint, right? Yeah. So yeah, I would,

[00:47:03] I'd love to see more. I had a great time with this one. Well, Jake, anything else to say about tactical breach wizards? Sure. The last thing I'll say is, uh, um, I'm typically not tactics grid based guy, but this one worked really well for me. And I think that if you are, if you want to dip your toes into the genre, I'd start here. Yeah. Yeah. I would a hundred percent agree.

[00:47:31] If you have any inkling towards like a tactics game or even like a puzzle game, because I think this kind of fits fits in both of those neat. There's, there's kind of two types, right? There's the tactical where the emphasis is on like strategy of how do we take out the opposing force? But then there's others, which is sort of more like into the breach as the example where it's, where it's every scenario is like a puzzle to solve.

[00:48:01] And what's interesting is boulders gate three combat kind of leans in that direction where like every combat scenario is like, because, because all of BG three's combat scenarios are very specifically designed. None of them are like randomly generated. They're all like hand designed and there's like a finite amount of them. They're all basically like one giant puzzle. Yeah. And so it's just a matter of like taking your skills and abilities and figure out like, okay,

[00:48:31] how do I solve for X? Right. Yeah. Tactical breach wizards. If you haven't played this, check it out. It's 15 bucks right now on steam. It's a no brainer. And ladies and gentlemen, with that, this has been another episode of the pre-order bonus podcast talking tactical breach wizards. If you like the show, please leave a review on your podcast platform. A choice helps people find the show. Please follow us on blue sky at pre-order cast, blah, blah, blah. I don't know how the blue sky links work.

[00:48:59] Find the link in the description of the blue sky. Uh, and then join us on discord where you can join in the conversation and come chat with us and come talk all things, video games and all sorts of stuff. And finally, if you want to support us directly, you can do so on patrion.com slash period cast where you can sign up for a premium edition of the show. Many options there, including, uh, don't forget that Jake does his own show. Jake's indie impressions. That's only available on Patreon.

[00:49:29] It's very cheap. Very cheap. It's too cheap, actually. Uh, so go sign up there and you get access to that. We appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening and have a great night.