I move one of my units a little way up the map, cursing as the attention of every bad guy in this room snaps onto him. My rifle-toting wizard’s health bar starts to blink out as an array of bullet trails and body slams are planned out in advance. In some turn-based strategy games, that kind of error might have been catastrophic, but in Tactical Breach Wizards it’s a minor inconvenience. I rewind my last action, before moving the unit slightly more slowly. Now, he’s out of range of the melee units’ charge attacks, has cover from the ranged fire, and I’m free to plan out the rest of my turn.
Knowing Tactical Breach Wizards, that’s about to mean a chaotic array of moves, including but not limited to; ricocheting a bolt of lightning around half a dozen goons at once; summoning a clone to eat up some of the incoming enemy fire; and conjuring a portal to an alternative dimension to dispatch a shoved opponent through. If that’s starting to sound a little out-there, that’s firmly by design – while its inspirations might be intense strategy campaigns filled with impossible decisions, TBZ is a far more whimsical playground filled with those same genre-leading ideas.
Deja vu
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly-heating fictional cold war, Zan Wesker is a ‘Navy Seer’. His powers of foresight are usually limited to a single second – just enough to make him very useful in a close-quarters firefight (and power that useful rewind skill) – but have recently started showing him glimpses of an apocalyptic future that he feels duty-bound to undo. Joining him on his journey are Jen, a storm witch currently struggling to make rent as a freelance P.I., Banks, a ‘necromedic’ who unlocked their powers of resurrection during a particularly bad shift as a surgeon, and Dall, a rebel priest fighting with both censer and riot shield.
Zan’s mission takes the team across TBZ’s fictional world, fighting off magical traffic cops and ineffectual pyromancers amid hordes of generic goons. Perhaps that might seem glib, given the backdrop of the apocalyptic war that you’re trying to prevent, but Tactical Breach Wizards’ humor is a huge part of its appeal. Almost everyone in its world is a bit of a joke, and Zan’s visions offer a touch of existential dread that’s very much in keeping with the disastrous lives being led by the rest of the cast.
Deja vu
The laughs tend to take a back seat during combat, but their absence allows the realities of this world to shine once fighting starts. Applying a breach charge to a door, Zan’s foresight means you always get the first move, and can undo any number of moves you make until you lock in and let the situation play out. You might, for example, discover that you would have benefitted by leading with a different character, and decide to jump right back to the start of your turn. You might also, however, realize that you actually made an error halfway through the turn, and jump back to the point just before you made that choice instead.
It’s a system that could feel a little cheap to hardcore, veteran strategy game players. If you run forward with abandon in XCOM and get one of your best soldiers cut down in their prime, that’s a mistake you have to live with. It’s also the aspect of XCOM 2 that caused me to bounce off it, hard, multiple times. But Tactical Breach Wizards neatly ripostes any potential criticism with optional objectives, a gentle encouragement towards speed and efficiency, and a toolbox that makes you want to work to get the most out of it.
Each character has some nifty tricks, but a limited ability to use them. Movement is at a premium, and some of the strongest skills in the game involve the chance to get around after you’ve repositioned. In even the smallest arenas, Dall’s ability to swap places with any other unit, or Jen’s broomstick, which lets her leap out of one window before reappearing through another, are invaluable. Most characters only have a single action per turn, and while they can use mana to cast more powerful spells, you’re still mostly limited to one empowered cast per fight, meaning that every spell has to punch above its weight to be as effective as possible.
That’s where I’ve started to find Tactical Breach Wizards the most satisfying. Getting the most out of a given spell is tricky, but the ability to use some trial and error can make for an excellent payoff. I might shuffle a group of enemies around the room with an empowered lightning strike, only to find that I could have insta-killed a major threat with it if I’d maneuvered them a touch closer to the window first. Maybe that’s frustrating, but with TBZ often encouraging you to both complete missions in few turns and push many enemies out of windows, the ability to jump backwards to optimize each spell is far more empowering than annoying. It’s not exactly the same kind of strategic depth offered by the likes of obvious inspirations like XCOM and Into the Breach, but it’s a rewarding alternative to those same ideas, with a narrative package around it that finalizes the push into a slightly different space and makes Tactical Breach Wizards a quiet contender for this year’s best strategy game.
Tactical Breach Wizards is out now on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our Indie Spotlight series.