Breachway Is An Astoundingly In-Depth Space Faring Roguelike Deckbuilder [Review]

Breachway is a roguelike deckbuilder that takes the joy and complexity of something like Stellaris and distills it into a more approachable meal. It’s really quite special, and if you love a bit of sci-fi and the genre in general, this is going to be huge for you. Here’s our review on Breachway.

Deckbuiding In The Stars with Breachway

I don’t know that I’d consider myself an expert in much. I do a lot of things, which means that it’s hard to develop expertise in any of them, even if I might hyperfocus on a specific hobby for a few years. But as a lifelong lover of card games and a huge fan of roguelikes, roguelike deckbuilders come close to being something I might actually be an expert in. So trust me when I say that Breachway feels like a breath of fresh air in the genre.

The base concept is simple. You use shield cards to block damage and attack cards to deal damage. You stay alive, and you win. However, attacks come in multiple types. Missiles don’t hit instantaneously, and some attacks allow you to target specific parts of the enemy ship, meaning you can knock out their weapon system for a few turns or stop them shielding.

You’ve then got cards that make others cheaper, or ones that give you a shield for longer, though it won’t be as strong as a standard shield. There’s also specific status effects to learn and master, like the ability to deal more damage with flak attacks the more you use them or an attack buff that will only last if you hit with an attack every turn.

Manage This!

Cards cost energy, but some also cost a specific resource you use to fuel your attacks, and some cards need a specific amount of mass to trigger. You can dictate how much of each of these resources you gain each turn by altering your reactor output. If you do this out of battle, there’s no issue, and you can upgrade your reactor for more resources. You can also do it in battle, though, but you’ll suffer some mild overheating for doing so.

Then there’s your crew, each of whom has a special skill you can power using morale, which you can gain more of by taking them to a bar or by rescuing people who need rescuing. All of that’s just what you have to manage in battle.

Outside of battle, you can also gain new cards, whole new equipment pieces for your ship to gain new weapons, new cards that come along with them, or new functions, and you can find new crew members as well. You’ve also got factions to deal with, and you can ignore battles entirely if you’re friendly enough with them or get dragged into extra battles if you’re annoying someone too much.

The One Place…

The map’s also a lot more open than in many games in the genre, and managing fuel and figuring out the best path from where you are to where you want to be is essential. As you can tell, there’s a lot of mechanics to manage here, and while it can seem overwhelming at first, I think the game does a good job of explaining them, and you’ll be a master of it in no time, especially if you’ve played games like Breachway before.

Breachway is an excellent take on the roguelike deckbuilding that takes us to Tim Curry’s favorite place and then adds in plenty of cool decisions and a really in-depth battle system for one of the coolest games in this genre I’ve played in ages. If it isn’t clear in this review hasn’t made it obvious enough, just go ahead and play Breachway, because you won’t be disappointed.

Verdict: Recommended

Breachway is available to play on September 26. A review code for this game was provided by the publisher.