primeideal

Every once in a while I do something that's kind of self-parodically on brand, even for me. Like, "are you really that much of a nerd? Yes, yes I am exactly this much of a nerd."

( go moses, go moses, m-o-a-ozis )

Into the Breach is designed by the same people who did "FTL," and it's similar in that it's a roguelike, fairly difficult (in my experience), and even if you don't win you can potentially unlock new squads to play next game. The "theme" is that there are bug-like monsters ("Vek") causing havoc, and you control a team of "mechs" from the future running around and beating them up. It's a bit more puzzle-y than FTL; each level is played on an 8x8 grid, and your mechs have different weapons/limits to how far they can move in a turn (but in practice I never internalize the move limits, just see what happens). The monsters will semi-randomly jump around and attack the buildings; if the buildings get damaged enough times, you lose. The monsters can also attack mechs, which isn't the end of the world (they have multiple HP). So the idea is that you take advantage of your mechs' powers and try to find ways to chain their moves together to eliminate the Vek before the map is overrun. There are four "islands" with different environmental themes; on each island, you have to save four (I think?) districts before the boss fight, which is harder. After you've completed at least two islands, you can move onto the final fight, which consists of two rounds (as opposed to FTL's three), but is very hard, I'd gotten to the last round several times back in the day but never won. (You can also go for a third or fourth island if you want to level up some more, in which case the final level may be correspondingly more difficult. But once you start an island, you have to finish it.)

I prefer FTL because I think its humor/theme/music are better. Bugs gross me out, even when they're giant alien bugs, who knew. Again, in both cases the "story" is pretty thin, here it consists of "some of the islands believe you're time travelers from the future come to save them, some are disdainful, your characters have witty one-liners but they get repetitive."

In FTL, unlocking new ships is rare and involves some random subquests that you may or may not get the chance to do. In ItB, it's more incremental; each squad has three potential achievements you can earn with them, plus various global achievements, some of which take your cumulative achievements over time into account and some of which are just "in this game you did XYZ." Unlocking a new squad costs three or four "achievement coins," so there's a feeling of goals/stuff to aim for even if I don't feel like I can win. Which is nice.

The squad that brought me success was the "Bombermechs:"
-one unit shoots through an intermediary unit (which can be friend or foe, or even a building) to damage a target behind it, which requires being colinear;
-one unit can launch a tiny "walking bomb" which is short-lived but does a small amount of damage when it explodes;
-the third unit can swap an adjacent unit with any other unit.

Despite the name, it took me way too long to realize that "walking bombs" can...walk. So not only can the launcher shoot them next to weak enemies (to blow up immediately), or intermediately between ranged enemies (to take the damage instead of the building that was going to be hit), they can move around a little to get into even better position.

You can also acquire "reactor cores" over the course of the game, and give them to mechs to upgrade their weapons. When the launcher mech is upgraded, they get to launch two bombs (in different directions), causing much more havoc especially to the 1-HP enemies. And when the swapper mech is upgraded, they get to heal allied and/or damage enemy units who are swapped. Even though it doesn't do any base damage, it's a very powerful "noncombatant" because it can potentially swap enemies whose attack lines are pointed in different directions, saving two buildings with one blow. And (especially on the final levels, but also some of the various environments), you can have an allied unit move onto a square that's about to get destroyed, then swap them with an enemy unit so the enemy takes the hit instead... :D

Anyway, I finally won, my first win after 79 hours (I am not sure if that is only the recent stint, or also my attempts on the old computer?) Will I play again at some point and try to unlock more achievements/squads? Probably. (It sounds like if you get very deep you can unlock a crossover with the FTL aliens!) But I don't think I'm going to be a completionist about it, we'll see.

Edit to add: Your characters can level up and you can keep one of them from game to game (...if they survive), and some of the unlockables are "special" pilots with inherent bonuses. Again, the "characterization" is very slim, just kind of different styles of one-liners. But for the last move I sacrificed Bethany, my experienced Exchange Mech pilot, and she had a line about "Mom, I'm coming to join you now" right before the win. D'aww?

Edit 2: Steam achievement tracker says I was mostly playing it in April/May 2020, which tracks with "needing something to do, but not forever."

What I should have been doing over the weekend: probably Yuletide stuff

What I mostly did over the weekend: dust off Civilization VI.

I'm mostly familiar with version III of the video game, although I've played a couple others briefly. Civ is super alluring because it promises a world with many paths to victory--science! culture! diplomacy! religion--and then just when I'm trying to develop my pacifist utopia, the AI decide to invade me. :( Maybe I need to be better at bribing them, but that also feels a bit dishonorable. NationStates is more my speed.

But anyway, it was a freebie recently, and I picked it up (and then went back to Crying Suns and some other stuff). Finally I finished a normal game, without getting annihilated, although without doing well either. So I've been trying the "scenarios" that come with the game, they're shorter-scale and usually focus on just one or two major mechanics/resources, so it's easier to keep track of what's going on. Still doesn't mean I'm any good, mind you, but it's a thing.

So far, with one playthrough of each (and this is on difficulty level 2/8, where 4 is "normal"):

• Alexander the Great: trying to conquer all the Persian cities in a relatively short time. Difficult. I think in order to produce enough units to storm the board, I'm going to have to keep the cities I conquer. Which in some game modes is dangerous, because you're occupying a city full of angry defeated enemies, that might not be good for morale--maybe it's better to settle your own cities to take advantage of the area. (The "achievement unlocked" for this game was "settle four cities, and name them all after yourself."
• Gift of the Nile: play as either Egypt or Nubia trying to develop culture and religion while dealing with waves of invaders from the northeast. I was Nubia and started more in the desert, which is good for avoiding said invaders. The win condition is to have temples in seven cities. But you can't build settler units in this version, only unlock them through scientific/cultural accomplishments. So you have to conquer at least one other city, either an independent city-state, something that's already been conquered by the invaders, or the rival civ, to even have a chance. Again, this game is a bit warmongery. I came very, very close to winning within the time limit, despite this, and I think I'd have a better strategy next time. Also, as someone who doesn't know a great deal about classical world history, this gives you a nice summary/timeline of events. "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" okay, that's all I know about Assyria.
• Jadwiga's Legacy: different factions in Eastern Europe trying to hold off waves of "barbarians." Usually barbarians are just "violent outsiders;" in Civ VI, they've gotten smart enough to "send a scout looking for cities, if it makes it back alive, then send waves of armed forces at that city." In this scenario the barbarians have their own identities--there are Swedes in the north and Ottomans in the west, etc.
• Outback Tycoon: different states racing to colonize Australia and make lots of profit thereby. No warfare, just economic competition. And the random chance that you lose a unit to the dangers of the Outback. (There's an achievement for this, too: "Attack of the Drop Bears.") Also, they have a slow, moody, instrumental version of "Waltzing Matilda" in the soundtrack. Very fun. Didn't win, didn't get a good look at my opponents' scores, we'll see how close I come next time.
• Path to Nirvana: East Asian cultures trying to proselytize/spread their religions to others. Again, no direct warfare, but there's a new "religious conflict" mechanic for this game that has units that can preach and fight with others. I was the Tufan people, who practice Vajrayana Buddhism and live up in the Himalayas. Apparently the Himalayas are treacherous enough that no one other than the Tufans wants to cross them, which made things relatively easy for me. So that was my first win!
• Black Death: European countries trying to survive the Black Death. I was Alfonso of Castile and won by going hardcore atheist, down with the church, up with science. So...that probably says something. (Sadly, there is no "Dramatic Irony" achievement for losing a plague doctor unit to the plague.)
• Vikings, Traders, and Raiders: different Norse cultures trying to pillage and plunder their neighbors. You gain the Faith resource by pillaging holy sites in other countries (???) and then can spend that on religious buildings at home, representing the conversion from the Norse pantheon to Christianity (???) I'm not sure how this works thematically, but okay. Also, once you earn a Great Admiral, you send him (or her) west in search of Vinland where they can retire to earn points. You don't start with the ability to build settlers, but you can unlock it. The question I had, playing as Denmark, is "where are they gonna go"--the map is already pretty full of city-states. (I stayed to the north so I never made it far enough inland to pillage the Andalusians or the Byzantines.) Turns out that Greenland and Iceland also exist, and Ireland is not occupied yet, so if nobody sinks you along the way you can send settlers there. (My aunt, who's into genealogy, suspects that our Irish last name may be derived from a Viking battle-cry--if so, art imitates life ;) )

Anyway. I will probably waste lots more time on both scenarios and "normal" games in the midst of all my other projects. But felt like bragging/rambling.

A couple weeks ago, someone posted in the FTL subreddit that "Crying Suns," a similar roguelike, was free for a short time, so I nabbed it and have so far played through the first two "chapters" (levels).

Much like FTL, each level consists of three "sectors" where you can "jump" between "adjacent" stars on a map at the cost of one "fuel." (Unlike FTL, each star has multiple planets you can also jump between.) Each sector ends with an increasingly difficult boss. If you beat all three, you unlock a new chapter and a new model of spaceship you can use for future runs.

The battles are more spatial than FTL--you have mini "squadrons" of fighter ships that attack others, as well as the enemy ships. You usually can't escape (occasionally the opponents will offer a surrender deal), so you have to be able to fight through. Sometimes you find opportunities to repair hull damage afterward, sometimes you don't.

The IC justification for the repeated runs is that you're a clone of a famous admiral, accompanied by a snarky robot. So every time you die/start a new chapter, it's a new clone, and your officers are similarly regenerated. There are many sorts of encounters you can find at the stars, and also like FTL, there are special "blue options" unlocked by having an officer with the right kind of skills. Some of the encounters have humor like "an old advertisement plays: 'all pirates must pay your union dues, else you may be...pirated.' Pirates have unions?!"

And there's also an IC sense of it being a roguelike, because the bosses will say things like "you again, didn't we just kill you?" or the robot snarker will say "cool, we added a quest marker to the next sector. In the event we survive to reach it, which given your track record is not high, we can complete the quest there."

The plot, such as it is, is "the mighty robots that sustained the Empire were turned off, you need to journey to turn them back on." So sector 1 is a sector ruled by a pirate, and you keep asking her underlings, "she did it, right?" When you find her, she's like "it wasn't me, it was those religious zealots." Sector 2 is fighting the religious zealots, "it was totally your boss who turned off the robots, right?" "It wasn't me, it was probably the companies who stood to gain financially." Sector 3 (which I have yet to beat) is the corporations.

( Speculation, spoiler tagged just in case. )

The music is, alas, much much worse than FTL, I usually have a mix of my own music (...which is a large percentage of musical theater bootlegs) playing instead.

Edit: forgot to mention that there are "commandos" with a very cosmopolitan mix of names. But sometimes you will see two Yangs, or a Sarah and a Sara, on the same expedition.