Tactical Breach Wizards is a turn-based tactics game by Suspicious Developments. Made in Unity, it has a low-poly model aesthetic and delivers a small-scale skirmish combat strategy. Released in August 2024, it was high on my list of games to play on my stream. However, I have a backlog that is too large to get my thoughts out on this game promptly if I were to stream it. I also did not want to wait to play the game because there are Wizards, and I can't refuse a game with wizards.
The game initially grabbed me because of its visual and gameplay similarity to another title: Fights in Tight Spaces. If you haven't played, I highly recommend it. Likewise, if you like Fights, please play Tactical Breach Wizards. The gameplay is exceptionally tight, with next to 0 randomness, making for a highly engaging and deep strategy. The player controls a crack team of Wizards who breach tactically (by God, do they breach). Each wizard has their own unique set of skills that you employ to achieve your mission. As you progress the campaign, you unlock more, adding new skills to your arsenal that make the tactics much deeper.
The game's writing is charming (the seer likes trains) and takes a level of care in its worldbuilding that I did not expect. I'd already gotten sold by tactical wizard combat, and then it started explaining its magic system and how geopolitics were affected by the existence of magic. Without getting too deep into particulars because the narrative is a major part of the game: You're trying to stop World War 5. I'm dying to know about numbers 3 and 4 since this game seems to still operate on a history that parallels our own despite occurring in fictitious nations. l the writing plays with the more ridiculous parts of military language and jargon. There is a Less Lethal Pyromancer in the game, which invites many questions about the horrors of militarized spellcasting . Often I found that the game went for jokes when I wish that it hadn’t.
Tactical Breach Wizards builds on itself very rapidly. You start with an overwatch and a damaging shooting attack. Then enemies get armor, so you're better served by knocking enemies out of windows. The game serves you a character who specializes in knocking enemies back; then, enemies get knockback resistance and armor. Then, you're served the character that applies debuffs to make your knockbacks more effective. Then enemies get debuff resistance, and so it continues. Because the game is always teaching you new things, many levels get burned, which feels disappointing. I got what felt pretty deep into the game before introducing a character whose big ability was to swap places with other characters. I love a swap character in any game, though. It just felt like a wizard hat on a wizard hat to me. This never got boring, yet it kept me asking. "Okay, but how much deeper is this going to go?" [1] The game never settles on play for more than a few levels; rather, it constantly throws you change-ups.
The game is huge, considering the size of the studio. It has challenge modes, bonus levels, and an extensive campaign. I played through the campaign first for the purpose of this review, but you can always come back to the side content later. Nor does completing side content give you much of an advantage so you’re not missing anything aside from achievements. In fact one of the key features this game includes is the option to skip levels while still accessing the narrative of the game. Something I made use of once by misclick as it happens. (Whoops)
I had to put the game down a few times purely because the tactics were so involved that it felt like I was building a turn, and when something went wrong, the entire thing came crashing down, and I'd have to restart. Yet, due to the minimal randomness, each level has a solution, and when you get that, things play out rather magically.
Aside from the raw complexity that the game builds, I have issues with play. There's a weird fascination with the word defenestrate, even though play makes this very important. Doing actual damage falls off extremely so that the previously instant death overwatch ability on the seer becomes a love tap. The seer, in particular, begins to struggle as the campaign grinds its way on.
Tactical Breach Wizards resulted from Suspicious Developments 6+ years of work and was well worth their time. If anything, I thought it was going to be a tactics game with a somewhat whimsical premise, yet the writing plays almost all of it straight. Its tactical combat is built to the extreme and might discourage those less inclined toward action optimization. It was a good fit for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience that I got for my money despite it having some pain points. The writing is something I started writing about at length and then discarded multiple times. Suffice to say you are getting a Tom Clancy novel but with wizards. The character writing and dialogue is charming and often funny yet has dissonance with the very serious worldbuilding that the game does particularly when you get to elements of religion and revolution. Your mileage may vary on the writing and I have to let my personal reaction give way to critical appraisal.
8/10- Definitely play if you like Wizards and Tactical Breaching
-Josh
Endnotes:
After I wrote this sentence, I continued playing the story, and the game added a FIFTH character to the roster