Breachway

This game has the possibility to be a lot of fun. But right now aside from the barebones loop, I can't see a way that this game has moved past it's early access grace period. It's incomplete, has a very small story, maybe a few paragraphs and that's it. The gameplay also needs some balancing and work, there are a lot of actions and card mechanics that do not work as they should. 2 years in Early Access and there should be a LOT more here. Not worth it do not spend money on this, even for 10 bucks during the summer sale, this didn't feel like a deal 2 days later.

So, for the purpose of reviewing a game, has either a "Thumbs Up" or a "Thumbs Down" score. I've chosen "thumbs down." If there were a "shrug" score, I'd choose that instead. Breachway is fine. It's a little like FTL, but with its own thing. It's a little like Cobalt Core, but with its own thing. However, unlike either of those things, its own thing is *fine.* It's *fine.* It's not bad. It's not great. No complaints. Breachway is a work-in-progress. It does its thing. Just nothing about it (so far) is really memorable. If you haven't played its inspirations, you're certainly better off playing those things, as they do it much better. But if you have, and you want a little something more, and you don't mind a "it's *fine*" review, then, yeah, sure, pick this up.

As of 07/2026 the game still ends after the second "level" ("without any new clues about the signal, your run ends here). About a year ago or so, they said they'd be working on the next map "right now" and would be done in a month. Considering that a map is mostly a bunch of more or less random encounters and that most weapons and ships already seem to be in the game, it sounded plausible. But since there is no progress to be seen, there's a good chance the game is abdoned. Either way, it not actually a bad game but unfished. After about 10h I already reached the current end twice. I don't see the point in further runs since in the end it's only a slight variation of the starting gear.

Fun at the start while discovering enemies and equipments but bosses require a planed build. Game is too random, random drops, random upgrades, random everything. Need to have a better balance in what can be planed for and what is random. Random is fun, makes runs feels different from one to other but this feels like playing monopoly.

I've had a lot of fun with the game so far. The fights are still a little too easy. Even with boss fights, I was never in danger of dying. But I'm also only three or four runs in (and you unlock the next difficulty level with each successful run). So I guess if I stick to it, the challenges will become greater. And there's still one ship and multiple different builds for me to explore. Well worth the money! Edit: And the devs are actively working on improving the game, which is unforuntately not the case for all Early Access games.

Breachway has a ton of potential. I love the theme, music, and gameplay. This negative review is less about the game and more about certain aspects of the game, which I hope the devs will make some changes with. Tutorial: I felt like the tutorial was a good intro, but didn't make it super clear about the fact the taking yellow paths used up a specific resource, while blue ones did not. When going through the tutorial, I thought that the resources were for each pip traveled to, regardless of color, much like FTL. It wasn't until I started playing a run and ran out of movement resources halfway down a yellow path that something started to click and I had to put the pieces together myself. My final complaint here is that even when I ran out of travel resources, the run didn't end, it just had me sit there clicking around wondering if I had any other options and I finally had to abort the run manually. Gameplay: - the encounters and combats could use some life and differentiation. After an hour or two of play they all kind of blend together. Really lean into certain mechanics, debuffs, and attacks. - Positive/negative relations with factions doesn't currently seem to have any noticeable effect on encounters, and feels like a useless part of the game currently - Sometimes an encounter would say that a location or event was added to the map, but I was unable to see them even after looking for it. Highlighting these areas noticeably seems like a must. It feels bad to have an encounter that rewards you with a special event on the map and then not know where it is QOL: - having floating text prompting the buttons to press to lock the card so I can look at the cards it created would be nice, it was frustrating until I found it in a prompt or looked it up in the game settings - There's still some placeholder text or duplicate conversations that happen before encounters - A preview of the mechanical effects of my critical choices would be nice. Picking major combat influences without really knowing what they do mechanically feels painful in a very mechanical game like this - It reeeeally bugged me that I couldn't have the left pane menu open and still travel on the map. - Being able to view the map and deck of cards more often in each stage of combat and in dialogue encounters would help significantly with decision making - It bothers me that the map shifts when I move my cursor across the screen. I know it can make the space feel fluid, but it seemed like I had to move my mouse more and differently than anticipated to go click on what I wanted. - All of the enemy ships currently look near identical. These is probably an early stage, but at the very least for different factions, the ships being distinct, colored specifically, and distinguishable from other ships would add a bit of flavor Again, when I first played this game I was really excited to get into it. I love the idea, and think it can be a slam dunk with a bit of work. At the end of the day, it's impossible not to compare it to Slay the Spire, especially STS2. I remember playing and realizing that a lot of the QOL things that STS has, Breachway does not yet have. There were some noticeable distinctions and differences that I liked, and obviously this needs to be and will be a different game than STS, but I think there's a lot of good mechanics that can be pulled from STS. All in all, I'm excited to see this game progress and develop. I hope to revisit this after some updates and give it another run with maybe some different feedback. Eventually though, I anticipate this review turning to a positive recommendation.

I'm Sorry. First and foremost, I did enjoy this game when it first launched for a little bit. It felt like FTL but wasn't, and the mechanics were interesting initially. Really didn't expect this one to keep updating, but it did and still is currently... Unfortunately I loaded it up for the first time in ages to check everything out and my GOD what a buggy mess it has truly become. I loaded up the game and went to the bathroom, but by the time i got back the game was crashing because it memory leaks on the title screen. So, did a couple things to try and improve performance. Turned all my graphics settings down to the lowest (My computer is beefy so shouldn't have to do this in the first place). Ended up putting it into windowed mode and performance was decent. After a while during battles my game would lag out until i reset the window settings. And every screen change from menu to battle or vice versa would enlarge my window off my monitor. I ended up fighting with the game itself just to play it and I eventually gave up after my first run back into it. tl;dr this is not ftl (for better or worse) and doesn't seem to work properly at first glance after all this time. I support the devs but this just was ridiculous. I don't recommend buying this until it's out of early access.

Overall its a neat little game, obviously its still in early access so there's still kinks to work out and content to be added. But, as someone who loves roguelike/lites in general, it's not hard to please me. The devs are actively ironing out balancing and adding new content which is hopeful, because my only real complaints would be the lack of enemy variety and the number of playable ships/weapon variety. Also, the map is a bit lacking in terms of events and such, but that's already been slated to be fixed via the roadmap. I will say, that the game is a bit easy until you reach the last sector's boss, who then proceeds to overheat you to death. Which... isn't that fun if you're not carrying the venting equipment that is ONLY useful on that boss while being useless for every other aspect of the game. I see other reviews complaining about cards not synergizing, which, is somewhat inaccurate. (Devs also just updated laser weapons last patch.) Most cards loosely synergize with each other in small ways like extra damage, shred, etc, which I feel is the correct way to do it because so many other deck builders lean heavily toward OP combinations that invalidate other builds outright. The way it is now, you can pretty much do anything that tickles your fancy and get away with it. Honestly, what I'd do (and currently going to do) is buy it on sale, play it a bit to see if you like it, then shelve it until there's more content. I'd give it a solid 7-8/10 with serious potential to be even better.