Breachway was provided by Hooded Horse for review. Thank you!
Breachway was in early access at the time of this review, so content and performance are subject to change.
Games based around building up a deck of cards to unleash upon the enemy are becoming increasingly more common, and ones that pair that premise up with roguelike gameplay are also on the rise. Combine those two mechanics, throw in a space theme, and get Breachway. As a fan of deck-builders, roguelikes, and space-themed games, I'm all for it!
There isn't much of a storyline to be found in Breachway, at least not that I noticed in the early access build that I was able to try. You get the chance to play a prologue, which is there to set you up with some form of storyline, but right now, it quickly disappears into forgotten memory once you start a run. This likely won't be a game you play for its intriguing storyline.
If you've played the ever-popular game FTL, then you'll have some idea of how part of Breachway functions, in that the game largely takes place on a galaxy map, where you will direct your ship to travel between nodes, with each node you reach having some form of event that happens there. You can encounter hostile ships who will fight you, friendly ships who will help you, space stations where you can refuel, recruit, buy, and sell equipment, and more.
I'm not sure how many different events can appear in the game. There appeared to be some repeats, but there's enough randomness and variety with regard to the game's combat that it can get away with it. The ship that spawns to attack you will likely be equipped differently each time, and you yourself will be equipped differently each time, meaning the strategies at play will be in constant motion.
That brings us to the combat system of Breachway, which needs to be solid. In my time with the game, I think it's a very well-put-together turn-based system. Not only do we have the variety of different enemy ships appearing and the ability to outfit our ship with different equipment, but the equipment each ship has determines what cards you have in your deck to draw, meaning there's even further variety brought upon by just what cards everyone has in their hands for that turn.
You can have different systems and weapons fitted to your ship, which come with some default cards, and then further cards that can be gained by winning battles, allowing you to add to your deck with powerful combinations. A laser weapon, for example, may come with two cards that can deal four damage each and cost 3 ordnance to fire. However, upon winning a battle, you may add a card to the laser with a different effect, such as dealing the damage and costing the ordnance, but each subsequent laser fired that turn will cost 1 less ordnance to fire.
Beyond weapons, you'll also have other systems, like shields and hacking. Shield cards can be played to give you some defense, and hacking cards can be used to affect your opponent's deck so that you can remove a powerful card from play.
All of these cards, however, have a resource cost associated with them. Your resources are spread across Ordnance, Energy, and Mass. These are fueled by your generator, which will generate some of these resources each turn. You can upgrade your generator with credits and adjust it to decide how much of each resource you want to generate. Weapons typically use Ordnance, whereas Shields often require Energy. You must balance your resource production to fit your ship's and deck's needs.
All in all, I found the system well-balanced and well-made. You can't consistently use your best cards to deal big damage, and you have to weigh whether it's best to use 1 heavy-hitting offensive card, 2 smaller offensive cards, or perhaps 1 offensive card and a defensive one to protect yourself from an upcoming enemy attack. The player can see the opponent's cards, as well as how many turns they are away from using that card, so that adds a further element of strategy as you can predict (roughly) how much shielding you will need to protect your precious hull points.
To add even more choice to the game, you also have your crew, who have special abilities you can use depending on whether you have enough command points. These cover various buffs, including increasing your weapon damage for that turn, generating resources immediately, adding some shielding, etc. These are useful to use if you need to get an extra shot in to end a battle that turns or needs some emergency shielding, but you don't have the resources or card to do so.
All of this combines to make a fairly deep and tactical combat system that doesn't feel overwhelming to the player. There is a short tutorial that explains everything to the player without being too wordy, and things are laid out in an easily understandable and clear way. There are tooltips for the cards that both you and your opponent hold, so you can read their effects and what they will do.
Visually, Breachway is fine and does have some nice visual effects, but it's nothing ground-breaking, which is probably for the best, as it makes the game quite easy to run.
So, I came away very impressed by Breachway. I have slight concerns about the number of different events and the variety in that regard, as most nodes I encountered just ended up putting me in a battle rather than an exploration or diplomatic event. Still, as for the combat events and the combat itself, Breachway handles that very well, and I think this core mechanic is the most important thing to get right. The events can be added as they go through the early access period.
Breachway mostly functions just fine on the Steam Deck. We have 1280x800 resolution support, and while the game doesn't support controllers, the trackpads on the Steam Deck are perfect for deck-building games like this, meaning you can play the game with relative ease using them.
Breachway doesn't have many graphical settings; it's just a simple quality setting with a few selections.
I don't recommend applying an FPS Limit to run the game below 60 FPS, as the input lag introduced just feels awful on the trackpad. So I just kept the 60 FPS Limit, the default on the Steam Deck LCD.
Because Breachway's graphical options are simple, you can choose the Medium quality setting and then apply a 12W TDP Limit in SteamOS.
Visually, the game holds up here. I noticed some slight aliasing on some ships, as well as slightly blotchy shadows, but unless you are staring at your ship, you probably won't notice it much.
The power draw is generally around 11-14W, but there are some occasions when the power draw will rise and the FPS dips down into the 40s. This is largely when there's a nebula effect in the background of a battle or weapons are being fired. Fortunately, FPS drops are not a dealbreaker for a turn-based game. Even with a 15W TDP Limit, you cannot hold 60 FPS on the Medium preset in these situations, so I don't even attempt to.
Temperatures stayed around 60-70C most of the time, but when the heavy battles came in, they could rise to 75C. Fan noise wasn't particularly noticeable.
Breachway does not currently have accessibility features. However, no dialogue in the game is voiced, so everything is subtitled.
There's no UI scaling, but I felt the text was generally large enough to read on the Steam Deck.
Breachway has some great foundations in place. Good gameplay mechanics are here, the game plays and looks nice, and there's a decent amount of content already here. With some additional variety in the type of events and more equipment and cards available to draw and play, Breachway could easily become one of my favorite space games.
Breachway also functions well on the Steam Deck. The game mostly manages to play at 60 FPS, with some slowdowns into the 40s on occasion. With decent battery life, perfectly playable controls, and readable text, I can recommend this game for play on the go.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Breachway is a great game for those who are fans of roguelikes, deck builders, and space games. It runs pretty well on the Steam Deck, with some occasional frame drops.
