Into the Breach

As the world continues to struggle against the coronavirus pandemic, Humble has launched the Heal Covid 19 Bundle to support a number of charities aiding the hardest hit countries such as Brazil and India as well as the global medical effort to save lives.

In total, you can get 35 different games, books, comics and software for just £15. All of the money raised will go to the charities Direct Relief, Doctors Without Borders, International Medical Corps and GiveIndia.

As for the specific contents of the bundle, it's mainly comprised of games that many would consider some of the best indie and AAA releases in recent years. Honestly, if you had someone completely fresh to PC gaming and wanted to show them the impressive diversity of games on offer this would be a terrific place to start.

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Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove Soundtrack Collection

Humble Bundle has launched a DRM-Freedom sale where you can get up to 96 per cent off a huge list of well-known and cult indie hits.

The list of available games is vast and overwhelming, so do go have a browse through the entire DRM-Freedom sale page to see if there's anything that catches your eye. To help narrow it down a bit, though, I've gone through and picked out a few particular highlights that you might be interested in.

Let's go for something a little arcane and peculiar to start us off. How tempted are you by Cultist Simulator for 10.04? Even with its minimalist presentation, the enigmatic card game has scratched the back of my brain through repeated descents into the occult as more secrets are unlocked.

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Into the Breach

Considering that Subset's last game, FTL, handed you an entire galaxy to knock about in, Into the Breach might strike you as being a little cramped in its opening minutes. This turn-based tactical battler likes to drop you into snug maps of eight squares by eight. You never have more than a handful of turns to worry about on each mission, and you have just three units to control as standard. What's worth remembering, though, is that FTL may have been set in the vast reaches of space, but it found its most frantic entertainment in the compact and claustrophobic arrangement of rooms that was your spaceship. This is a studio that understands panic and understands the power of confinement. FTL is a classic - and Into the Breach may well be even better.

The question with any turn-based tactical game is: what kind of game is this really? Once you take away the mechs and the super-soldiers, is this Chess again? Is it American Football? The easiest answer for Into the Breach - and it's not a complete answer because Into the Breach is not an easy game to get your head around - is that beneath a veneer that invokes the likes of Front Mission and even Advance Wars, this is billiards. By which I mean your shots matter, but victory lies in understanding where the remaining pieces are going to come to rest afterwards.

This is doubly true because so much of Into the Breach isn't merely concerned with blasting away at mutant hordes with your guns and missiles and lasers. It's concerned with doing all that while shoving them too. Shoving them into the sea where they drown. Shoving them onto a dangerous tile that is about to drop into the earth or be hit by falling magma or be engulfed with the burning fumes from a rocket launch. Missiles and lasers and guns are great, but you learn to look through the weapons you're given along the course of an adventure and cherish the ones that have drag or knockback powers. Again: it's not how much damage you do in a round, it's what the board looks like once the round is finished.

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Into the Breach

Into the Breach, the new game by FTL: Faster than Light studio Subset Games, will be released 27th February on Windows PC. Other platforms are still planned but there's no schedule for their release yet.

Like FTL, Into the Breach looks simplistic - a slightly cartoony grid-and-turn-based strategy game about protecting Earth from aliens breeding under the surface. Combat is even described as "minimalistic" on the Into the Breach website, providing you the opportunity to counter-attack each turn.

There's a mechanic whereby you can't fail - when you're defeated you send help back through time to save another timeline - and each attempt randomly generates a world and challenge for you. Travelling game writer extraordinaire Chris Avellone has leant a hand, too.

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