Into the Breach

Pacific-Rim meet chess. A chess-like game with rogue-lite elements.

It reminds me a bit of a chess game in a way. You'll burn your brains thinking the next move, and you'll see this short battles make evolve your robots. Bad guys are a bit plain in my opinion as they're mostly insects but the scenery and music are very cozy and enjoyable.

Into The Breach will make your brain expand in a similar way to chess.

This is such a cleverly designed and balanced rogue-like! A turned-based strategy with a perfect foresight about the actions the enemy will take in the next turn, making each turn into a small resource optimization puzzle, especially on normal and hard difficulty. However, “Into the Breach” can still surprise you even after 50 hours of play, because it has amazing emergent complexity and just enough randomness and variety of squads, weapons, and strategies to keep you on the edge. It is easy to learn and difficult to master in the best way! [Context: I spent 100 hours with it and earned all the achievements.]

A simple game wit hidden depths, a solid upgrade structure and very pleasing if you are into old school pixel art. It is in essence a simpler (and then again, not so simple) version of chess. You have 3 pieces to start with (artillary, a tank and a "boxer" mech) and have to defend a set number of territories and islands against attacking aliens. There are many different ways to up the difficulty, and therefore enough challenge is present to gaurantee multiple replays - a time travel mechanic makes this make sense in-universe. Not that time consuming, enough fun to warrant the investment, I can recommend "Into the breach" for any fan of games like Commandos, Civilization and Starcraft. Low tech, high fun!