I've only spent an hour with this game so far. In that small time frame the game has proven itself to be a succesful addition to and a very interesting take on the strategy genre. Rather than focusing solely on damage, stats, or abilities, the game offers a small and simple tool set to complete each mission. Weapons deal some damage of course, but their main use lies in their ability to push things around. Enemies can be rearranged with this mechanic so that they damage each other, prevent their allies from spawning, or in some cases can even instant kill them if they are shoved into water or collide with enough things to kill them. The 3 starting mechs have a really interesting take on the way they use these mechanics. The melee mech knocks enemies back 1 tile and does 2 damage, which in the early game is a good setup for 1 hit KO against other objects. The tank can shoot half way across the map in a straight line and knocks back 1 tile. The artillery is so far the most interesting, with the most potential for interesting emergent gameplay. It's shot can travel across the whole map in a straight line. The shot itself deals 1 damage, but will also cause 1 knockback on each of the four adjacent tiles. It creates a lot of "Oh snap!" moments where you can for example aim beside a target to line up shots for your other mechs. Or if one of your own guys gets surrounded, you could also shoot your mech with artillery and use the adjacent knockback to help it mitigate some damage. It's a simple concept, but there are a surprising number of ways it can be applied in combat, and is a fresh take on the turn based tactics genre. The time travelling mechanic is also a nice way of alleviating some of the pain of losing in a roguelike. When you lose, you can choose 1 of your pilots to travel to another timeline and he will carry over his stats, so not all progress is lost. And PS: this game has been working fine on my Mac via wineskin port, if you don't have windows like me.
