Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.
At one point during the new demo of the highly anticipated, excellently named wizard-shooter-strategy game Tactical Breach Wizards, a character posits that you can’t solve all of life’s problems by throwing them out of windows. This does not, in fact, appear to be the philosophy of the game’s chief creator, Tom Francis, who has labeled the title—out sometime later this year, the sooner the better—the third installment in his ongoing “Defenestration Trilogy” of delightfully glass-punishing indie adventures. (The previous two entries being 2013 stealth wiring puzzler Gunpoint, and 2017's Heat Signature, which, what with its space-based heists and need for rapid, often explosive exits from spaceship chambers full of goons pointing guns at you, might have the most satisfying window-breaks of any game, ever.)
The demo for Tactical Breach Wizards carries that basic philosophy—i.e., that it is good when an asshole goes out a window—to a more visceral and, well, tactical place. While not as massive as a few such offerings we’ve seen of late, the demo is still commendably beefy: Several missions that make up the early portion of the game, enough for you to get at least a basic handle on its bite-sized, kinetic take on X-COM-style turn-based combat. (Also, Francis’ sense of humor, which manages the unique trick of being wry and sarcastic without ever becoming glib or irritating.) Most importantly, it’s enough to give you a glimpse of the game’s most important gameplay hook, which it shares with its immediate predecessor: A steadily expanding selection of tools and toys that feel less like they were designed with an eye toward pleasing the Great God Game Balance, and more toward letting the player pull off ludicrous shit on a regular basis. Why not let players set up pre-cognitive traps to blast the next enemies to come racing through the door to hell, or load up on grenades that emit body-flinging shockwaves?
All of it comes back to a basic tweak on the normal version of this (usually very punishing) kind of tactical combat: The idea that just shooting a guy is kind of boring—while sending him flying around a level (ideally through a window, natch) is a hell of a lot more fun. As with many of the games published by Francis’ Suspicious Developments studio, you can clear the levels in the TBW demo through rote, slow tactics. But Francis (a former writer for PC Gamer, before he crossed the aisle) understands inherently that few things incentivize players better than the simple prospect of doing something really cool, and a little dumb. The game also prods you in the direction of flamboyance with a generous rewind feature, which means you’re never punished for experimentation—allowing players to cook up the dumbest possible solution to a seemingly simple problem.
We cruised through the demo of Tactical Breach Wizards—which, we should probably note, we beta-tested years back, as fans of Francis’ general game-making philosophy—in about an hour. But it was one of the more enjoyable hours we’ve spent with a game of late (especially when the demo opened up just enough to give us a peak at an upgrade system that seems rife with ways to abuse all your new toys). Although the game lacks the infinite replayability of a roguelike like Heat Signature, it also seems to benefit massively from focus: I.e., this is a game that is about knocking people through windows, and it is going to make sure you have the most satisfying knocking-people-through-windows experience possible.