
Into the Breach’s interface was a nightmare to make and the key to its greatness - somebee
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/05/into-the-breach-interface-design/
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danielbarla
I think there's a big difference between what the headline is implying (some
kind of hugely complex, hard-to-create UI), and what the article itself is
saying. From what I can gather, the devs wanted to distill the entire game
experience into something that is displayable in a simple manner, and as a
core driver, this affected nearly every part of the game.

I'm also watching Into the Breach with some curiosity; the game seems to be a
lot of fun, and has an amazing soundtrack. I wonder if it will be as big a
success as FTL, and if so, whether it will be on its own merit, or the mass
following they have due to FTL.

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baldfat
> headline is implying (some kind of hugely complex, hard-to-create UI)

Making anything simple is HUGELY complex. It took them years to get what they
wanted and it shows. I think complex UI is actually lazy work. Space 4X games
have notorious UI. Endless Space 2's interface might be much simpler than
others but I guarantee you they put more time into refining their interface.

Being able to explain or create something "simple" is perhaps the hardest part
of creating, and is much harder than naming things in programming and that
actually is perhaps is the hardest part.

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andywood
I made a game that has this design principle. The UI is all point-click and a
few icons. But it presents things like: what you can do to the object in front
of you, with the item in your hand. What you can do with items you have _on
hand_. What you could do if you had an item that you know about. Hints about
what you could do if you knew something you don't know yet. This is all
distilled to a single icon with decorations, but computing it all correctly is
quite involved.

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JauntTrooper
I’ve really been enjoying ‘Into the Breach.’

I wonder how much of the interface choices were driven by portability to iPad
and especially mobile.

FTL (which is superb) is too complicated visually to port to a phone. It works
well on an iPad, but having played on both the iPad and desktop I can see that
they needed to make UI tweaks for the iPad to make it work.

This new game is an 8x8 grid though, so it’s easier to imagine it as a mobile
game.

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Marazan
It begs to be a mobile game.

It's ability to be played, satisfactorily, in tiny bite size chunks - of maybe
only a few minutes at a time - demands it makes its way to mobile.

I want it on my phone for my commute.

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nukeop
Into the Breach is a fantastic, complex game that at the same time feels very
approachable and simple in scope, so good work on the interface.

It often feels like a very complex variation of chess. The maps are small and
there are very few categories of objects in them, which makes the game easy to
play but hard to master.

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johnatwork
I really like that the game is digestible in one night or two.

It really shines on replayability with new types of units that dramatically
change the way you strategize.

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markatkinson
Really great game. It had me hooked from the get go.

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dccoolgai
The look-and-feel of the UI reminds me a lot of the original X-COM but it does
a much better job at being easy to learn. The animated tooltips for weapon
effects really are cool and a pattern that could probably be used elsewhere.

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xchaotic
Into the breach is really a very elaborate Sokkoban

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anc84
Anyone know if a Linux port is on the horizon?

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apozem
If you don't want to wait, people have gotten it working with Wine. I
installed it on my Mac the other day.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/80nt36/i_hav...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/80nt36/i_have_successfully_installed_into_the_breach_on/)

~~~
jandrese
I want to buy the Linux version just to make sure my sale is counted as a
Linux sale.

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pavel_lishin
> _We work hard to ensure our ads aren 't a pain and they're how we're able to
> offer this splendid site for free. For Horace's sake, could you whitelist
> us?_

And I work pretty hard to make sure my machine doesn't get hijacked by a
Belorussian botnet or a Chinese cryptominer. I guess Horace better explain to
me that your ads are entirely self-hosted without any JS tracking.

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hitekker
Sadly, no Mac release despite FTL working wonderfully.

For gaming, OS X is suffering.

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whatever_dude
No mobile either.

They're just a small company (it's just two devs) and they cannot work on
things in parallel. I bet it'll come eventually.

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Noos
Another overrated as hell indie game with bad pixel graphics. Between this and
Celeste its getting annoying.

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strictnein
Celeste looks great. Thanks for the recommendation.

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MSM
It's really an amazing game.

I think OP just can't get past the pixel graphics because he just picked two
of the highest acclaimed titles of the year, highly recommend both of them.

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jack9
In the same way you just picked two you liked and decided to call them
amazing, despite being pixel rehashes. Rude.

