Flaws in tactics games are uniquely frustrating, as doomed combats tick towards an hour or mechanical layers are obfuscated in menus. A sleek, punchy SRPG is a pipe dream. Into the Breach is the only game to achieve this. It compares more easily to Chess than to its contemporaries, combats more like puzzles where you can Queen's Gambit your mechs on the ceiling. There is always a solution, if you think hard enough. This is an astonishing feat of balance. In their GDC talk, a developer describes how they reworked the story layer repeatedly before stripping it out almost entirely. A game that understands itself this deeply is the result of creativity tempered to be unbreakable. That design is the heartbeat of Into the Breach, on high and low levels, the looping turns inside combats inside campaigns. It could beat forever.