Recent reviews by Groove Wizard

Tactical Breach Wizards is genuinely one of the greatest games I've ever played in my life. After having a really enjoyable time playing it on chill weekend mornings or while I was getting ready for bed, I reached the ending of the main campaign this weekend and found myself thrilled, satisfied, and craving more.

It's rare we're offered a gift of a video game with as much heart, wit, and care as this one. At no point did Tactical Breach Wizards let me down.

The game, in short, is a perfectly-balanced puzzle game. You play as a small squad of breach operatives, going up against various factions of enemies that get increasingly tough. Your operatives have a wonderful array of skills, from pushing enemies around, debuffing them, tossing them out windows, making them attack each other, and much more that I don't want to spoil here. Almost across the board, the enemies do enough damage to take out any operative in a single hit, which brings a really enjoyable energy to the game that makes you feel like an underdog in every encounter. You're outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, but absolutely NOT outplanned.

The true joy of this game comes from its invitation to the player to have a dangerously good and welcoming time. One of the main operatives has the ability to see exactly one second into the future, which is the in-universe explanation for your ability to have your team go through an entire round of combat and see how the enemies will immediately react, and if you don't like that choice, to go back one step or more. This simple trick made this game knock-out enjoyable, because I never felt cheated or upset by things, as we normally can in tactics games.

In addition to controlling the flow of a turn and never feeling "locked in" to a decision (until you end your turn!), the amount of transparency in the enemy's movements is wonderful. You can see who an enemy will shoot during the Foresight phase (the last thing you see before you can undo actions), you can see where a bomb will detonate, you can see an operative's line-of-sight as you try to move through each map, you can see the abilities of all enemies on the map, their health, their damage. You are handed every necessary piece of information, given a room that looks practically unwinnable, and you're told to go out and have fun.

I could go on about the gameplay for literally days, but I want to address something that I wasn't expecting when I first saw this game. The amazing work put into the heart and story of this game.

It's rare for a game to make me literally laugh-out-loud, and I can count at least a dozen instances during this game that I guffawed. One of the many magic tricks Tactical Breach Wizards pulls off is their diegetic humor. That is to say, many games make jokes that are exclusively directed at the player to make sure you're having fun and in a playful mood, but those are jokes made on-top of the video game - something directly between the developer and the player. Instead, the humor in this game feels as if it's radiating off of the characters and world itself. It feels as if you're watching some genuinely funny people be funny, and they're not doing it for you - you're just lucky to witness.

The payoff on these jokes is also quite splendid. The jokes are in-world, and they actually exist mechanically. There's a villain character who is taunted for their terrible magic powers, and the magical fire they produce is called "mildfire" and isn't quite as scary as you'd expect a pyromancer. There are setups in the lore that payoff hours later, as you learn how various bits of magic work. Characters in this world gain magic through a moment of great need, for instance, and there are a few magical abilities that make you think... Wait, why is that the power you needed?! What were you DOING?

Which smoothly brings me to the world itself. Damn, is the world of Tactical Breach Wizards awesome, inviting, interesting, and just genuinely creative. There is intention behind every single action in the game. Suspicious Developments does not leave a single stone unturned - if there's a mechanic in the game, or a conceit of this world that's important, it will be described in a way that's fun, quick, and understandable. I cherish the designs of their magic system, from how magic is developed in individuals, to how it can be commoditized in the world, to how different parts of the world can react to it.

But the real heart of the game is the characters. Hot diggity do I love the central party.

Through the course of the game, you build a party that grows in size. A grizzled ex-spec-op who is going back in the game "one last time". A witchy detective who has been trying to make her big break. A tormented doctor who has to kill to revive. A stalwart revolutionary who only knows how to fight. A snarky hitman with a shaky-at-best moral compass and a soft spot for puppers. They're a troubled gang of flawed heroes who come together to save the world, grappling with their own insecurities, traumas, lack of purpose, and likely demise.

And holy heck if every moment doesn't feel SUPREMELY earned.

This is one of my favorite games of all time. I'm so sad I've played it to the end. I'm thrilled that I have a bunch of challenges to go back through and conquer. I'm excited to play user-generated levels. And I'm watching Suspicious Developments next developments with bated breath.

To add a bit of space to this overwhelmingly glowing review, I had two complaints with this game that inhibited my time, especially early on.

One - the controller controls are really, really, really silly. It's one of those controller layouts that has you moving the mouse on screen with your analog sticks. No tabbing through menus with the d-pad. Gag me with a spoon. I played it on my Steam Deck, either docked with an Xbox Controller or through the Deck itself. It ran great, but HOT TAMALES are the controls just not enjoyable. I got used to it after like four sessions but never liked it.

Two - and this is more of a "I wish" than a thing that was inherently negative - the music is repetitive with very few tracks. I'm not absolutely certain, but it felt like it was less than five music tracks in the whole game, and each mission would only have one. With no voice acting (which I also didn't mind, though it'd also have been nice), it made the audio soundscape of the game very dry. After a couple sessions I switched to listening to podcasts with the game audio a little lower (but not off, to catch anything different).

This game is genuinely my game of the year for 2024. It feels like I'm explicitly the target demographic - melodramatic goofballs who suffer existential crises and wish XCOM was more fun - and it ABSOLUTELY delivered.