Tactical Breach Wizards defenestrates by the book in new footage
A wizard's staff has a stun-prod on the end
Tactical Breach Wizards has come a long way since its early days as an in-joke turned prototype from Gunpoint dev Tom Francis and pals. Now it looks like a clever little tactical puzzler in the vein of Into The Breach, only instead of giant robots pushing aliens into volcanoes, it's modern-day wizards pushing criminals out windows. There's still a lot of work to be done on the game, with some great early art direction hiding many development sins, but today's eleven minutes of new footage are absolutely worth a look. Check out how a Witch Cop upholds Witch Law in the video below.
While anything can change between now and when it launches, the walkthrough video gives us a peek at a pair of scenarios involving two of six planned characters - Witch Cop and Riot Priest. The former does things by the book, so she gains mana for using the minimum required force to take down a suspect. Sure, you could launch that guy out a window, but smacking him into a wall with exactly the required force to knock him out will give her a major magical buff. The Riot Priest has no such restrictions, and gains extra mana for bigger attacks by tanking oncoming damage.
As with Into The Breach, the player is equipped with all the knowledge they need, and can test out actions for each turn before committing to a final plan. Even with just two characters, there's some exciting interplay between them, with the little stun-wand shots from the Witch Cop doubling as a tool to nudge the Riot Priest into position for a bone-shattering shield charge, and charging up her mana batteries a little in the process. It's also mentioned that twitchy enemies on overwatch will open fire on anything moving, including teammates, if pushed into the line of fire.
Tom Francis and the rest of his crew at Suspicious Developments make it clear that this is still early footage and the game could, theoretically, change completely by launch. Still, it sounds like they've got the basics worked out now, and intend for it to be a relatively easy, not especially long game. Maybe around eight hours long and story-driven, but with bonus points and fancy costumes awarded for more precise, aggressive play.
While there's no release date yet for Tactical Breach Wizards, it does have a Steam store page now, which lists it as the third game in The Defenestration Trilogy, after Gunpoint and Heat Signature. They really do like pushing people out of windows.
Disclosure: Lead dev Tom Francis occasionally writes some words for RPS, but has been lost down a wizard-shaped hole for the past six months.