1. Breachway
  2. News

Breachway News

Breachway EA Release Times & Launch Content

Hello everyone,

Breachway is releasing into early access tomorrow! It’s been a long road to get here, with a few delays along the way, but the wait will come to an end soon! For everyone who is curious, here is a handy graphic that shows the release time in your region:



We also wanted to take a moment to share what the game will feature on release, and what the general directions are that we are going to expand on throughout early access.

[h2]Early Access Launch[/h2]

Breachway’s initial early access offering will feature:
  • Four playable ships, each with their own layouts, synergies, specific bonuses, and initial faction standings.
  • Multiple types of combat systems to wield in tense turn-based combat, from lasers and missiles to flak and railguns, and even hacking!
  • A large collection of over 300 cards to discover for your equipment allowing you to fine-tune your loadout.
  • Over 60 submodules with a wide variety of effects. Add them to your equipment to further increase their power, and unlock more synergies and possible combos.
  • 6 unique crewmembers to recruit along the way, each bringing their own special ability to deploy in combat.
  • 40 regular enemies, 16 elite enemies, and 2 boss enemies.
  • Two star systems to traverse, with their own events, enemy types, and boss encounters. Use the fuel system to reach difficult areas, and navigate on the optimal path to your target!
  • Meta progression between runs – a wide variety of bonuses you can unlock and then mix and match.
  • An escalation system that make runs progressively more challenging as you master the game’s mechanics.
  • Four fully fleshed-out factions, each with their own associated events and allegiances.
  • Space stations, missions, items, random events, and more!
  • A soundtrack of 19 space-themed tracks to accompany you as you chill in space stations, explore, and fight other ships.

Our main focus for the early access release was to have the game be as close to a complete experience as we could manage. This meant eliminating hundreds of bugs, adding extra music, sound effects, a polish pass on everything graphical, etc.

However, because of this, we had to put a pause on creating content, and ensuring what already is there, is as enjoyable as a team of 4 developers working on such a complex project can make it.

[h2]Early Access Roadmap - the general plan[/h2]

Our main focus going forward is going to be content. We want players to be able to experience a full run as soon as possible, that means traversing three sectors, gaining more powerful equipment and cards, encountering new events, and facing more challenging enemies.

Some features, such as items players can find and use, still offer a lot of untapped design space. We have some interesting plans for them, and we’ll share more details soon.

The same is true of the crewmembers, we have a crew leveling system that we we want to flesh out more before bringing it to players, that will also be one of our focus points going forward. We also plan to have special events for how each crewmember you find along your journeys joins you.

Another major part of our focus going forward will also be expanding on the universe of Breachway. Besides further fleshing out the main motive for each ship to get to the source of the signal, you will also find some small pockets of exposition— on defeating the first sector boss, on reaching the second sector, and so on. These narrative moments will be unique based on your crew and ship, and they’ll only appear once to avoid disrupting gameplay. We plan to add many more of these small slices of world-building, triggered by in-game events and conditions, and tailored to your ship and crew composition.

[h2]Early Access updates[/h2]
Speaking of which, we should outline what our plans are for updates.

Initially, we’ll likely need to patch the game frequently, as thousands of players will find bugs that our smaller group of testers missed. Sadly this is the nature of games with such interdependent systems with some crazy edge-cases.

After the initial flurry of hotfixes, we plan to settle into a rhythm of smaller updates every few weeks where we do balance changes, add new events here and there possibly, and polish and further develop out visual effects.

Then once every couple of months, we are going to release larger updates, that will feature things like new ships, new enemies, new regions, missions, crewmembers, and more—possibly even some surprises we haven’t thought of yet. We already have a new ship we’re working on for the first big update. This ship is all about missiles and blowing enemy ships to (space)dust.

That’s all for now. Back to work—just one more day until we can finally share the game with you.

See you soon, space cowboys!
Victor & the Edgeflow team

Breachway Demo update

Hello everyone!

We are happy to release another update to our demo, and look forward to getting your feedback and suggestions as the Early Access launch approaches.

We've added some major new features to Breachway since the last update, including a meta-progression system and an incrementally scaling difficulty system.
Along with these, there are numerous smaller changes and new content additions—too many to list individually. Here's a breakdown of the key updates:

[h3]Main Changes and Additions:[/h3]


  • Persistent progression - As you play, you will unlock perks you can add to your ship on starting a new run, giving you some much-needed assistance in tackling all the challenges you'll face.
  • Escalation levels - On completing the demo, you will unlock Escalation levels that add more and more challenges to your run.
  • The Lancer - You've seen it in the hangar a few times, and now you can unlock it by defeating the first system boss on Escalation level 5.
  • Longer runs - We've increased the number of nodes you can visit before facing the first boss, giving you more options to upgrade your ship and find better gear.
  • Boss rebalancing - The boss should now be easier to beat, reflecting his status as a first system boss.
  • Cheaper equipment and repairs - allowing you to experiment more with different equipment builds and reactor power without being punished too harshly for taking damage in combat. (this is just the first system after all :) )
  • Card balance changes and additions - We've done a significant amount of balance changes to cards and cost and added some new cards since the last build.
  • Reworked the waypoint node system - You can now discover new events on the map as you travel, potentially changing your route through the system.
  • Drafting changes - We've made some changes to the way drafting works; you will now only draft once every 2 fights against regular enemies, but you have 2 options to pick from per piece of equipment. We're still playing around with various setups for drafting cards.
  • More crewmembers and events for you to discover. Each crewmember will have their own event eventually, but for now there’s a generic placeholder event when you come across them.
  • A LOT of bug fixes (we lost count , but somewhere around a couple hundred), this should result in a smoother play experience.


Any Escalation levels or meta-progression perks you unlock in the demo will carry over to the full game.


We hope you enjoy the update, and we look forward to discussing the game with you in the Steam forums and on our Discord.

Victor

Breachway News: Important Announcement

Hello everyone!

We want to share some significant development updates with you:

Breachway will now launch on September 26, 2024.

I understand that repeated delays are tough and can raise questions. It's certainly been tough on us as developers, as we've worked so hard on this game and want to release it in the best state possible.
While it wasn't an easy choice, we ultimately decided together with our publisher that the additional time was better for the project and better for you, the players.

I sincerely hope you understand. Rest assured that the new date is locked in tighter than an airlock.

In addition to bug-fixing and polishing, the extra time has allowed us to add and refine features such as the meta-progression, an Ascension-style progressive difficulty system and a persistent ship damage system.

[h2]The Firebrand[/h2]
We've also added a new ship, the Firebrand. Check it out in the screenshots below:

Say hello to the Firebrand. It starts with Radiators cause it's packing some HEAT.

[h2]Join Us at Gamescom[/h2]
In addition, Breachway will be showcased at Gamescom, where you can play the latest version of the Breachway demo.

If you’re attending, visit us at Hall 10.2, booth nr. F010g - E019 to play some Breachway and say hi to the developer team.

Thanks for sticking with us through the cosmic dust. September 26th can't come soon enough.

See you then, Space Cowboys,

Victor

Highly wishlisted space roguelike Breachway confirms new launch date

Take the ship-building of No Man's Sky and Starfield, add in the tactical combat and roguelike structure of FTL, and supplement it with a card system reminiscent of Slay the Spire or the recently released Zet Zillions, and you have Breachway. One of my most-wanted indies of 2024, the space game has already shot up into the higher echelons of the Steam rankings with over 150,000 wishlists, but developer Edgeflow Studio and publisher Hooded Horse made the decision to push it back from its original launch date to ensure a strong debut. Now, it's finally almost ready to go.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

One of 2024's most wanted new roguelikes has just been delayed

Promising space strategy game gets launch date and a free Steam demo

Deck-building space sim Breachway re-emerges from warp with an August early access release date


In theory I'm down to review Breachway, a roguelike deck-building space sim which is sort of FTL but 3D and with cards. The second I wrested this privilege from Ed Thorn's resentful fingers, however, developers Edgeflow Studio and publishers Hooded Horse delayed the early access release. Perhaps this reflects Hooded Horse's atypically forgiving, when-it's-ready approach to game publishing. Or perhaps they just hate me and wish to deny me things that might bring me pleasure. It matters not, because the game now has a new early access release date - 30th August 2024 via Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. Catch a celebratory trailer below.


Read more