For the "ask about a fandom you blog about that I don't know" prompt: I don't know anything about the game but I enjoyed the tactical breach wizardposting you were doing not so long ago. Would you like to talk a bit more about what made the game so enjoyable for you?
Tactical Breach Wizards has layers.
As with many video games, the core of Tactical Breach Wizards is the core gameplay loop. You're given a few wizards who have some esoteric tools, and a bunch of enemies who are too numerous or tanky to be overwhelmed with the limited force you can bring to bear; now figure out how to use the trickier elements of those tools to negate or overcome that lack of brute force.
Knockback is hardly the only example, but it's the first you're introduced to, and it's also a ton of fun. Jen's lightning is weak, but it can easily defenestrate enemies. Getting yourself and the enemy into position where you can defenestrate the most dangerous target without exposing yourself to more danger from the other targets is an interesting mini-puzzle, and you keep doing stuff like that.
If I want to throw the heavy guy out the window, I need Banks to throw sedative at him. But moving Banks in range means she's exposed to a bunch of mooks who collectively have enough firepower to put her down. So Zan and Dall need to protect Dall, but they don't have enough bullets for all the mooks, so—
It's a similar kind of almost experimental joy that I get from games like Slice & Dice or Into the Breach. I have a set of tools and a set of problems to overcome, and have to figure out how to make the two mesh in a way beneficial to me.
The next layer (shared in some form by both S&D and ItB) is the "Foresee" mechanic. There's a lot of complexity in TBW, and while there isn't really RNG to worry about, it's easy for you to overlook some factor. Maybe shooting that guy makes him run into an explosive barrel you didn't want to explode. Maybe moving Rion into position for a good vine means he's exposed to too much fire. Maybe you thought you budgeted Dall's health properly, but forgot that she was accidentally caught in Banks's sedative cloud two turns ago. No problem; just rewind!
It gives you the freedom to fuck around, find out, and finagle a new solution instead of faceplanting. If Jen's current position doesn't let her zap that guy in the direction you wanted, reverse the shot and her movement and try again. Keep trying, keep foreseeing new possibilities, until you're satisfied.
The next layer is level design. You have a lot of tools designed to work together, and the Foresight to make sure they work together the way you expect. So the levels need to be challenging despite your tools, without just making a bunch of your tools temporarily irrelevant. And they need to find a bunch of different ways to challenge you, so you're not just solving the same problems the same way every level.
Most of the campaign and training dreams manage this balance well, especially when you factor in the optional Confidence Goals which change how you have to approach each level. You can beat this level, but can you beat it fast or without getting hurt or while ignoring Steve? The Proving Grounds are dull in large part because they don't have this balance, and neither do most user-created levels.
On top of these mechanical details, gameplay polished to balance a complex experience properly, we have a layer of presentation. Aesthetics and interface and UX. There's a lot of stuff that Just Works, making everything feel intuitive without being noticed, and all of that is critical to making the gameplay work properly. When something doesn't work how you expected, it's easy to figure out how.
Presentation is a good transition from gameplay to narrative, thanks to aesthetics. The levels and character models not only serve the ludic needs of Tactical Breach Wizards, they serve its story. Zan Vesker and Steve Clark and First Chaplain Richter and everyone else look they way they need to look to sell the gameplay, to bridge the gap between fantastical powers and gritty modern combat. At the same time, they also sell the narrative, seeming less like Cool Units being moved around a tabletop and more like people in a world.
The stylization also helps. Making a bone-clad pyromancer look grounded is a tall order, but it's easier when he blends so naturally into this world of police stations and office buildings and trains, especially when there are Jens and Bankses and Livs around to help make this world feel like one where it's normal to dress like a warlock sometimes.
The next layer is the prose. It helps with both presentation and characterization, but it's also just fun. A lot of my TBW posts were just me sharing and commenting on screenshots of various good lines, and I screenshot a lot of other lines that I later decided not to post.
And the fun doesn't detract from the tone or overall narrative, even though the characters are usually in life-or-death situations. A big part of this, I think, is that the characters don't all quip the same. Jen's quips don't sound like Banks's quips don't sound like Liv's quips don't sound like Rion's quips. They quip in different ways and under different kinds of stress. It adds to your sense of these characters as various kinds of people who would quip at each other seconds before initiating a desperate firefight.
Which I guess brings me to the characterization layer. The eight-ish main characters all have at least a bit of depth (except Steve, of course), and the ones who end up on your team get more than that. Even taciturn latecomer Rion has a magic stress dream which helps explain why he wound up how he is. All of these characters are neat; you can easily imagine any of them existing outside the context of their story. You do not want them to get imprisoned or murdered or suffer through World War 5.
And on top of the individual characters and scenes and sentences, the overarching narrative is pretty good. The worldbuilding is sketchy, but there's enough to make everything make sense. You understand why characters and institutions have the goals they do, and why they take the actions they do, and why that results in conflict. There are a lot of balls in the air—Liv Kennedy's private goals, Reactor's plans, the Kalan revolution, Medil's situation, etc etc etc. But all of them matter by the end, and all of them get satisfying resolutions.
There's exactly enough story to set up problems for our protagonists to solve, to bring them together, and then to watch them solve those problems. From top to bottom, core to surface, it's quite elegant.
The biggest problem I have is that it's...self-contained? In a good way, but also kind of a frustrating way. I want more, but it's not there.
I've mentioned that I don't find any of the user-created levels satisfying, and I don't think that's going to change; my experience with the level editor is that it's clunky and lacks the tools you need to create truly novel scenarios. So there won't be satisfying new ludic experiences with TBW unless they release DLC. And while I like the characters, they don't have the depth of Taylor Hebert or Ai Hoshino or my other long-term blorbos; I kinda want to see more of them, but I also kinda want to leave them where they lie. They have a couple of epilogue options each, and that's...fine.
Tactical Breach Wizards is a very well-made game, polished, created with care. It's exactly as much as it needs to, and all of that was a lot of fun, and it gave me something to chew on without overstaying its welcome.
