Disclaimer: I loved the demo and got involved with playtesting, and therefore received the game for free.

IDENTITY

The Edgeflow team managed to include familiar features from the roguelike and deck builder genres while also bringing something new to the table. Breachway is genuinely different to other games and progresses the deck builder genre in interesting and fun ways. For example: the dominant strategy in deck builders is to build a small deck and cycle through it quickly, however in Breachway the cards have cooldowns, so if you see a strong card you should feel free to choose it.

I'm impressed with how Breachway has developed since the demo through to early access and I believe the direction will continue to be positive through to 1.0 and beyond. Therefore I'm comfortable recommending picking it up in early access.


ART

The graphics for the spaceships, stations, and star maps are all beautiful. Music and sound effects are solid too and there are enough settings to configure stuff how you want it.

I hope the UI receives some love to get on the same level as the graphics. For color-blind spaceship captains: some information is conveyed by color and there aren't alternative color schemes yet.

My system is i7 6700K + GTX 1080 @ 1080p High, close to the recommended system requirements, and it runs great so I think the system requirements are accurate. I would like to see system requirements provided for a variety of common resolutions and refresh rates but that's the same for most steam games.


GAMEPLAY

There are many possible configurations of equipment and cards on your ship, and although you're building a deck it really feels like you're configuring a spaceship (takes me back to EFT warrior days in Eve Online). Choose wisely as apparently space is full of unpleasant individuals who will gladly highlight any weaknesses in your build and send you back to the start.

At first I struggled to get past the first boss - but now I regularly make it to the second boss. The second boss is a big step up in difficulty and I have beaten it only once. So while you're getting repeatedly turned into a space wreck know that victory is possible.

Good luck & Fly safe o7

FTL: Captain's edition might be my favourite roguelike, ever. Slay the Spire has been a friend's for eons and a more recent joy of my own.

This strikes a half decent balance between the two. The thematic approach to the cards being tied to the systems is great.
Combat is slow. The rewards feel off. Even when playing a flawless fight, it takes awhile to chug through. You never seem to be rewarded enough to both heal and improve. Acquiring new crew members is a random event, only.

There is so much of this that is great. It is just . . . A little off. There are rewards associated with NG+. Where FTL has hundreds of hours for me, this . . . Well, it is early and new. Around 10$, it is a buy.

Oh, please, for the love of god, zoom out the dang map or give me options to control it. The boss battle gets shunted into the top right corner and sometimes finding it between your relationships panel is a pita.

The game works well and functions as intended. The gameplay itself is enjoyable and reminds me of the game FTL. However at this time the game is completely unbalanced and is designed for you to replay the first sector hundreds of times to progress. I suspect the next sectors are designed the same way - to make the player play them hundreds of times to progress.

While I do enjoy the game and believe there is promise here at this time due to the very poorly balanced game play I cannot recommend this game and instead recommend FTL if you're looking for something like this.

Examples of being poorly balanced:

You need credits to upgrade your ship. It costs 100 credits however you will continually find yourself at 99 credits received. To progress you have to upgrade something X100 so this is an intentional design to increase player time in the game grinding out upgrades over hundreds of runs for no real reason other than to make players grind upgrades that may or, very likely, do not improve the run they are playing.

The enemy weapons are significantly overpowered compared to your own weapons once you get past the first couple stages (flak, cooldown times, missles)

Some weapons you receive are nearly useless (Ion weapons) except in very specific situations vs enemies with shields in which they are useful. However the majority of enemies do not have shields so you find yourself unable to do anything in combat as the ion weapons do not prevent enemies from performing actions except in very specific situations.

The game does not provide enough movement points (fuel) for the player to do much other than a direct path to the boss limiting the credits you can earn in a run for upgrades, shops, etc.

Edit: The developer has made significant balance changes for the better. Credits are available at a much better rate. Fuel costs are down significantly allowing for risk/reward in the path you take. Overall a much better experience after the updates. However there is still a hard wall at the sector two boss which I suspect is due to there not being any content past sector 2 (and there's no achievements past sector 2). If you're fine with a relatively short game at this time then pick this up - it plays as you would expect and is an enjoyable game for the content it currently provides. However if you're looking for a game you can play for hundreds of hours tinkering with load outs it's not there yet since there's only two sectors to play.