Into the Breach is a fantasy turn-based battle. It's set in a future where humanity fights an army of giant monsters. You control mechs equipped with a variety of weapons and armour in carefully coordinated actions played out on super-small tile-based arenas. The added novelty is that you are able to see what the enemy plans to do next, so the challenge is how to counter and foil their plans - not unlike a game of chess.

You control three different mechs and are given an objective for that map along with a fixed number of turns to complete that objective. Your aim is to protect buildings and the related power grid. To do this you need careful planning and close observation of the moves each enemy will be taking next.

It's a game about countering attacks and trying to minimise unforeseen consequences of your actions. Unlike other tactical games, Into The Breach keeps things on a small scale. Rather than increasing level size, it's the complexity and number of enemies that make things steadily harder.

As you progress you work through a series of different island locations. You choose the order you tackle these and must choose carefully as each one has conditions that can affect combat scenarios, and more hazardous conditions can gain greater rewards from completing the scenarios on each.