Played Into the Breach 🎮.

This is a turn-based strategy game in which you control mech pilots to save the world from alien invasion. Not the most original storyline and by it’s look I first assumed it was akin to the famous XCOM series. But it’s not really, because here you know exactly what your enemies are going to do in advance, with no guessing or random luck involved. In some ways it felt more like a puzzle game.

If you lose you get sent back to the beginning to try again. Often I find that style of “roguelike” game frustratingly repetitive. But here the missions differ a bit each playthrough. You also have the ability to upgrade your mechs in different ways and unlock lots of new characters so it doesn’t get boring. You get the chance to send one of your heroes back through time which gives me the sense of not having lost all my progress (when I remember to do it).

Each fight takes place within small land grid and only takes a few minutes to play, making it well suited to mobile devices, although it’s available on all sorts of platforms. It won a lot of awards in past years, deservedly so. And if you’re a Netflix subscriber you can play it for free.