When I saw the reveal trailer forMoonbreakerat Gamescom, it piqued my interest but not for the reasons people might expect. I don’t have a powerful interest in miniatures, I’ve never played Warhammer, and I was always an economic kind of Dungeons and Dragons player, preferring imagination to miniatures (or at least, that’s what my bank account preferred).
Whatdidexcite me about the game was the fact that it’s co-created by author Brandon Sanderson. I love his work, having read the entire Cosmere, so his attachment to the game had me intrigued.
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While Sanderson wrote the lore and characters, on the development side, Moonbreaker was created bySubnauticadeveloperUnknown Worlds(UWE). Moonbreaker is weird to describe in genre terms - I guess you could call it a turn-based tactical battler, or something along those lines. If I were to venture into lazy comparison territory, I’d say that Moonbreaker is Warhammer meetsHearthstonemeets Teamfight Tactics.
The goal of Moonbreaker is to destroy the opposition’s captain, a powerful unit that is deployed at the outset of each round. You have a “deck” of crewmates, who you can deploy each round depending on the amount of ‘Cinder’ you have (much like Hearthstone’s mana crystals). In addition to your captain, your deck will have nine crewmates. Each unit has an attack value, health points and a couple of unique abilities.
Moonbreaker is set in an enclosed arena, where the player has full autonomy over each unit rather than the auto-battling system of, say, Teamfight Tactics. Environmental factors play a big part in Moonbreaker, so if a ranged character has a bad angle on an opposition unit due to a car being in the way then expect to see your probability of hitting them plummet.
After handily dispatching the turrets the tutorial threw my way, I was feeling confident heading into an AI game. In a classic life lesson tonever take confidence from how well you do in a tutorial, I duly got my ass kicked in the game proper.
I was out-gunned, outmaneuvered, and simply outplayed by my robotic adversary. My captain was Astra, a young prodigy from the Methedori culture. She’s a ranged character, but I totally failed to keep her at range long before the opposing captain Extillior began slashing me with his massive blade.
I didn’t approach the game with a strategy and it cost me. The AI was able to outflank my units with ease, knocking them off the board moments after they arrive on it, and the game ended with my captain falling from her huge frog. The next game went no better as I tried playing Extillior myself (with the sound videogame logic of ‘If you may’t beat them, be them’).
Though I personally wasn’t able to take advantage of the synergies that existed between my units, I could see the potential. I really got a sense of the depth of each unit and how a game plan could come together if all the right pieces are put into play. I suck for now, but I can see the elements here that will make the game satisfying once I get that little bit better.
Though Moonbreaker doesn’t play anything like its tabletop inspiration, it does treat its miniatures with the same respect real-life collectors would. There’s a comprehensive painting mode with a full suite of tools that allow the player to customise their miniature in any way they see fit. I was also impressed when the devs told me that each of the current characters in the game has been painted using the same tool as that available to players.
Moonbreaker may yet be tainted by the loot-box style monetisation system it’s pursuing. While the game will ship with a large collection of miniatures, newly-added miniatures will be locked behind booster packs, which creates the possibility of getting a duplicate of a miniature you already have. These types of chance-based microtransactions are generally something to discourage. If I want a particular miniature, I should be able to just buy it.
Moonbreaker is arriving very soon, and will be available on Steam Early Access on September 29, with a couple of weekend sessions before that date. One of those runs from today, September 9, to September 11, and then again between September 16 and September 18. During both sessions you’ll be able to play Moonbreaker in its entirety minus a few systems like the shop. You can request to participate in these play tests on the game’sSteam page.
