Into the Breach

Subset Games followed FTL with a tactics game that removes almost all randomness and is harder for it. Eight tiles by eight, three mechs, five turns to survive, and the crucial rule: enemy attacks are telegraphed before you move, so every turn is a solvable puzzle rather than a gamble. Damage prevention beats damage dealing, because your real objective is protecting the power grid under the buildings rather than killing anything, and shoving a Vek into its own ally's line of fire is usually better than shooting it. Runs are short - under an hour - across four islands with escalating threats, and each of the eight mech squads is a different puzzle language: one plays around fire, one around displacement, one around a single fragile artillery piece. Pilots carry across runs, and the ending sends one back in time to start again, which is the loop stated in the fiction. The 2022 Advanced Edition added four squads, new enemies and pilots for free. Almost nothing else is this dense per minute.