The Breach (2023)

Planet Earth… the end of the 21st century: the Achab Corporation influences and dominates the globe using outstanding technologies, obtained via access to Gene.sys, a secret database of unknown origin which has turned out to be a mine of information and knowledge.

However, the Corporation is not the only entity that wants to obtain these secrets: the Breachers are expert hackers, capable of connecting to Gene.sys in order to steal information and increase the power and prestige of their faction. A.R.M. (the Achab Remote Mind) security system, a sophisticated artificial intelligence developed by Achab engineers, proactively detects and fights against each intrusion attempt to Gene.sys, but it seems that something is going wrong with it…

The Breach is a competitive Net Crawler game for 1-4 players, lasting approximately 25 minutes per player, where they attempt to breach the Gene.sys database to steal secret information. Each player is a Breacher, a digital rebel, guided by their ideals or by their Faction interests.

The game map is Gene.sys, a virtual universe of mysterious origin, currently controlled by the Achab Corporation. After hacking into the database, the Breacher Avatars will need to face several dangers: not just other Breachers, but also I.C.E. controlled by the A.R.M. (the Achab Remote Mind), who will try to stop the incursions. In case of need, A.R.M. will also use powerful Guardians to try to put an end to intrusion attempts.

The Breach is a Net Crawler with a distinctive resource management system, set collection mechanics and variable powers. Your objective is to spread your viruses inside the database, while gathering as much information as possible.

The game turn is structured in three phases: Firewall (I.C.E. run their subroutines against players), Actions (Avatars choose and execute their actions) and Net (Avatars configure their skills and steal information using viruses). You will be able to upgrade your Avatar, assign Viruses, fight the Guards and other Avatars, explore the rooms of Gene.sys, but also install programs and use Cheat codes to manipulate the database according to your needs.

Pay also attention to the health of your Avatar: if it will suffer enough damage, it will be disconnected from the network and reconnected in a different location! However, you could play more strategic and take advantage also of this event…

Each game of The Breach will be different from the previous one: the choice among Avatar, Breacher and Database structure offers a different challenge each time, and players have to be clever to identify the best strategy for optimizing the available resources.

—description from the publisher