Breached
By David Chapman,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Cool but confusing trial-and-error adventure on alien world.

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Breached
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What’s It About?
BREACHED is a tale of survival, wrapped within a mystery, all told with a sci-fi twist. Your name is Corus Valott. It's the year 2245 and you've suddenly awakened from a deep cryogenic hibernation. Something has gone horribly wrong. The world around you has been lost to the elements. You're surrounded by nothing more than a barren desert, abandoned buildings, and the questions of what happened and why you were left behind. Making matters worse, your shelter has been heavily damaged and left you with only eight days worth of oxygen. It's up to you to connect with remote drones, navigate the harsh environment, and scavenge the materials you need to repair your shelter and maybe find out what's happened to the world during your hibernation.
Is It Any Good?
There's something both eerily peaceful and frantically nerve-racking about being isolated and alone in this adventure game. It's that conflict of emotions that makes Breached both entertaining and frustrating. Right from the start, you're thrust into the thick of things and clueless about what's happening. Reading the opening journal, you get the gist of the malfunction that put you in the dire situation you're in and given the barest of instructions for how to interact with your environment. It makes for an immersive experience as you share your character's confusion at his current state and how he got here, as well as his anxiety in sorting out what to do next. From a storyline perspective, it makes for an almost surreal and immersive experience. From a gameplay perspective, though, it can be frustrating to the point of pulling your hair out.
The problem with Breached is that it does too good a job of leaving you to your own devices. Short of general tasks, you're not told where to send your probes, what to do with the materials you find, or how to progress. For example, early on in the game you're told to synthesize fuel for your shelter. What you aren't told is how to use the resources to synthesize that fuel. And when you finally figure out that you need to do so in the Lab screen, you're only told that you need to manually figure out a proper ratio of ingredients. It's a lot of unnecessary trial and error. And as for the scavenging part of the game, it can get more than a bit monotonous cruising around a barren landscape trying to find just the right spot where some needed capsule or mineral is. Worse, the map never seems to get right what resources are to be found in a particular area. Once again, it's frustrating to feel as if you've been spinning your wheels and wasting precious time for no good reason. Still, despite itself, Breached still manages to come together in the end to feel like a unique, but short, experience worth checking out.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about disaster survival. What are some ways to be prepared for natural disasters, and what are some good tips for dealing with the unexpected?
Talk about space and space exploration. What are some ways that we're looking to expand our knowledge of space, and what are some of the benefits of exploring outside our own planet?
Game Details
- Platforms: Linux, Mac, Windows
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Nkidu Games
- Release date: June 21, 2016
- Genre: Adventure
- Topics: Robots, Science and Nature, Space and Aliens
- ESRB rating: NR for No Descriptions
- Last updated: October 27, 2019
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