Breakout 2025 just finished in Toronto this past weekend, and I had a blast! I met several incredible designers, tried lots of new games, and overall feel a lot more energized and creatively excited. Here’s what I encountered and why I think they are awesome.
Beam Saber is a game I’ve been eyeing for a bit over a year. I recently finished up a three year mech mercenary campaign in the Stars Without Number system (more on that in a future post), and while I was in the middle of it I was eyeing all other mech systems to see if they could work better for me than SWN (they might have for me, but not for my overall group).
When I finally sat down at Breakout to play it with its creator Austin Ramsay, it was even better than I hoped. We were a strike team of three bug-themed mechs ambushing a guarded escort and retrieving whatever was inside the main armored truck. We waited in the infamous ‘ambush alley’ for our target and were, ironically, ambushed ourselves by a competitor while we waited. Though we took quite a few hits, we managed to defeat both our competitors and our escort’s guards – only collapsing a few buildings in the process.
While it retains many familiar mechanics from Blades in the Dark, the changes it does make all feel interesting and right for the genre of media it’s emulating. Your mech has Quirks consisting of an adjective and a verb that can be interpreted positively or negatively (e.g. obvious pincers, loud digger). While in your mech you spend narratively-related Quirks instead of stress to do things like push yourself, resist harm, etc.
There’s also the bonds system. You start with 1 bond with every other PC, and when you relieve stress with them you gain an additional bond. When you exceed the cap of 3 bonds, you ask them a question, gain XP, and reset back down to 1 bond. Whenever you help a PC, both the stress cost and help effect multiply by the number of bonds you have with them. It was too long-term a mechanic to see much of during the one-shot, but I really like how it makes teamwork and evolving relationships a fundamental part of being a pilot.
Here’s hoping to playing or running a campaign of this once my group has had a short break from mech games.
Spirit Wardens is the temporary name for this Forged in the Dark game by Sidney Icarus. Unofficially set in Duskvol 500 years before Blades takes places, the old ways of sorcery are dying and the Immortal Emperor mandates the creation of a strike team: a few special people wearing supernatural masks. During the game you choose between four similar playbooks (Trader, Sailor, Noble, maybe also Foreigner but I’m not sure) and fill out your history in a lifepath-light list with 4 distinct stages. Then in the first scene of the game you are given your masks and become the first spirit wardens in history.
Masks are fascinatingly implemented – a second playbook that slips into and partially covers up your current one, hiding your personal identity, history, and contacts while you don the anonymity of your mask. There are several mask playbooks – I donned the Mask of Silk which focused on uncovering secrets, speaking truths, and going where others might stop you. Masks have their own advancements that they keep if you ever die, retire, go mad, etc.
You are a new force separate from the law, with the full authority of the Emperor to fulfill your duty as you interpret it, but without any rules, procedures, or expectations that would inform how you act or how others act towards you (if they even believe you’re legitimate). Your decisions establish spirit warden doctrine and influence what is and isn’t acceptable by your peers and future recruits. You also struggle with the precepts given to you by the emperor (eg. “Master all thresholds” or “Purge what defiles you”), and might end up with a blighted, rewritten version of the precept in the future.
Not only was this a fascinating new perspective on the setting of Blades, it also easily and naturally makes character choices and beliefs a core focus. Because the premise gives the PCs authority and freedom, but not safety or familiarity, they have to establish their identities as individuals and as a group, and their choices will naturally echo throughout Doskvol’s future.
This game is still in the experimental phase of design, so a lot of what I played may change significantly in future versions, but I really enjoyed my time with this game. John Harper is rightfully protective of the world of Blades in the Dark, but I do hope that he grants permission to this project to still take place in Duskvol when it comes out.
Elemental is a game I didn’t know anything about when I sat down to play it. During this session we infiltrated a noble ball, freed a princess locked in an upper room, stole everything not nailed down, and redirected the blame to others. It was a session full of manipulation, disguises, and secrets, and the GM did a fantastic job of making it feel alive, reactive, and fast-paced.
The Elemental system itself is a fairly simple one where most tasks are resolved with players rolling 1d6+stat+skill vs the GM’s 1d6+difficulty modifier. Sixes explode once, and modifiers ranged from +1 to +5 during my game. There’s probably more to it that we didn’t see since combat didn’t come up during this game, but it feels like it’s meant to ‘get out of the way’ so the GM and players can have any kind of narrative experience without being held back by the rules. The drawback of that, of course, is that it doesn’t seem to specifically support any particular one either (though supplements probably address this).
Overall I’m glad I played, but it didn’t draw me in deeper.
Slugblaster is a game I’ve been curious about since the Quinns Quest review, and it definitely delivered on what I’ve heard. We were a bunch of teenagers hoverboarding between dimensions to reach the Infinite Rift and do the coolest tricks atop all of reality. Outrunning dimensional cops and outstyling a rival group, we flipped over a fallen mecha, sacrificed all the sweet photos we took to access infinity, and did a two-person spinning trick called ‘Green and Yellow Coming Out of Both Ends’, among many other awesome moments.
The game’s tone manages to feel nostalgic without obviously tying itself to any one specific era. Its interdimensional world feels like it could take place anytime between the 1970s and 2010s. One minute we may be livestreaming our tricks online for all to see, and the next we might be playing an atari game on a CRT TV. The PCs have ray guns and hoverboards and companion drones, things that feel just out of place enough to not be set in any specific date.
The game also does a great job and making the players feel like a group of close-knit friends, with cheers, assistance, and camaraderie playing a big part in how well you roll. We weren’t able to see much of what happens between runs, when family ties and trouble brew and pull at the PCs, but it seems like the other side of the game that makes it really shine.
The next time I feel an itch to play Masks, I think I’ll give Slugblaster a shot and see how I feel.
The Wildsea is another game that I’d heard about from Quinns Quest, but one I was the most interested in due to the world, art, and some of the mechanics I had heard about. During this session we attended a festival taking place on the molten carapace of a gigantic beetle. We tried amazing (and amazingly terrible) food, befriended ghosts that appear only during this time, stole a burning coal from carefully monitored smokehouse, traveled to an unearthed temple, and soothed a lion-like predator made of plants.
The system itself is very interesting. Dice rolls function similarly to Blades in the Dark (though I think that’s not an intentional influence) where you roll a number of dice based on a skill+approach+other factors, and keep the highest. If there is a disadvantage or especially difficult challenge, the roll might ‘cut’ one or two dice, removing the highest ones after the roll. Furthermore, if you roll doubles it creates a ‘twist’, which is not inherently positive or negative, but simply means that something new has developed or been introduced.
The biggest draw for me about the game though, is the world. Many fantasy worlds feel well-explored by now, or only change one or two big things, but The Wildsea feels new and compelling, managing to be strange and mysterious while still feeling like a real, authentic world.
I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of The Wildsea for free after playing this. The GM brought the copy to Breakout intending to give it to someone, and decided that someone would be me. I’ve already started reading it, and hope to run it soon.
The Electrum Archive isn’t a game I had the chance to play at Breakout, but I was given a free copy of Issue 01 by its creators and read the whole thing in almost a single go. While not as radically different as The Wildsea, the science-fantasy world of The Electrum Archive still feels new and interesting – in no small part thanks to the excellent art and layout design on both the exterior and interior of the zine. Over twenty influences are listed on the back page, and the world of this game feels inspired by them while being far more than just an homage.
The mechanics themselves are also fascinating. I haven’t really enjoyed any OSR systems I’ve played, but I think I might really enjoy playing the mechanics found in The Electrum Archive. With always-hitting attacks, zone-based combat, and weapon-based initiative, as just a few parts of the game, it has the lethal combat and resource management of an OSR game but the fast resolution and interesting advancement choices of a more modern one.
I’d like to play or run this as well at some point. My list continues to grow.
I also played two non-RPG board games. Behext was a very fun wizard duel hot potato games that I highly recommend, and Tides of Time was a solid two player drafting card game that was enjoyable to play once.