Knockback

Lore & Background

In the shattered world of Into the Breach, the Goliaths are massive industrial war-machines built to hold the line against the relentless swarm of Breach-born creatures. Their designers understood that brute force alone would not suffice on a battlefield littered with crumbling platforms, toxic pools, and narrow chasms. So they engineered certain strikes—most iconically the Brawler's piston-driven punch—to carry a secondary kinetic impulse. The impact doesn't merely bruise; it launches the target in a rigid, unyielding vector, as though the Goliath's fist were a battering ram on a rail.

Reader's Guide

Knockback in Into the Breach works as a linear, axis-aligned displacement: the target slides in a straight line (horizontal or vertical, matching the attack's direction) until it encounters a blocking condition. There is no diagonal knockback. The slide stops at the first wall, occupied tile, map boundary, or hazard tile it reaches. Range and reach depend entirely on the source ability.

The Brawler's Punch is a melee-range attack that knocks back one tile of displacement minimum, but the actual slide distance is determined by how far the target travels before being blocked. A target in an open row can slide three or four tiles; one adjacent to a wall slides zero effective distance. Always read the preview vector carefully—the game shows you the exact landing tile. Terrain interaction is where knockback becomes lethal.

Pushing an enemy into a hazard tile (lava, acid, electric) deals that hazard's damage on the next turn or immediately, depending on the hazard type. Pushing off the map edge eliminates the unit. Pushing into another enemy can cluster them, making a follow-up area attack or a Wasp's multi-target sting devastating. Synergy highlights: Pair a Brawler knockback with a Warden repositioning to block a second shove, creating a 'pin.'

Use a Wrecker's slam to clear a row, then slide a Stinger through the opened lane. In tight 5x5 boards, a single well-timed knockback can reset an entire enemy formation, buying your Goliaths a full turn of free movement.

Did You Know?

• Because Into the Breach is fully deterministic, the exact landing tile of every knockback is shown in the move preview before you commit—there is never a 'hope it slides far enough' gamble.
• Knockback can push an enemy into a hazard tile, effectively converting a zero-damage shove into a lethal environmental kill without spending additional energy.
• The slide is strictly linear and axis-aligned; a knockback never changes direction mid-slide, even if the path crosses different terrain types.
• A unit knocked back into a tile occupied by another enemy will stop at the tile adjacent to that enemy, potentially creating a tight cluster vulnerable to multi-target attacks.