One Of The Year’s Most Underrated Strategy Games Just Got An Important Sci-Fi Crossover

It’s been seven years since the release of Into the Breach, an intricate tactical game where success hinges on your ability to pick the right moves on a tiny battlefield. Now, it’s also brought my attention to another sci-fi game that scratches a similar strategic itch, but in a very different form, thanks to a new crossover.

Lonestar launched in April 2025, and while its reviews sit at Very Positive on Steam, it’s not a game I’ve heard a lot of buzz about. I’ll admit I even overlooked it when it first launched, partly due to just not quite getting what was going on with its combat. But now that its Into the Breach collaboration has made me take a second look, I’ve found a deeply engaging sci-fi strategy game with an original take on spaceship combat — and it’s even part of the Steam Summer Sale until July 10.

Visually, Lonestar has some similarities with Subset Games’ pre-Into the Breach release, FTL. It starts you off with a choice of pilots and ships (once you’ve unlocked them), and sends you out into a vast galaxy to hunt down targets as a bounty hunter. Since it’s a roguelike, if you fail, you’ll try this again. The biggest downside I’ve found is that there’s not much character to Lonestar’s galaxy, though descriptions of the bounties you’re tracking down do give them some personality, like a math genius obsessed with keeping their health even and a pilot convinced that the bigger his ship is, the better.

Those quirks aren’t just flavor; they come across in combat, where Lonestar shines. Ships in the game are made up of individual attack and support units, and you’re free to arrange your own as long as you have room for them. In each round, the enemy will fire its attack units, launching a beam of energy straight out toward your ship. You have a limited amount of fuel that you can use to simply dodge one or more attacks, but the rest you’ll have to fight back using a hand of dice that’s randomly rolled each round.

Each enemy attack is represented with a power level shown between your ships. To stop one from damaging you, you need to load dice of equal or greater power into an attack unit in the part of the ship that’s about to be hit. Exact matches means no one gets hurt, but using more power than your opponent means you damage them instead.

Usually, your dice rolls won’t be high enough to prevail right away. Instead, you’ll have to use support units to manipulate your hand and get the advantage. Support units are extremely versatile. Increasing the numbers on your dice, spawning extras if you meet their requirements, or adding power to your weapons are just some of their capabilities. Once you’ve earned enough units as rewards in battle, building your ship and running your dice through support units starts to take on some of the flavor of factory games like Factorio. There’s no automation here, but the process of plugging dice into various devices to increase their power before eventually loading them into your weapons does call to mind a similar kind of efficiency-oriented gameplay.

It’s not all about just making the numbers go up, either. Almost every fight in Lonestar feels unique. Enemies build their ship of distinct units as well, and some of theirs add huge twists to combat, like healing themselves each turn, stealing fuel from your ship, or lowering all of your attacks to the power of your weakest weapon. Using your custom ship to the best of its ability is always important, but without paying attention to enemy quirks, you’ll never make it through a run.

All of that makes Lonestar great even with the Into the Breach crossover, which is a nice bonus of its own. Abe, a pilot from Into the Breach has been added, along with ten weapons inspired by his game’s mechs. Random events based on Into the Breach can also be encountered as you explore the galaxy, and a new boss enemy brings the game’s Vex antagonists into Lonestar as well. All told, it’s a small but interesting update — the best part about it might just be that it introduces more players to a game that already deserved more attention.

Lonestar is available now on PC. It’s part of the Steam Summer Sale until July 10.