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‘868-HACK’ Developer Michael Brough’s Brilliant ‘Imbroglio’ Gets New Paid “Mizzenmast” Expansion

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It was just about this time 4 years ago that developer Michael Brough released his latest entry in the tactical roguelike genre with a new game called Imbroglio. Brough has released a number of games over the years, but none more famous than 868-HACK in 2013 which featured a finely honed set of mechanics and nearly infinite replay value. Imbroglio actually shared a lot with its cousin 868-HACK in that it was an incredibly approachable game on its surface but contained many, MANY layers of depth for those who dared to master its intricacies. We loved Imbroglio in our original review and included it in our Best Games of 2016 list. While a big rebalancing update and leaderboard reset happened just this past February, it had been a couple of years since Imbroglio had seen any sort of new content. That changed today with the release of a new paid expansion for the game called Mizzenmast.

Imbroglio has seen two previous expansions before today’s: the Ossuary expansion in October of 2016 and the Phlogiston expansion in April of 2018. Like those expansions, Mizzenmast also features 16 new weapon cards, but unlike those expansions that featured just two new characters, Mizzenmast features FOUR new characters. It’s almost like a double expansion, which is probably why it’s priced higher than the previous ones at $7.99. Mizzenmast also includes a new game mode called Draft which Brough explains is “a new way to play the game with a more ‘roguelike’ scoring system that encourages playing out every game (instead of restarting 10x to try for the perfect opening) and using a variety of weapons."

Since this is the world of mobile gaming, a casual observer might see a $4 game that contains an $8 add-on as pure madness, but those in the know are fully aware that Brough’s games are these timeless little pieces of joy, and if you spread out whatever the cost of any of his games or expansions are across all the time spent playing them, they’d be seen as bargains. Even if you’re not keen on springing for a new expansion right now today’s update also includes a bunch of other tweaks to the game which you can read about in the App Store’s update notes. Oh, also, I couldn’t for the life of me remember if Imbroglio was updated for full screen devices before or not, but as of today’s update it is, so that’s always nice. If Imbroglio is already your daily habit and you’re looking to spice things up, or if you are a lapsed fan looking for a reason to dive back in, definitely give the new Mizzenmast expansion a try.

IMPORTANT NOTE READ THIS NOW: Unfortunately a bug has snuck into the live version of the Mizzenmast update which causes crashing upon launching the game. It’s Game Center related, so in the meantime you can turn off Game Center from your device’s Settings app in order to play the game while a fix is currently in the works.

  • Imbroglio

    "Every individual element of Imbroglio’s design coalesces into an elegantly complex whole. Nothing is out of place. It…
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