Tactical Breach Wizards sold 'twice as well' as Suspicious Developments' previous games, but more importantly, it failed catastrophically to lose an IGF award: 'All we can say is we're sorry, and we'll try to do worse'

Tactical Breach Wizards, the fantasy turn-based tactical strategy about busting down doors with a team of Navy Seers and Necro Medics, is an excellent game. But did you know it is also an award losing game?

Since its launch in 2024, Tactical Breach Wizards has not only enjoyed commercial success and near-universal critical acclaim, but it has also embarked upon a wholly precedented run of game award losses. All of this is explained in Suspicious Developments' latest newsletter, clips of which were shared on BlueSky by fellow PC Gamer contributor Jeremy Peel.

The full newsletter—which was shared directly by Jeremy—reveals Tactical Breach Wizards was received very well by players indeed. "By revenue, Wizards sold twice as well as any of our previous games, so we are in the increasingly rare position of remaining fully independent, self-funded, and safe for the amount of time it takes to make a videogame when you're very slow at making videogames," Suspicious Developments writes.

The newsletter goes on to say that this successful launch led "straight into awards season, during which we did our best to continue our history of being nominated for but ultimately losing a healthy number of awards." In keeping with this tradition, Suspicious Developments says it "proudly" lost the Golden Joysticks, two BAFTAs, a DICE award, and a Hugo "an especially great honour given how few games have ever successfully lost a Hugo."

Not everything went according to plan, however. "As many of you will know, we weren't able to lose an IGF award for Excellence in Design. We're still trying to figure out exactly what happened, but long story short, we won it," the newsletter explains. Suspicious Developments apologised for this flagrantly victorious error, resolving to address the issue as soon as possible. "All we can say is we're sorry, and we'll try to do worse."

As for what all these sales and accidental award wins means for the company's future, Suspicious Developments is already working on a new game. In fact, its latest project is the studio's second new game since Tactical Breach Wizards, as the old new game didn't work out. "We started something new! And then we scrapped it! Now we've started a different something new!"

Suspicious Developments says it isn't "ready to announce the concept or the real title yet". But it has posted a video discussing why it scrapped that initial project, while also providing a teensy glimpse of the new idea in action, which you can view above. "We also didn't want to go as dark as we did for a lot of Wizards' development, so Tom [Francis] has been talking about our prototyping work."