Arco review - small scale battles offering vast potential

“Bite-size” is one of those terms that gets a bad rap. This may be because it conjures memories of cramming for GCSEs with the help of the Beeb, or because, when deployed in the world of cuisine, it often translates to: “slightly less than you paid for.” But in games, bite-size can be a wonderful size. WarioWare is bite-sized: the entire history of interaction delivered in four-second gulps. Into the Breach is bite-sized: a dizzying well of strategy that you can dip into in the time it takes to send an email.

And Arco? Arco is bite-sized. It takes this stuff seriously. It’s bite-sized in the art, in which tiny pixelated heroes and villains can easily disappear behind a typical mouse pointer. It’s there in the way the narrative of this wonderfully weird Western unfolds, in bursts of chewy, iMessage scrolling. And it’s there in the combat, which pitches you right into the middle of complex dust-ups that can obligingly burn themselves out in just a handful of terms. This is the Into the Breach take on bite-size games, and it rules.

This is particularly cheering since Arco’s early review code was rather unstable. Having now had a chance to properly engage with the game on PC as well as Switch, it’s a happy thing to report that you can dive in without worries of crashing. And what a game you’ll be diving into.