Tacticians Of Ahm is a crunchy, bite-sized 8-bit core tactics ttrpg with fun presentation, compelling design, and a whole lot of heart.
The PDF is in its current beta build is 92 pages, with a mix of good helpful diagrams, bare exposed Microsoft Word formatting, and a fantastic cover and character sheet.
The basic premise is that you are sprites in an old NES cart that is corrupting with age. That corruption is literally eating at your world, shrinking its borders, and spawning glitched out monsters in what was otherwise a peaceful land. For me personally, this sort of Horton Hears A Who/Reboot premise of being tiny creatures somewhere unobservable in the real world doesn't really compel, but I will take any excuse to lean into the 8-bit aesthetic, and there's a lot of room to calibrate the game's setting and premise if you have a different angle you'd like to take.
More importantly, mechanically, Tacticians shines. Attacks always hit. Effects are applied to the entire area of effect. Facing matters. Gear matters. Rolls are out of combat only. Armor consumes inventory slots. You can grow relationships with your squad and leverage them for extra actions. Everything scales off of class levels, and you can freely and flexibly multiclass.
It's as deep as you want it to be, and a new player can bash together a character in ten minutes or spend an hour making very deliberate build choices. Similarly, XP accumulates fast and you can either stay in your starting class for maximum damage value or take levels in everything for a wide movepool.
For players, the core mechanics are simple and well-explained. For GMs, the game is easy and intuitive to run, but does require some prep to structure combats into scenarios---at least until you're a few sessions in. Illustrations and charts are provided for players and GMs throughout, as is a thorough and well-designed bestiary.
As for designers, Tacticians has the three great treats of an rpg poised to have an explosive third party scene: it's simple, it's deep, and it's extremely user friendly.
Overall, Tacticians Of Ahm is a gem. Although this might sound banal, its design priority is fun, and this is a good priority for a TTRPG to have. More importantly, it hits its mark. It has the positioning and deliberate action of Into The Breach, but mixes it with the chill nostalgia of spending an afternoon on your grandmother's couch playing NES. If you like tactics games with some light storytelling that you can drag a few casual friends into, this is likely the best.
Minor Issues:
-Page 34, Bless, using 'take' here feels a little confusing. Maybe 'gain'?
-It might be interesting to have Corrupt1on and Cha0s be antagonistic but opposite forces, fitting with the binary theme of 1s and 0s.