The peerless TIGSource led me to this wondrous discovery: an open-source (and freeware, natch) XCOM variant of considerable ambition. UFO: Alien Invasion, for that is the name of this beast, has taken a rather more serious approach to the subject matter of alien invasion than one might expect, with a purported ‘hard science’ fiction and a whiff of the dreaded realism to authenticate the extra-terrestrial shootings. Needless to say, it still delivers the kind of turn-based agonising, base-building, and team-equipping fiddliness we’ve come to love. I’ve not had a chance to play more much – had a few other distractions today – but I expect I’ll post something a little more detailed later this month. As I understand it there’s a new version due soon and they’ll need beta-testers.
The downloads page is here, and you’ll need to select the operating system from the funny drop-down menus. It’s 261mb big, which is the equivalent some amount of freeware games… I don’t know. I’m so tired.
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I spent ages playing this about half a year ago.
It was very fun until I got to the bit that was obviously unfinished at the time.
Looks really nice – but no destructible environments! Sigh.. One day a perfect X-COM remake will appear and I will be happy forever after.
If only someone dedicated enough could give proper use to Silent Storm’s engine…
Tis indeed lovely. I was surprised and delighted at the sheer amount of detail in, say, the UFOpaedia pages. Obviously there are bits that are unpolished or just plain unfinished, but I look forward to a final product.
Oooo. I think that I have finally found a time sink worthy of my time.
And also
Needless factoid of the day: the download is 16 Peggles with change.
Diogo – thanks for the heads up on Silent Storm – I just started playing the demo and it’s quite fantastic! Amazing piece of work – destructible environments and rag doll physics, how did that pass me by?