Posts Tagged ‘Xenonauts’
Give And You Shall Receive
By John Walker on May 19th, 2012.
This makes sense as a thing to do. With so many gaming Kickstarters running, for games we’re genuinely interested to play, let’s have a look to see where they all are this weekend. The headline news is that Grim Dawn has finished its run, with just shy of double its target reached. Below you can catch up on Moebius, Xenonauts, Tex Murphy, and many more. And you can also note that almost all of them aren’t pledging to Kick It Forward, which completely sucks, so you should get in touch with them all and yell at them.
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Carmageddon: Reincarnation, Drifter: A Space Trading Game, Grim Dawn, Kickstarter, kickstarter katchup, legends of eisenwald, Moebius, Skyjacker, Tex Murphy: Project Fedora, Two Guys SpaceVenture, Xenonauts.
Golloping along
By Alec Meer on May 9th, 2012.
I know exactly what I’m doing. Including when I screw up. When I screw up in X-COM, I invariably know that I’ve screwed up long before the results of said screwing-up actually come to pass. My soldier is out of action points and left standing in the open while an alien silently eyeballs him, or a yet-to-explode grenade lands casually at the feet of an innocent civilian. Next turn, I will pay for these mistakes. Pay in blood.
I make exactly the same mistakes, and knew exactly why they had come to pass and what punishment would follow them, in Goldhawk Interactive’s indie remake/reiminaging Xenonauts, which after three years of preorder-funded development today climbs about the wheezing Kickstarter bandwagon for its final furlong.
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feature, Kickstarter, X-COM: UFO Defense, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Xenonauts.
Silence is golden
By Alec Meer on May 5th, 2012.
As promised yesterday, here’s another chat with XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead dev Jake Solomon. Here it is – and it brings with it particularly glad tidings if, like me, you weren’t 100% convinced the slo-motion ‘glamcam’ killshots and 80s action movie soldier vocals were for you. Turns out we will indeed be able to turn them off in favour of quieter, interruption-free strategising. I’ll probably try it both ways (missus) to work out which I prefer in practice but I’m super-chuffed that we’re getting the option.
Also discussed – what he thinks about indie X-COM remake Xenonauts, chat about how to capture live aliens, how alien interrogation and research works, more on the game’s lethality, and to what extent the game will shape your advancement up the tech tree.
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feature, Firaxis, interview, X-COM: UFO Defense, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, xcomint, Xenonauts.
By Alec Meer on April 10th, 2012.
It’s probably horribly sensationalist to suggest there’s a cold war on between Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Goldhawk Interactive’s more mechanically purist X-COMlike Xenonauts, but then again it is the battle to end all battles, one shall stand and one shall fall and the Earth itself will be left in smoking ruins by the time this apocalyptic conflict is over.
Xenonauts has been smartening itself up since the announcement of Firaxis’ official reimaginging, as lead dev Chris England chatted to me about a few weeks ago. More detailed environments, and the ‘evil alien sheds’ have now been replaced with suitably dramatic crashed UFOs. Images of its newly endetailed look are now available for all to clap eyes upon. Which is only so much preamble, innit? Here you are…
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Goldhawk Interactive, X-COM: UFO Defense, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Xenonauts.
The enemy of my Enemy
By Alec Meer on February 14th, 2012.
Up until January 5, 2012, the mega-ambitious Xenonauts, Goldhawk Interactive’s Cold War-set tale of alien invasion, was our number one hope for a modernised X-COM. Then, on January 5, 2012, 2K and Firaxis announced they were making an official modernised X-COM. We’ve already chatted to Firaxis about XCOM: Enemy Unknown at length, but what did that shock news mean to Goldhawk lead Chris England? Here, I chat to Chris about his initial reaction, why it doesn’t spell horror for his project, where he’s at with Xenonauts at the moment, what’s planned for the future, how he believes Xenonauts will be better than X-COM and whether spending his life savings on making the game has paid off.
Also, IKEA UFOs and drinking eight pints.
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feature, Goldhawk Interactive, interview, X-COM: UFO Defense, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Xenonauts.
By Alec Meer on November 15th, 2011.
Night will always follow day, controversy will always follow a highly-anticipated game scoring less than 9/10 on a mainstream videogaming website, and X-COM will always see remakes. Xenonauts is the one to watch at present, of course, but Xenowar caught my attention because it’s going for a hyper-stripped down, simplistic, scrappy mini-take on the oft-aped formula.
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free, X-COM: UFO Defense, Xenonauts, Xenowar.
By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2011.
Poor old Xenonauts, Goldhawk Interactive’s Cold War-set XCOMalike, was the most recent victim of Paypal’s callous punishing of indies who fund development by selling early builds of their games as part of pre-orders – and as a result it hasn’t been available for sale for quite some time.
Well, a month on, the impressive turn-based tactical strategy game is back, thanks to Desura. You can pre-order it (again) right now, and doing so gets you immediate access to the current version of the game as well as all its updates as and when. Oh, and the price has dropped from $30/£20 to a rather more sensible $20/£15. There’s also a premium version, which gets you forum-based glory and possibly other goodies down the line for £20/$30. More details here.
Desura, Goldhawk Interactive, Xenonauts.
By Alec Meer on October 9th, 2011.
Oh, not again. Paypal is increasingly the scourge of indie games – it’s opted to cruelly and unnecessarily freeze funds for Minecraft and Project Zomboid in the past, and the latest victim of its administrative idiocy is enticing X-COM reimagining Xenonauts. “Currently our Paypal account has been locked down and closed, so we don’t have access to any of the new money coming in or any access to the funds currently in the account,” say devs Goldhawk Interactive. “As a result of this, we’ve temporarily disabled the pre-order page.”
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Goldhawk Interactive, paypal, Xenonauts.
X-COM in spirit if not in name
By Alec Meer on October 1st, 2011.
OK, I admit it: I am as cynical as you when it comes to half-suspecting that enormously ambitious, fanbase-courting independent projects announced before work on them has even begun carry the dread stench of vapourware. I’ve been very interested in Xenonauts for some time, if faintly horrified that lead designer Chris England claims he made the final decision to pour his life savings into funding an X-COM remake based on an offhand oh-if-only comment I made on RPS, but I confess wasn’t entirely convinced it would see the light of day. Partly this was due to the many tales of infamy concerning amateur game devs who started working together remotely without ever actually meeting – online tensions can run so high – and partly because I’ve been waiting a long time for an X-COM remake that actually feels anything like X-COM. It is not in my nature to believe that dreams can come true.
A playable build of Xenonauts was on show in the RPS-sponsored Indie Arcade at the Eurogamer expo last week, and pretty much everyone I spoke to about it said the same thing: “well, it’s X-COM,” they offered with a wide grin. They didn’t say what worked or what didn’t or what they’d change or anything like that – they just said “it’s like X-COM.”
I can’t think of a greater compliment for any game.
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feature, Goldhawk Interactive, X-COM: UFO Defense, xcom, Xenonauts.
By Alec Meer on May 18th, 2011.
It’s been a bit all-quiet for the Cold War-set X-COM reimagining Xenonauts for the last few months, but creators Goldhawk have finally broken cover to show how the major element – the ground combat – looks in action. The answer, you may not be terribly surprised to hear is “quite a bit like X-COM”, but clearly that’s exactly what we want. Higher res and detail is a fine thing, but it’s especially pleasing to see that destructible scenery, something so bafflingly absent from many of the commercial X-COM remakes, is present and correct.
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Goldhawk Interactive, X-COM: UFO Defense, Xenonauts.
By Alec Meer on November 16th, 2010.
Amidst the web-wide frenzy resulting from the announcement of 2K Marin’s shooter-sequel to X-COM, those who were unwaveringly disappointed/infuriated that the series’ strategy roots had been abandoned had at least one source of turn-based solace. That was Goldhawk Interactive’s Xenonauts, one of more X-COM remake projects than any sane man could count – but this time determined to retain the original game’s key systems and concepts rather than slavishly recreate every feature, aesthetic and plot-point. Cold War-set and going for military grit rather than early 90s comicbook scifi, it promises to be familiar yet different.
However, a great many X-COM tributes have been, gone or simply stalled midway through development – indeed RPS gets advised of a new one at least every couple of months. So how/will this one be different? Best leave that one to the developer, really – read on for project lead Chris England’s thoughts on why do this, 2K’s FPS, bastard Chrysalids, and what’s going to be better than the original.
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feature, Goldhawk Interactive, interview, X-COM, xcom, Xenonauts.
