We recently said that you should keep a beady little eye on X-Com re-make Xenonauts. Well, we have some good news for you - it’s now on Kickstarter and there’s a demo.
Xenonauts is a re-make of the 1993 classic X-Com: UFO Defense (known here as UFO: Enemy Unknown), in which players take charge of an elite anti-alien force and defend the world from invasion. Despite being almost 20 years old X-Com is regularly voted as one of the greatest games ever made and it has spawned a number of imitators - none of which have managed to capture that certain something which made the original so brilliant.
Xenonauts is the latest game to attempt to do this and it has been in production for a couple of years. The developers, Goldhawk Interactive, have decided to use fashionable funding source Kickstarter to get the money necessary to finish the game properly. They have already raised $75,000 and have released a demo to help convince people to support them.
Kickstarter is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace, with lots of projects all vying for your attention, so what’s the game actually like? Well... I have played it and my considered opinion is as follows.
Firstly, let me say that I don’t love Xenonauts. I am IN LOVE with Xenonauts. I want to take it home and do unspeakable things to it. I want to hold it and tell it that everything will be OK. I want it to have my children. I want to cherish it and keep it safe for all time. Am I making myself quite clear? Ever since UFO: Enemy Unknown was first released I have yearned for and dreamed of a proper re-make. Something that does full justice to the brilliance of the original. I am pleased to tell you that this is it. Finally. All those years of heartache, all those pretenders to the throne, all those false dawns - they’re over. That longed for day has finally arrived.
Because Xenonauts doesn’t just slavishly copy what has gone before - it takes it, gives it a slap around the chops and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Not only have the graphics had a complete rework (and the hand drawn interface screens in particular look lovely), but everything has been re-designed and streamlined. A lot of the micro-management has been removed. There’s no more ordering missiles or running out of rifle ammo - you have an infinite supply, which arrives automatically. You can rename your troops and view them in order of strength, accuracy or any statistic you like. You give them their guns in base, with their attributes clearly visible on the same screen. When you move your troops in battle it tells you how many action points will be left. Your landing craft even have more than one door! Goldhawk have obviously gone through X-Com and fixed every single minor irritation that it contained - and that bodes very well for the finished game.
And, as well as the small things, a number of more crucial aspects have also been changed. For example, the interception process has been completely revamped. You now control individual fighters, with different characteristics and weaponry - and you can even combine them into a squadron to take down the more difficult enemies. You direct these fighters on a two-dimensional screen to outflank their targets, and gain missile lock whilst avoiding return fire. Even within the confines of the demo it is clear that different UFOs will pose different levels of challenge - with fighters proving more difficult to destroy than scouts and the whole experience is much more interactive than in the original game.
So Xenonauts has kept what is great, tweaked what is out of date and completely changed what it thinks needs to be changed. And the important thing is that all of these choices and decisions have, so far, been spot on. It really is looking like this is finally the game that we’ve all been waiting for.
But don’t take my word for it. Please don’t. Go and play the demo. It’s a bit buggy, yes, it is an alpha after all - but if you liked X-Com or if you have any kind of beautiful soul burning bright within you then play this game. It is quite simply wonderful and I can’t wait for it to be finished.
Recently I have been doing a bit of writing for "The Digital Fix". Part of that is a (roughly) fortnightly column rounding up some of the indie stuff out there that people may have missed. The reviews of Yeti Hunter and Realm of the Mad God (which I underestimated and am still playing) are from there. However, I have decided that I might as well just re-produce the whole thing here - as it is increasingly moving away from having a "main" review and more into lots of equal parts.... Indie Review - MolyJam
MolyJam!
Usually when somebody starts a parody account on Twitter they confine themselves to, well, parodying their subject. However, sometimes what starts as an affectionate send up can end up becoming something quite different.
@PeterMolydeux is a parody account. It gently mocks the famous game designer Peter Molyneux - who made such classics as Populous, Theme Park, Black and White and the Fable series. Molydeux (as Molyneux) tweets different game ideas – “You are a bin, by day people are throwing litter in you but by night you use that litter to highlight issues in the city through modern art” or “You are a pigeon who must go around the city trying to persuade business men not to jump off buildings by retrieving items from their home” - that urge game developers to “think outside the box”. They stress emotion over action and innovation over repetition. His assertion is that games have become too standardised, too cold and too safe. He says that creativity is being stifled and that gamers are suffering because of it. The thing is that, after a while, people stopped looking at this as just somebody imitating Molyneux and started to think “some of these ideas are interesting, what if we actually made some games using them?” and eventually MolyJam happened - announced by the man himself in this video
MolyJam was a massive gaming meet up. Game designers, developers and people from all walks of life came together in many different places around the world, for 2 days, and built games based on Molydeux’s tweets. The result was (at last count) 302 very different offerings; all for free, and all availablehere.
As you can imagine, things can vary wildly from game to game, even when the inspirational tweet is the same. Some are unfinished and most will occupy you for less than ten minutes - but all are interesting. My personal favourites are Amour Parkour (two lovers run across an urban landscape until something special happens), Huggy Bear! (which details the emotional effect on a bear of being too strong to hug people) and The Shadowland Prophesy (an amazing cel-shaded RPG, with lasers!). Taken together the collection provides a cornucopia of innovation and creativity. Be prepared for things not working quite as you expect, but if you approach it with an open mind then it will reward you with something that is truly different.
I would like to think that MolyJam will live up to Molydeux’s claims and change at least some of the ideas in the industry. But even if it doesn’t, it has shown that some genuinely beautiful games can come out of thinking a bit differently, trying new things and generally taking the mick out of a gaming legend. Go and have a look!
The Republia Times
Have you ever wanted to work for an Orwellian propaganda agency? Have you ever fancied having your family held hostage by a dictatorship, with their safety dependent on your work performance? Probably not, but if you do fancy it then The Republia Times gives you such an opportunity. It puts you in the position of Editor of the aforementioned publication, just after a change of regime. Your job is to quell unrest, increase the readership and ensure that your kidnapped family remain healthy. You pick which stories to cover and how to place them on the page in order to produce the desired effects on the brainwashed populace - with targets and (literal) deadlines regularly set. Tension quickly builds and before long you’ll be manipulating public opinion with the best of them. The game is played in your browser, costs nothing and is well worth a look.
X-Com (or UFO: Enemy Unknown as it is known in Britain) was released in 1994. Created by legendary games designer Julian Gollop it is regularly voted as one of the greatest games ever made. It mixes real time and turn based combat, strategic and tactical gameplay, character progression, research, manufacturing and a whole lot more to create something quite unique. There have been many attempts to duplicate the game’s success over the past 20 years, but none have really managed it. The good news, however, is that that may be about to change as there are a couple of very promising projects on the way. Firaxis have their well-publicised, big budget “re-imagining” in the pipeline but Goldhawk Interactive have also been beavering away on Xenonauts for the past couple of years. Xenonauts promises to be the most faithful of the two to the spirit of the original, it still uses time units for example, and is clearly being made by people who are massive X-Com fans. Using such a revered game as the basis for your project is always going to be risky, but Goldhawk are making all the right noises and, from what we’ve seen of the game so far, they appear to be doing a great job. As is usual with these things you can support the game’s development by pre-ordering on their website. This gives you access to the current development build, and the finished game at a reduced price. More importantly it helps Goldhawk realise their vision for what is looking to be a very promising modern take on an all-time classic. Could this finally be the game to do the original justice? Let’s hope so.
