8.8 /10 1 Votes
85% PC Gamer Publisher(s) Goldhawk Interactive Composer(s) Aleksi Aubry-Carlson Series X-COM Developer(s) Goldhawk Interactive | 9/10 Steam 4.3/5 GOG Designer(s) Chris England Initial release date 17 June 2014 Mode Single-player video game | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Programmer(s) Sergey Kovrov, Gijs-Jan Roelofs, Laszlo Perneky, Giovanni Frigo Platforms Microsoft Windows, Linux, Macintosh operating systems Genres Strategy video game, Turn-based tactics Similar UFO: Enemy Unknown, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, OpenXcom, XCOM: Enemy Within, X‑COM: Terror from the Deep | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Xenonauts trailer
Xenonauts is a strategy turn-based tactics science fiction video game developed and published as a maiden title of London-based independent game studio Goldhawk Interactive. Inspired by 1994's UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense in North America), the gameplay involves the player taking the role of the commander of a clandestine organization known as the Xenonauts in an attempt to defeat an alien invasion of Earth in the alternate history year 1979. The game was released on June 17, 2014 for Microsoft Windows. Ports to Mac OS X and Linux were initially based on the Wine compatibility layer, until native ports became available in September 2015.
Contents
- Xenonauts trailer
- Xenonauts 2 demo alien defense squad based strategy game
- Gameplay
- Development
- Reception
- Community Edition
- References
Xenonauts 2 demo alien defense squad based strategy game
Gameplay
The game retains the fundamental mechanics of the early X-COM games, in this case considered to be a real-time global air control and strategic management and research component of the game, coupled with turn-based ground combat where the player controls a squad of soldiers and vehicles against the alien forces on a tactical scale. Soldiers develop their attributes through combat experience, and terrain in the ground combat maps is destructible.
Features advertised by Goldhawk as "enhancements" to the original X-COM model include the following (although many have appeared in other spiritual successors):
Development
The development of Xenonauts began in 2009. The game is heavily influenced by the X-COM series but is described by the development team as neither a remake nor a clone, but rather "a re-imagining". It is marketed as a Cold War-era based "planetary defense simulator" answer to 2K Marin's The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, which at the time had alienated many fans due to its FPS-based gameplay.
In November 2010, the project launched a revamped website and announced that they were accepting pre-orders, the benefits of which included early beta access and a discounted price over planned release pricing. A provisional release date was set as Autumn 2012. A public game demo was released on May 8, 2012. Its Kickstarter fundraising project managed to raise $154,715 from 4,668 backers.
Xenonauts for Windows reached beta and launched on Steam Early Access in June 2013. A tentative release date of the end of 2013 was announced in September 2013, although the developer conceded that the title might be delayed until early 2014 if additional polish was required. It was released on June 17, 2014.
In 2015, Goldhawk Interactive hinted that they were designing and prototyping a sequel. In February 2016, Xenonauts 2 was officially announced. The game is being developed in the Unity game engine, making use of 3D graphics. The developers announced plans to release the game in an early access phase.
Reception
Xenonauts was well received by critics, receiving a score of 85% from PC Gamer, and a 77% on Metacritic, based on 21 reviews.
Community Edition
Shortly after the release of the stable version Goldhawk Interactive allowed selected members of the community to access the source code. This resulted in the community edition of the game (Xenonauts:Community Edition, X:CE), which continues development of an independent branch of the game, adding new features and bugfixes. The 1.5 version of Xenonauts incorporated a large number of these changes. As of October 2016, X:CE still keeps releasing new versions, even though the official game is in maintenance mode.