Before the recent explosion in turn-based strategies, people would have laughed at the idea of releasing a game in which people take turns at moving. Asynchronous movement was a dated idea, back from when computers couldn’t cope with large scale AI calculations, having no place in modern gaming.
Chris England’s spiritual successor to X-com, Xenonauts is nearing completion and has the funding from pre-orders to get released on Steam and Desura. However, in order to maximise the potential of the game Chris has launched a Kickstarter with a goal of raising $50,000 by June 10th. In his own words, Chris says “We’re hoping that the Kickstarter will raise enough money that we can pull together a small full-time team in London, and will give us the financial breathing space to be able to make something really special”.
When 2K’s Christoph Hartmann said that “strategy games are just not contemporary”, what he actually meant was “we can’t market and sell a strategy game on a console”. That was in defence of the abominable idea of turning X-Com into an FPS. Gentlemen, gentleladies, I am afraid that we may never see another strategy game in the X-Com series. One would think there were lessons to learn from Enforcer and Interceptor, but you would apparently be wrong.
I’m feeling a bit tired, I don’t know whether it is the expo, or that I have just come back from a few drinks down Leicester Square, but I am still looking forward to the last day of the Eurogamer Expo. Read on after the jump for a roundup of Days 2 and 3 of the expo.