Xenonauts: Strategic Planetary Defence Simulator

Perhaps, dear readers, like myself, you were worried when you heard the news that X-Com would be returning, but as an FPS. After all, how would an FPS capture that feeling of controlling an entire squad, naming them, coming up with their stories, and growing with them? Aliens? Plot? Did X-Com have one?

I kid; of course it did. But the game time focused so much on those battles or research and development, that it never really captured my attention in any large regard (perhaps a product of the fact that I was ten years old when I first played it).

For those who might want something a bit more... strategic, Goldhawk Interactive may have something for you. Indie, for the PC, and calling itself a 'strategic planetary defence simulator,' Xenonauts seeks to claim that niche of people who had hoped for something a little less first-person.

Taking place instead during the Cold War, the game imagines an organization who is put together to battle aliens. Except for the bit about the Cold War, it sounds pretty familiar. As Goldhawk Interactive states:

The game is heavily inspired by the classic X-Com series of strategy games that arrived in the mid-90s courtesy of the now-defunct Microprose. It is a labour of love for many of the team, all of whom are big X-Com fans, but we have decided to try and reinvent the game rather than recreate it. The result is a game that is neither a sequel to X-Com nor a remake. We have taken our franchise in a different direction, retaining the core mechanics that made the original so compelling but updating the settings and features of the game to fit in with the modern age. Gone are the near-future stylings of Xenonauts' forerunners, replaced by a militaristic Cold War setting and a retro-inspired art style.

Slated for a Christmas 2010 release, only on PC, they are asking for your help in suggestions, comments, concerns, and the like in their forums. The project is completely self-funded, a state they wish to keep so as to keep creative control. And yes, they freely admit they made this announcement just now to gather all those who may be reeling from the latest news.