Phoenix Point is one of the X-COM tree's most interesting branches. Where Firaxis created a modern, flashy, accessible variation of the original X-COM, the series creator, Julian Gollop, took a different approach. Phoenix Point maintained the original's complexity, elevated the strategic side of things dramatically and gave us tactical battles built on a detailed physics simulation.
Unfortunately, it was rife with bugs at launch, and probably didn't get the fair shake it deserved thanks to its status as an Epic exclusive. It would take another year for it to come to Steam. Gollop remembers it as a "very difficult project".
"We reached a really great big audience with that one," he tells us. "It was a very difficult project to do. With crowdfunding, you make promises which you don't know if you're going to be able to deliver. And we obviously tried very hard. We had all these backer builds that came out once every two or three months. Progress towards the final game was getting slower, though, and the game is complex. The original release was not perfect, shall we say, although we did continue working on it for quite a while. And then a year later, the Steam release was much improved, and we had a much better tutorial."
Gollop calls it "ambitious and unusual", and that's certainly how it feels to play. "We were trying to do some things which were a little bit new. The idea of immersive strategy is also there, because you have the first-person aiming and shooting thing, which generally players really liked. That gave you an instant visual kind of feedback as to what you were facing, what you could see, what you might be able to hit. But it felt more personal as well. So that also has some very important elements of immersive strategy."
The manual aiming was definitely one of the most interesting additions, and easily could have been a weird novelty and nothing more. But I'm with our reviewer Jon Bolding on this one, who said, "It seems like a gimmick from the outside, but in play it really won me over. There's nothing quite like the feeling of shooting off an enemy's arm so they drop their shotgun."
Gollop's latest game is a far cry from the grim complexity of Phoenix Point. It's a lighthearted co-op strategy action romp with a Fortnite-like aesthetic called Chip 'N Clawz. It's Gollop's attempt at an accessible strategy game, designed for "people who have maybe not played any strategy at all".
But that doesn't mean Gollop is entirely done with Phoenix Point, and a sequel could be on the table. "Yes, I do," he says, when asked if he wants to return to Phoenix Point. "I cannot confirm either way whether that's going to be possible yet, but I certainly do"
With the XCOM field lying fallow at the moment, some more Phoenix Point would absolutely be welcome.
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