Goldhawk Interactive has announced that Xenonauts 2 is currently under development, and is slated for a 2017 release on the PC. Although the team did not reveal any screenshots for tactical title, it did reveal some information about it.
Xenonauts 2 will be powered by the Unity3D engine and instead of 2D sprites, it will pack 3D graphics.
The game will retaine the Time Unit combat system, will enhance the interface and will give the player additional tactical options.
Here are some of the game’s new key features:
- Game Engine – using Unity3D will give us a much more capable platform for development than our previous engine, so expect fewer bugs, improved performance, better modding support, etc
- 3D Graphics – moving from 2D sprites to 3D graphics will improve visual fidelity, but will also be valuable for gameplay – it allows for things like rotating cameras, vastly improved animation, physics objects, accurate projectile tracking, etc
- Ground Combat – we will be retaining the Time Unit combat system, and will enhance the interface and giving the player additional tactical options: destructible UFOs, better use of terrain verticality, human psionics, etc
- Geoscape – we want to add a lot more strategic choice for the player with regards to the research tree and how they choose to expand their organisation (there was definitely too much strategic railroading in the first Xenonauts)
- Air Combat – redesigned to be turn-based and to feature larger numbers of combatants, with the goal of making it a less frequent occurrence but more tactically involved when it does happen
- Aliens – we are visually and mechanically redesigning all of the enemies, and creating a more intelligent and challenging foe by developing gameplay systems that allow the aliens to respond and adapt to your tactics and technology
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Haha, they saw how XCOM 2 has succeeded and went doing their own similar game.
Do you realize this is Xenonauts 2, as in, the SECOND game in the series?
Yes, I’m not blind. I just said it jokingly, because their sudden announcement after the success of XCOM 2 seemed a bit funny for me. I imagined it looking like: “-Hey, bro, do you see those high scores of our spiritual precedessor’s sequel on Metacritic? Come on, let’s make our new game as well. -Okay, we’re going full speed ahead with this sh.. starting from tomorrow.”.
Didn’t realize it was a joke.
Anyway, the announcement states that Xenonauts 2 entered full production at the start of 2016. Add more time for pre-production so they actually started in 2015. Xenonauts 1 was released mid-2014 and they’ve been supporting it to this day (last patch Jan 19), so yeah I think the timing is normal, at least for a small indie dev.