From The Ashes

Rebuild a broken world in Phoenix Point, a bold new sci-fi strategy game from the creator of the original X-COM.

- Andy Kelly

When the game starts in 2047, most of humanity has been killed, abducted, or transformed into alien monstrosities,” says lead designer Julian Gollop, who is perhaps best known for creating the original X-COM series. “But there are a few isolated groups that have managed to survive.”

“The Phoenix Project organization you’re the leader of is very diminished,” he says. “You’re being attacked on all sides by various different powers. But out of the ashes of the devastation of the virus, which comes to be known as the Pandora virus, there comes a number of charismatic leaders who claim their factions will be able to rebuild the world and make it better.”

Julian Gollop has been making strategy games for decades, from Laser Squad and Rebelstar Raiders in the ’80s, to the legendary X-COM series in the ’90s. That’s the old X-COM, with a dash after the X, rather than Firaxis’ recent (and equally superb) reboot, XCOM. But Phoenix Point seems to be bigger, grander, and more ambitious than anything he’s done before, and I ask what inspired him to start the project.

“I wanted to pursue what I call my vision of a grand strategy game, which involves tactical turn-based battles as well as a wider strategic conflict,” he says. “I love this multilevel, multiscale aspect to strategy games, which is heavily influenced by some of the board games I used to play when I was much younger. Before computer games existed, in fact.

“I also wanted to revisit some of the ideas I was developing in the original X-COM series. For example, in X-COM: Apocalypse there was this idea of a living city with multiple factions that you had individual relationships with. This was something I wanted to explore a lot more.”

DEAD RISING