Turn based strategy fans are surely familiar with Firaxis’ 2012 sci-fi game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The game tells the story of an Earth under siege by an alien force of seemingly insurmountable strength. The elite of the nations militaries join together to fight the invasion and place the player in charge of the unit. As commander, you are tasked with expanding your base, recruiting and training troops, and leading actual combat missions.
The base game is deep and challenging on its own, certainly more than enough to stump even the best player at times. Of course, this meant that a group of fans got together to add new features and to make the game longer and even more challenging. XCOM: Long War takes the base game and and makes more than 700 alterations. The mod deepens the psionics and technology trees, adds a fatigue mechanism, adds character classes, increases the maximum size of your squad, adds new missions, and gives the aliens a research system of their own, allowing them to field more powerful soldiers over time.
Long War was met with acclaim by fans and was noted by a number of publications as a major upgrade to the base game. Given their success, it’s no surprise that the group behind Long War have founded their own game studio, aptly named Long War Studios.
The studio is working on an original IP, Terra Invicta, and appear to have plans to fund it via Kickstarter. In keeping with the sci-fi theme, Long War Studios describe the game.
“An alien force has arrived in the far reaches of Solar System and begun probing Earth’s defenses and building an invasion fleet. The player must assemble a council of scientists, politicians, military leaders and operatives who can unite Earth’s squabbling nations with the ultimate goal of taking the fight to the aliens in the high ground of outer space.”
The company’s website promises a grand strategy game so I imagine that it will focus on larger scale combat rather than the small squad battles seen in XCOM but I’m excited to see what the new, but experienced studio can do. While information is currently scarce, keep an eye on Kickstarter for Terra Invicta to make its appearance.