Update: Xenonauts 2's Kickstarter campaign has been successfully funded, several hours after going live. As outlined in our original story below, the project sought £50,000. At the time of writing, its total has reached £67,698—with 29 days left to go.
An update posted by studio head Chris England thanks backers and explains developer Goldhawk Interactive will now turn its head towards stretch goal voting.
"I had genuine concerns this morning about how well this campaign was going to go," says England. "The games market has become far more crowded since we started developing the first Xenonauts, and Kickstarter is hardly the fresh new way of funding games that it was when we last ran a campaign back in 2012.
"We wondered whether people would still be interested in Xenonauts-2, especially now it's four whole years since the original game came out."
If you fancy backing Xenonauts 2, its Kickstarter is this way. Be sure to check out the alpha demo featured there too. Our original story follows.
Fully funded on Kickstarter after 8.5 hours! I thought our last Kickstarter was a wild ride but this is something else - massive thanks to everyone that pledged! We're all incredibly grateful for your generosity.June 20, 2018
Original story:
Officially confirmed in early 2016, sci-fi strategy game Xenonauts 2 is now live on Kickstarter. Like its forerunner, it's after £50,000, and, at the time of writing, has already amassed almost two fifths of its goal.
The first Xenonauts was well received four years ago—it was Phil's personal pick of 2014—and the likes of Endless Space 2, Julian Gollop's upcoming Phoenix Point, and XCOM 2 have further galvanised the appeal of sci-fi-spun turn-based strategy games.
Here's number two's Kickstarter campaign video:
Xenonauts 2 is a sequel, so I suggest reading the campaign blurb and/or this post to learn what's new at your discretion. A combat demo is also available to download from the KS page.
As for the campaign itself, more on rewards and custom soldiers can be found in its FAQ section, which also contains interesting info on Xenonauts 2's closed beta and the dev's plans to overhaul its UI.
"The problem is that UI art is very time-consuming and expensive, and you end up throwing a lot of work away if you change the mechanics after you've styled up a UI screen," explains the Kickstarter FAQ. "Because so much of our game is UI (think how many screens there are on the strategy layer), we decided that it would be more efficient to re-use some of the art from the original Xenonauts while we were experimenting with the gameplay and we would do the final UI styling towards the end of development."
If you fancy any of that, you can thrown money at Xenonauts 2 over here. It's linked above, but Phil's words on what makes the original work are worth linking to again.
