
"You also always need an overview of the battlefield working, so there's a lot of inspiration there from the way they approached building things and presentation, the way some of the interface works, the fact you can see quite clearly where a character can move within a turn and things like that. The camera views and camera shots have these sort-of behind-the-shoulder views, so you need to make sure that graphically you can support that level of detail while still retaining this overall top-down view clarity that you get as a typical strategy game." Obviously, it has a fully 3D interactive environment with detailed models. We looked at some of the UI and presentation things they did and tried to match it, at least in terms of the way it works or in terms of the visual fidelity. "In terms of being inspired by Firaxis and what they're doing with XCOM. It's great to have got the porting done, it will reach a wider audience there, and it's also great that it's on Game Pass, of course, because anybody subscribed will be able to get the best version of the game including all of its DLC. "Even given the fact that it's a pretty hardcore sort of strategy game, it still works on console. "I've always wanted the game to reach as wide an audience as possible," says Gollop. Granted the success of Chaos Reborn meant Snapshot was always likely to continue making turn-based strategy games, but it was the tangential success of the newly evolved X-COM series, now rebranded as simply XCOM, which guided Gollop and his studio's next move. It follows on from the developer's 2015 turn-based tactical role-playing game Chaos Reborn, and, by Gollop's own admission, wouldn't exist if not for Firaxis' slant on X-COM.

Phoenix Point, for the uninitiated, is the latest venture from Snapshot Games – the studio Gollop co-founded in 2013 – which launched in 2019 on PC, and has just arrived on PS4 and Xbox One with future launches (free upgrades if you opt for last-gen now) on PS5 and Xbox Series X planned. Look out for some news on that in the near future." Julian Gollop, Snapshot Games

"I can't say too much about what's next, but we do have another DLC in the works, which we haven't announced yet but I can assure you, it is all designed and is in production.
