Turning ‘Xenonauts 2’ into a corporate battle royale

It’s 9:41PM, and Xenonauts 2 just killed my dog. Not the real one — he remains alive and judgy, watching as I hit Alt-F4 on Goldhawk Interactive‘s turn-based strategy sequel. The victim was a rookie soldier called Teemo (after his canine namesake), who was on his first mission to fight an alien invasion of Earth. His brief battle came to an end when another newbie tried throwing an explosive charge at an extraterrestrial, only for it to bounce off a table and turn Teemo into a watery red splash on the wall.

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As the stain formerly known as Teemo can testify to, Xenonauts 2 is bloody difficult. Directly inspired by the original X-COM games, players are charged with fighting a clandestine battle against alien invaders, taking on the menace in turn-based battles while using a real-time campaign screen to research technology, monitor the skies, and build up base facilities.

This premise is shared by Firaxis‘ fantastic XCOM reboot, but Xenonauts 2 taps more into the milsim-style immersion and tough-as-nails difficulty of the original ’90s series. Your soldiers are always a stray plasma round away from death, and their every shot is determined by a percentage-based roll that’s influenced by the likes of cover, a weapon’s effective range, and even the smoke that lingers after an explosion. Before launching a campaign, you can tweak numerous difficulty settings to make it as challenging as you like — but if you’re playing on Xenonauts 2‘s default settings, expect a tough fight.

Heading into a review build, the plan was to treat Xenonauts 2 like an action film, using these default difficulty settings and naming my first band of recruits after pals. It failed miserably: within several missions, dear friends and family members were eviscerated in one-sided firefights, friendly fire, and in one extra-pathetic case, smoke inhalation.
Besides being terrible at Xenonauts, my mistake was obvious. The stakes were too personal, meaning it became a game of keeping people alive rather than actually winning the war. Perhaps by going the opposite way and running Xenonauts 2 with a cutthroat business model, Earth would be in safer hands — and more importantly, more campaign progress would be made.

And so, while the gloop of Teemo was still warm, a new campaign began. Outside of Xenonauts 2‘s turn-based battles, the real-time campaign map is where much of the action happens: it’s here that you send out fighter jets to shoot down UFOs and choose where to send soldiers, all in the hopes of keeping each region’s panic levels at a minimum — the lower their panic levels, the more funding they’re willing to send your way. On the other end, reaching maximum panic means the region surrenders to aliens. Lose two, and it’s game over — but that wasn’t going to happen if the market had its say.

First off, Xenonauts would be a global franchise, and every region in the world would need a local branch. Secondly, this was a business: the goal was to rake in as much profit as possible, so keeping funding high and selling off alien salvage was imperative. Thirdly, the company had to be a brand you can trust, so the first batch of rookie soldiers were named after various fast food restaurants, creating a Succession-style battle royale where the last brand standing would inherit the privatised defence force.

After opening in Europe, business was booming. Within several in-game days it had shot down two UFOs, and our elite fast food fighting force has secured each wreckage for valuable salvage. Missions in Xenonauts 2 are terrifying: aliens can set up overwatch positions before you discover them, meaning that crossing an empty street can be a death sentence if there’s a baddie lurking in the fog of war. As a result, moving your squad is nail-biting; and rewards slow, methodical operations — but even that’s not always enough.

Just as the squad was getting used to wreckage recovery, Xenonauts 2 unleashed its first unique mission: civilians were being abducted from a remote arctic facility, and it was up to Earth’s fast-food avengers to save them. You only have a certain number of turns to rescue as many civilians as possible, which is a smart move from Goldhawk as it forces players’ hands into abandoning the caution that’s got them this far. Taco Bell is the first to fall, splattered by a burst of plasma-fire mere feet from the dropship he arrived in. Subway goes down several turns later when they’re flanked by a Sectoid and dies in a single shot.
Despite their deaths, the mission is ultimately a success — we save more than enough civilians to call it a win — but it proves to be the beginning of a bloody path for our business.

Days later, a routine wreckage clearance goes wrong when the last alien trapped in its ship, a floating brain with a plasma cannon for a mouth, shoots Greggs as they comes into view. Domino’s, the squad’s sniper, stands on Greggs’ corpse to land a glancing shot at the Mechtoid, but the next turn he’s shot in the head and crumples on top of his former co-worker.

Yet with every brand that falls, there are wins to be gleaned, as the technological gulf between aliens and humanity inches closer with every reverse-engineered scrap of alien tech. After pouring money into our research division, KFC, McDonald’s and Burger King are all issued snazzy laser rifles, while Five Guys trades in her LMG for its laser equivalent. The few survivors become leaders as their fallen comrades are replaced with fresh faces, and the funding rolls in as they successfully foil terrorist attacks, abductions, and heavily-defended alien outposts. Soon, the European branch is joined by headquarters in Asia and North America.

With scores of dead aliens and a flush bank account, things are looking good. Unfortunately, Xenonauts 2 does a fantastic job at keeping stakes high — for every new weapon or armour set you develop, there’s another alien supersoldier waiting to debut. When a Destroyer-class UFO is shot down over France, the mission to secure it turned into a desperate firefight when heavily-armoured reptiles and missile-toting mechs poured from the wreckage; killing Burger King in the initial charge.

Days later, a mission to abduct a VIP from the Cleaners — a shadowy faction of humans working for the aliens — gets bloody when Cleaner reinforcements arrive and kill Pizza Hut, who stayed behind to hold them off while his comrades dragged an unconscious VIP into a dropship. The only remaining survivors are KFC, Five Guys and McDonald’s, but the latter soon falls while storming an alien base; panicking after being shot and — ironically — running away from a nearby medic, leaving them to bleed out on the floor.

Finally, it happens: on a muddy farm in America, Five Guys is torn to pieces by a lightning-fast Reaper, insectoids who plant their larvae in unlucky victims. It’s not enough for Five Guys to die: the ex-Major’s body incubates another Reaper, which is birthed in a shower of blood. Fittingly, it’s KFC that puts it down, bringing the competition to a close with two reluctant blasts of laser.

After watching each of their comrades die violent deaths, KFC is crowned the winner. It’s a hollow victory: without enough veteran soldiers, the base’s rookies are helpless against Earth’s invaders, who are now deadlier than ever. More UFOs swarm the skies every day, and all three Xenonauts bases are stretched thin trying to put out fires across the world. Because more aliens are running unchecked, global panic rises sharply, while funding plummets. The writing’s on the wall — we’re folding. With scores of employees dead and profits tanking, it’s time to use the last move in the CEO rulebook: I quit before facing any real consequences, closing the campaign and leaving KFC to their empire of dust.

Like its predecessor, Xenonauts 2 thrives as an emergent storyteller, where cold percentage rolls birth emotional tales of heroism, heartbreak, and — somehow — corporate battle royales. Ultimately, these stories are all for the player to decide. Name your soldiers after businesses, after family members, or leave them with the names they were generated with. Do whatever you like — if you’re anything like me, they’re all going to die anwyay.

Xenonauts 2 will launch in Early Access on July 18, and will be available on PC. 

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