#xcom game

[never-obsolete]

X-COM: UFO Defense (1994)

[psychotrenny]

Regardless of Gender or Martial Status, all XCOM operatives are referred to as "Miss". This is because it's they fucking love doing it

[retrocgads]

USA 1997

[8bitsupervillain]

I made this quite some time ago. I think it's high time I updated this. These are the games I considered some of the best of all time.

[facelesscharactersoftheday]

The faceless characters of today is Spectre from XCOM

[psychosynchrony]

So I finally sat down to play XCOM: Enemy Unknown after years of it staring at me from the dusty corner of my steam library. I knew very little about this game, but I understood that it was Turn-Based Tactics involving an alien invasion and considered difficult.

Starting the game, I noticed a checkbox for playing on Iron Man mode (that is to say, no save scumming allowed).

So obviously I turned that on. >.>;

[mwolf0epsilon]

o(TヘTo)

[ale10ander]

XCOM and the perils of adaptations

Many video games have been adapted into board games: Slay the Spire, XCOM, and This War of Mine are three of the most prominent. But there's a challenge to making a good adaptation.

The Faithful

This War of Mine is extremely faithful; it feels exactly like one playthrough of the game. While the video game is single-player, the board game plays up to six, a concession for the medium. Even with six players, the players take turns reading emotional prompts, and act as one. The best way to play the game is with as few people as possible, in an intimate setting.

The Vibes

Compare that to the XCOM board game. This isn't an attempt to port the video game to tabletop space (that's been done with games like Level 7: Omega Protocol, which is an N-Vs-1 combat game in the same vein as the board games DOOM (2016), Imperial Assault, or Descent). Invariably, these games end up with a lot of dice rolling and complex line-of-sight rules, things often labeled as hallmarks of the "Ameritrash" genre of board games.

No, the XCOM board game takes a different approach. Instead of adapting the gameplay, it emulates the FEEL of an XCOM game: not having enough resources, having a time crunch to make difficult decisions, and choosing whether its better to lose one country over another. In some respects, it's not a very faithful adaptation, as it's a completely different experience to the video game. In other respects, it succeeds at its goal, and gives an experience of the stress and genre of the modern XCOM games.

What about RPGs?

Tabletop roleplaying games (a la Dungeons and Dragons) are an a similarly weird bind to XCOM. Some people play them as romance simulators, while others play them as combat simulators. There are those who argue that the 4th edition of D&D is the best version, because it lays bare what the game is "really" about (beating up monsters and taking their stuff) and makes that core loop fun. Others argue that it's the worst edition, because it only has rules for combat and eschews the "roleplaying" part of roleplaying games.

So what would an XCOM adaptation look like? Just like with board games, there are multiple possible approaches you could take. You could flesh out the combat system and have a slow-moving, tense game of tactics, where the chance to roll is determined entirely by swingy dice, or you could let the combat take a back seat and focus on the resource management side of things.

My take, or The part of this post that's closest to being an ad

Two years ago, I released an RPG called Cyberrats. Mechanically, it was inspired most heavily by the modern XCOM games, as well as Shadowrun (an RPG famous for being incredibly "crunchy"). Here's how I chose to handle various aspects of the adaptation. In my mind, the six most important aspects of an XCOM adaptation are:

Combat

Basebuilding

Resource Management

Specializations

Lethality

and a campaign.

I want to be clear: my goal was not to adapt XCOM, but to create a tabletop experience that feels similar to XCOM, while being its own thing. Here's how I tackled these elements.

Combat

I wanted combat to be tactical, but quick and fun. Many RPGs with heavy combat systems end up spending hours in a single encounter. I didn't want that. I used a modified version of the LUMEN system, which means that players get a number (usually 1-3) of six-sided dice (d6), roll them, and keep the highest. A 5-6 is a full success, a 3-4 is a success with consequences, and a 1-2 is a failure with consequences.

Additionally, enemies are simple (having attacks and non-combat 'moves', like inflicting status effects or activating their allies) and drop loot when defeated. Range bands are abstract (close, near, far), and missions have objectives (hack this computer, defuse a bomb, capture the VIP, and so on).

Basebuilding

My favorite part of XCOM is investing in the base to unlock new powers and abilities. In the base game of Cyberrats, there are 17 total rooms that can be built. These rooms improve healing (the clinic), offer new psychic powers or weapons (Auguary, Detonatorium, Engineering Lab), improve player characters ("Operatives") (Gym, Training Grounds), or otherwise affect gameplay. Players can choose which builds are important to them, and build them as a team in whatever order they'd like.

Excavation

The base is a 4x4 grid of rooms. The first two rooms are clear, the next tow cost 1 to clear. The second row costs 2 each to clear, and so on. In addition to clearing a space, rooms cost money to build.

Campaign and Resource Management

As fun as the missions in XCOM are, it's not a game I would play indefinitely. I play to win, with a strong probability of losing. Similarly, I know a lot of RPGs are designed to be played indefinitely, as a forever campaign. With Cyberrats, I wanted a short campaign, one that can be beat in ~10 sessions.

And I did that by tying it into resource management. The premise of Cyberrats is simple: the world is being invaded by aliens. You are interns at a megacorp, and a rival megacorp has the situation under control. Unacceptable!.

You have to sabotage the rival megacorp, fend off the alien invasion, and make sure your boss gets all the credit.

Mechanically, it looks like this: there are two "Victory Meters". One for the Interlopers (the aliens), one for Valdivian, your rival Megacorp. If either of those Victory meters reaches 10, you lose. In the first case, the aliens win. In the second case, someone else fended them off.

Players are presented with 3 missions. They choose one to fail, one to settle with dice rolls, and one to play out. Failing a mission targeting a specific faction increases that faction's victory meter. Succeeding against a faction lowers it.

There's also a third faction, the military. They don't have a victory meter, but do have some of the best loot in the game, making them a lucrative target.

In order to win the campaign, players must win a mission against each faction 3 times, and then go on a special story mission to fight the big boss form each faction. The final story mission is blowing up the mothership and saving the day.

Specializations

In XCOM, you start as raw recruits. After your first mission, you are assigned a specialization based on actions you took. After that, as you gain experience, you choose between two powerful abilities corresponding to your specialization.

In Cyberrats, you start as interns. You have very little health, and only one power. After your first mission, if you live, you choose a Career. As you gain experience, you choose between 3 abilities for specializations of that career. The careers are Vector (hacker), Trenchy (weapons specialist), Mindjob (psychic), and Ratter (mutated freak).

Lethality

In Cyberrats, you create two Operatives to send on missions. Partially, this is so you can send one on the backup mission (resolved with dice rolls based on the prowess of the assigned Operatives), and partially this is because there's a good chance your Operatives will get Injured.

Hit points are small (even the brawniest Career only starts with 9), and nothing is guaranteed. But, it's very hard to die in Cyberrats: it just becomes increasingly expensive to recover.

Conclusion

There's no wrong way to adapt a game to a new medium. I once read an article about 6 different ways to adapt a book into a movie, and these thoughts have been stewing in my mind ever since. I made some choices in bringing an XCOM-like experience to table, but I can easily imagine several other, equally valid approaches. It's all about what you want to emulate, baby.

[moon-pepper]

Nintendo explicitly saying multiple times "we aren't going to talk about the Switch successor yet" is great for me because I'm almost definitely tapping out once they move on from the Switch

[swedebeast]

X-COM turns 30 years old

It was released in 1994. Look at all those pixels. The current generation might find it cute, but the older generations are just happy there's no Chrysalis in this image.

Because then the cold sweats would start pouring.

[das-boog]

Heya folks! If you been enjoying the latest Cyberrats art, the new kickstarter is live!

Cyberrats is a rules light, tactics heavy LUMEN system game inspired by xcom, teenage mutant ninja turtles and shadowrun. Players are mutant rats and interns for one of three evil, world-spanning megacorporations when aliens invade the earth. Not so bad, on paper. A good disaster now and then is good for your bosses bottom line. The issue is that a rival megacorp, Valdivian, has the issue well in hand and refuses to share the alien-fighting market. An unacceptable scenario. Your job is to sabotage the "real" heroes, secure the contract, save the world, and clock out of your shift.

Cyberrats: Rise of the Briny Bastards expands on ideas introduced in the first game, expanding both tactical options AND downtime actions to flesh out who your mutagenic operative is, what their relationship is to their team and what they're really fighting for when their checks are cashed and the dust settles. We've also introduced a bunch of new mutators and classes, a toyetic submarine, and a new enemy faction in the form of an ocean that hates your player characters personally.

Cyberrats gameplay is designed to contrast risky, dangerous missions with the personal stakes of the characters. You'll watch your helpless intern slowly build out a 90s-action-figure's worth of extra weaponry, powers and relationships with other players and npcs that can synergize for more and more impressive combat strategies. The numbers are stacked in the enemies favor, and you're encouraged to find unique ways to break the game balance to survive!

If you're like me, and like the crunch of a game to add weight to its emotional stakes but ALSO don't want to have to memorize 4 different chapters on how to grapple someone, I highly recommend it! You can find the kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2018387307/cyberrats-rise-of-the-briny-bastards

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector

What an amazing experience this game is.

I've had it wishlisted probably since it showed up but there it fell under my radar since its release. It may or may not have caught some sales in that time but again it went unnoticed and what an absolute crime that is. Released in 2021, it recently just came out with the T'au army which put the rest of the game and its various army packs on sale to an agreeable level, and putting it back on my radar.

Many Warhammer games usually nail the aesthetic, themes, diction, and storylines but very few capture the actual feel of playing on tabletop. There was Dawn of War which depicted swaths of armies cutting across the landscape but it was all in real time, the only methodology there was making sure your travelling teams had all the right counters to vehicles and infantry and after that you basically just let it go.

What we have here is a unique XCOM-like that may very well be the closest many of us will get to playing the actual tabletop game. We have a campaign (just one; following a Blood Raven chapter of the space marines) and two extra modes. Demonic Invasion is a wave based king of the hill type thing where you hold off for as long as you can as every round will continually spit the chaos god's minions at you. There's Planetary Supremacy, which is a sort of Catan/Risk style hex board that players of Dark Crusade or Soulstorm may be familiar with. It's the mode most of my hours have been played on. My only wish is that it could go for just a bit longer, maybe a bigger map, more enemies fighting each other, better node control.

In extension, there's also custom campaigns players can build as well as skirmishes for you to play against AI or other players. As of this writing there is no Co-op and that's quite a shame.

So there's a lot to do here. Some of the more mixed reviews, especially targetting the new armies, are complaining that there's not a super special story campaign for each and every single one of them. That is frankly not so much a problem for me, as I immediately gravitated towards the hex board game mode and just enjoyed having my hands on the Necron for the first time in many years. Now in HD with reflections! My dead bois are beautiful!

There's plenty to learn as well. Even on the easiest difficulties, the AI can route you. My Necron have units called Warriors, basically the equivalent to shotgunners. They also have the slowest movement of my army so it's difficult to get them into position and keep my general army momentum going. Sometimes they fall behind and I lack the much needed damage against enemy swarm units, and I've lost some good troops because I didn't have enough people shooting back. It's how I nearly lost against the Tyranids one game despite outnumbering them by 500 army points. Tactics very much matter here.

There's also a photo mode which is a bit fickle. The camera is locked at certain height over the floor tile so it's difficult to get sweeping, heroic visions of your armies from foot-level. You're more or less stuck staring at them from head-on. It's fun to play around with, though.

So while there is a campaign (just the one), this game could be treated more like a sandbox than anything else. I'm told from the game's discord they plan on releasing free units over the coming months. This is good, because that's one of my chief complaints about the game. There's a significant lack of versatile units to play with. Each faction gets around a dozen to fifteen to allocate with your army point cap (another staple of Tabletop that most games don't quite capture), with Khorne getting the shortest end of the stick (and the cheapest DLC) whom only have eight units to choose from. There's a significant lack of Kroot and vehicles here, and foot troops seem to be a choice between three different things. There's a lot more than that on tabletop.

Not that I expect this to be the tabletop simulator but it cuts real damn close. Closer than most games in this franchise. A must have if you like turn-based XCOM-likes.

[afrouniverse]

Ever had a crush on a fictional character that your friends would face palm if they knew about it. That's where I'm at right now

[retrocgads]

USA 1997

[grayrazor]

I think the perfect Star Wars strategy game for me would be less like a 4X as Rebellion and Empire at War were, and rather have elements from MGS: Peace Walker or XCOM 2. You run Yavin Base or Echo Base, send squads like Phoenix Squadron or Kyle Katarn out to steal Imperial weapons and ships, then liberate planets. The Rebel Alliance isn't a polity that governs planets and dispatches armies, they're a mobile guerilla force using hit and run tactics.

[tepuitrouble]

I've been going through Godot engine 3d tutorials, ft 1994 xcom models I made to make things less boring