- Launcher Update - 17 April 2023
Hello everyone - today's update is just a minor update that shouldn't affect gameplay in any way! As Xenonauts 2 will be launching into Early Access in the next couple of months, we've just replaced the old development update RSS feed in the Xenonauts launcher with an image that links through to the Steam page for the sequel (in case anyone that enjoyed the first game was not aware that the sequel exists).
- Xenonauts-2 Kickstarter: 72 hours left! - 17 July 2018
Another quick update to let everyone know that the Kickstarter for Xenonauts-2 has entered its final three days. You can see it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts-2-strategic-planetary-defence-simulator/ It's been very successful, so huge thanks to anyone that backed us - we asked for £50,000 and were fully funded in 8 hours, and we're now well over 300% funded! Some cool stretch goals have already been unlocked (like weapon attachments and locational injuries in combat) and we're hoping to hit the next one at 400% which involves us giving extra support to the Community Edition and modding teams that created such great extra content for everyone in the first Xenonauts (although the game will still be moddable even if we don't get there). https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F4470821%2F64d09be517a530f8f90569dc6550742de1f665da.png Anyw…
- Xenonauts 2 successfully crowdfunded in half a day (Updated) - 20 June 2018
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…
- Xenonauts-2 Kickstarter is live! - 20 June 2018
If you played and enjoyed the original Xenonauts, you may be interested to know that the Kickstarter for the sequel Xenonauts-2 has now gone live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts-2-strategic-planetary-defence-simulator/ Full details of the new game are available on the Kickstarter page, along with a free alpha demo of a tactical combat mission - we've still got plenty of work left to do, but hopefully you can see the improvement! Xenonauts-2 is not a chronological sequel to Xenonauts, but rather an updated portrayal of similar events. We've moved to a much more modern engine (Unity) and improved the quality of the visuals, and we're making all sorts of changes to the design to fix some of the gameplay issues that meant not everyone enjoyed Xenonauts as much as they could have! We're expecting Xenonauts-2 to move into closed beta in about three months, followed by…
- Get Xenonauts free in GOG's Summer Gaming Sale - 4 June 2018
GOG's Summer Gaming Sale —or #SummerGaming Sale as it's stylised on-site—is live now through June 18. To mark the occasion, the digital storefront is giving away sci-fi strategy game Xenonauts free-of-charge from today through Wednesday, June 6 at 6am PST / 2pm BST.   First, let's talk deals. I like D-Pad Studio's retro-styled platformer Owlboy , which, at 40 percent off, costs £10.69/$14.99. I'm also fond of Fallout: New Vegas , the best of the post-apocalyptic role-playing series, whose Ultimate Edition comes in at £7.49/$10.59, 50 percent less its recommended retail value.   Subset Games' FTL follow-up, Into the Breach is another great pickup for £8.49/$11.99—as is Larian's all-consuming CRPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 for £23.99/$33.89. If you're after something less bloodthirsty, I'd recom…
- XC mon: Xenonauts 2 releasing free dev builds - 24 February 2017
When X-COM cast off its hyphen and complexity to become XCOM, Xenonauts was handily here with old-school alien-busting . Now you can see how its sequel is shaping up, as developers Goldhawk Interactive are releasing development builds of Xenonauts 2 for free. You can play one single mission right now, then Goldhawk plan to expand this pre-alpha demo fortnightly. They’ll start charging money once the game’s in good enough shape but paying with feedback is peachy-dory for now. …
- Cloud Saves & Xenonauts: Community Edition - 29 October 2016
Two things to discuss in this announcement - cloud saves and the Community Edition of Xenonauts. We've now enabled cloud saves for Xenonauts. Steam should save your save games and you should now be able to access them if you want to play Xenonauts on a different machine. Hopefully that will make things more convenient for you guys! The second thing is the Community Edition of Xenonauts. A lot of people already know about this, but not everyone does - it's an optional free upgrade to Xenonauts that has been created by coders from the community who were given access to the source code of the game, fixing bugs and adding various new features to the game. Whilst Xenonauts is no longer under active development, Xenonauts: Community Edition is still being worked on and will likely continue to improve. You can access the Community Edition by right clicking on the game in your Steam library, an…
- Cloud Saves & Xenonauts: Community Edition - 29 October 2016
Two things to discuss in this announcement - cloud saves and the Community Edition of Xenonauts. We've now enabled cloud saves for Xenonauts. Steam should save your save games and you should now be able to access them if you want to play Xenonauts on a different machine. Hopefully that will make things more convenient for you guys! The second thing is the Community Edition of Xenonauts. A lot of people already know about this, but not everyone does - it's an optional free upgrade to Xenonauts that has been created by coders from the community who were given access to the source code of the game, fixing bugs and adding various new features to the game. Whilst Xenonauts is no longer under active development, Xenonauts: Community Edition is still being worked on and will likely continue to improve. You can access the Community Edition by right clicking on the game in your Steam library, an…
- Xenonauts V1.65 Stable Released! - 8 August 2016
This is a brief update, as we've pushed V1.65 from the Experimental branch to the Stable branch. I've post the patch notes from V1.65 Experimental below so you can see what has changed, but the main reason we've pushed this update to Stable is that there's a Windows 10 specific bug that is fixed by V1.65 which is affecting some of our users. We'll be monitoring V1.65 to see if it causes any additional problems (in which case we'll roll back to V1.64 and let people who want to keep it opt in to the Experimental branch), but we think all will be well. Please let us know if you see any new issues appearing though! Changes: Miss shots should no longer go through walls; the trajectory code has been updated so they should only hit tiles that a "hit" shot would be able to hit. Grenade scatter calculation updated, so "miss" throws can actually miss by a meaningful amount. This applies to both X…
- Xenonauts V1.65 Stable Released! - 8 August 2016
This is a brief update, as we've pushed V1.65 from the Experimental branch to the Stable branch. I've post the patch notes from V1.65 Experimental below so you can see what has changed, but the main reason we've pushed this update to Stable is that there's a Windows 10 specific bug that is fixed by V1.65 which is affecting some of our users. We'll be monitoring V1.65 to see if it causes any additional problems (in which case we'll roll back to V1.64 and let people who want to keep it opt in to the Experimental branch), but we think all will be well. Please let us know if you see any new issues appearing though! Changes: Miss shots should no longer go through walls; the trajectory code has been updated so they should only hit tiles that a "hit" shot would be able to hit. Grenade scatter calculation updated, so "miss" throws can actually miss by a meaningful amount. This applies to both X…
- Xenonauts 2 confirmed and expected in 2017! - 4 February 2016
We have now officially confirmed we are working on Xenonauts 2, and we're currently hoping for a 2017 release for the game! The full statement and some basic details on the sequel can be read here (with more to follow in the next couple of months): http://www.xenonauts2.com Thanks to everyone that has supported us by buying the first game - the experience we've gained making it and the feedback received from the community should allow us to create something even better second time around!
- Xenonauts 2 confirmed and expected in 2017! - 4 February 2016
We have now officially confirmed we are working on Xenonauts 2, and we're currently hoping for a 2017 release for the game! The full statement and some basic details on the sequel can be read here (with more to follow in the next couple of months): http://www.xenonauts2.com Thanks to everyone that has supported us by buying the first game - the experience we've gained making it and the feedback received from the community should allow us to create something even better second time around!
- Xenonauts 2 is officially confirmed - 3 February 2016
Released in the summer of 2014, Xenonauts is a turn-based tactics game that was heavily inspired by X-COM: UFO Defense . (That would be the 1994 predecessor to the 2012 update XCOM: Enemy Unknown .) But it grew into a deeper and more detailed game that proved a triumph of rebooted game design, as we said in our review : Difficult and unforgiving, but still a deeply engaging, indie version of an alien invasion that stands toe-to-toe with X-COM—the classic and the reboots. That's high praise indeed, and so it's not at all surprising that a sequel has now been confirmed. It's also not surprising because Project Lead Chris England said last year that developer Goldhawk Interactive was actively designing and prototyping Xenonauts 2, but at that point the studio hadn't actually committed to making it. Now it has, and while a full announcement, with a website, concept art, and other such…
- Xenonauts V1.65 Experimental Released! - 19 January 2016
We've released a new version of Xenonauts for Windows on the Experimental branch, V1.65. It contains some gameplay updates, but it will need some testing to see if it is stable before being rolled out to the default Stable branch for all Steam users, so if anyone can test it that would be appreciated. To access the Experimental branch, please follow the instructions here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/5958-Xenonauts-Experimental-Builds-Instructions We will also merge these fixes into the native Mac / Linux builds in the future if they prove to be stable. Most of these fixes are drawn from improvements to the game made by the Xenonauts: Community Edition team, so a public thank you to those who contributed to X:CE in general and to Solver specifically for putting this patch together for us. Changes: Miss shots should no longer go through walls; the trajectory c…
- Xenonauts V1.65 Experimental Released! - 19 January 2016
We've released a new version of Xenonauts for Windows on the Experimental branch, V1.65. It contains some gameplay updates, but it will need some testing to see if it is stable before being rolled out to the default Stable branch for all Steam users, so if anyone can test it that would be appreciated. To access the Experimental branch, please follow the instructions here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/5958-Xenonauts-Experimental-Builds-Instructions We will also merge these fixes into the native Mac / Linux builds in the future if they prove to be stable. Most of these fixes are drawn from improvements to the game made by the Xenonauts: Community Edition team, so a public thank you to those who contributed to X:CE in general and to Solver specifically for putting this patch together for us. Changes: Miss shots should no longer go through walls; the trajectory c…
- Further fixes to Mac / Linux builds! - 10 January 2016
We've had another patch for the Mac / Linux versions of Xenonauts available on the Experimental branch over the festive season, and it appears to fix some compatibility issues that some users have been experiencing without introducing any additional bugs. We have therefore now released it to the main default Steam branch. There's no changes to the gameplay mechanics so there are no changes to the Windows experience, it should just improve the experience on the native ports a little more. We here at Goldhawk hope everyone had a merry Christmas and we wish you all a happy new year!
- Further fixes to Mac / Linux builds! - 10 January 2016
We've had another patch for the Mac / Linux versions of Xenonauts available on the Experimental branch over the festive season, and it appears to fix some compatibility issues that some users have been experiencing without introducing any additional bugs. We have therefore now released it to the main default Steam branch. There's no changes to the gameplay mechanics so there are no changes to the Windows experience, it should just improve the experience on the native ports a little more. We here at Goldhawk hope everyone had a merry Christmas and we wish you all a happy new year!
- Mac / Linux Builds Updated - 6 October 2015
Just a quick note to say there's been a further patch to the Mac / Linux native builds that were released last week, bringing them up to V1.60. This should address some bugs that were only affecting the Mac / Linux builds, the most annoying being the crashes / freezes during the alien turn that were making the game unplayable for some. Initial reports seem to suggest that the majority of these issues are now fixed but the porter is continuing to work hard on the stability of the new ports. If you're a Windows user, your version of the game will remain at V1.59 as all the fixes have been made to the port rather than the actual game code. You're therefore not missing out on any gameplay updates as a result of being on V1.59. Please keep us posted about any issues you're having with the Mac / Linux builds on the forums and we'll do our best to resolve them for you!
- Mac / Linux Builds Updated - 6 October 2015
Just a quick note to say there's been a further patch to the Mac / Linux native builds that were released last week, bringing them up to V1.60. This should address some bugs that were only affecting the Mac / Linux builds, the most annoying being the crashes / freezes during the alien turn that were making the game unplayable for some. Initial reports seem to suggest that the majority of these issues are now fixed but the porter is continuing to work hard on the stability of the new ports. If you're a Windows user, your version of the game will remain at V1.59 as all the fixes have been made to the port rather than the actual game code. You're therefore not missing out on any gameplay updates as a result of being on V1.59. Please keep us posted about any issues you're having with the Mac / Linux builds on the forums and we'll do our best to resolve them for you!
- Xenonauts 2 is being prototyped right now - 30 September 2015
Over on the Goldhawk Forums , Xenonauts project lead Chris England is raising everybody's hopes for Xenonauts 2. His language is tentative but promising. "We're still evaluating the possibility," he says, "But I'd say the chances of us making Xenonauts 2 as our next game are better than even." Apparently community feedback has helped to convince the team to make a sequel, but it's still possible that they might go in a different direction. The codebase they've been working on in the time since releasing Xenonauts would work for any "squad-based tactics game" they want, so it's possible their next game will tell a new story in the same genre. However, it does look like they've been doing a lot of thinking about Xenonauts, for instance testing a 3D art style, redesigning the aliens from the first game, and considering whether they're able to create a new strategy layer. England says that…
