Xenonauts Early Access Available for Purchase on Steam

In case you have been eagerly awaiting a more faithful successor to X-COM: UFO Defense than XCOM: Enemy Unknown and have missed the Kickstarter drive for Xenonauts, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now purchase early access for the title on Steam for $19.99/€16.99. Note that purchasing early access also means purchasing the full game, so you won’t have to grab it again at release.

Here’s an overview of the game from its Steam page:

Xenonauts is a strategy game in which you control a multi-national military organisation defending a Cold War-era Earth from alien invasion, using small squads of persistent soldiers to eliminate the extraterrestrials and recover their technology in turn-based ground combat. A detailed strategic layer allows you to co-ordinate the defence of the planet, using your interceptors to shoot down UFOs and researching captured artefacts to learn about your foes and unlock new combat equipment to use on your missions.

Xenonauts is a spiritual successor to the classic X-Com strategy games from the 1990s. We aim to improve the graphics, add new content and streamline the interface whilst still retaining all of the key mechanics of the original games. Devoted fans should love this game, but we’re also keen to introduce the joys of old-school grand strategy to a whole new generation of players who might not otherwise experience it!

The game wears its influences on its sleeve and is in fact proud of them, and while it’s obviously not a 1:1 replica, pretty much all of the major mechanics from Microprose’s title are present in a very similar form in Xenonauts, from the tactical combat to the strategy layer.