Leaderboard

Hello everyone and welcome to 2023! December was a good month for the project even though it was curtailed by the Christmas holidays, as we released V25 and then opened the game up to the first wave of open beta testers. We didn't add many new features as most of our time was spent gathering community feedback and fixing bugs identified by our new (and old) testers, so I'll instead talk more broadly about we're going to be working on in the next couple of months. Open Beta: The first thing to say is that the open beta has already been extremely helpful. We started by inviting a small group of new testers (50) and asked them to post up their initial impressions of the game, and report any bugs / issues they encountered so we could fix them. The response has been really good so far. Thankfully, the initial response to the game has been almost universally positive (i.e. nobody saying that they didn't enjoy the game, or that it felt too similar to Xenonauts 1 to be worth playing) but we've also recieved a lot of useful feedback about what people do and don't like about the game. Stability is generally pretty good but there's still been a LOT of bugs reported that we're currently working through - every bug fixed makes the game feel better to play! As we release future builds we'll be inviting new players to join the Open Beta so we can maintain a continual stream of "first impressions" posts, but we'll probably only be inviting 50-100 people for each new build. However, if you're not lucky enough to get an invite, you'll still be able to give the game a test via our public demo! Public Demo: Xenonauts 2 is going to be participating in the upcoming Steam Next Fest that runs from 6-13th February 2023, and we're going to be putting out a demo that will allow you to play the first couple of months of a campaign (usually about five or six tactical missions). This should allow people to get a taste of the full game, and hopefully get everyone excited for our upcoming Early Access release! Upcoming Work: As such, the dev team will mostly be spending their time on improving this demo this month. Our primary goal is to get the tutorial implemented, as if experienced players feel it would be helpful then I imagine new players will be entirely lost without it! This is a quick 5-minute sequence that covers the plot events immediately prior to the start of the game, and introduces the player to the key controls for the Geoscape and tactical combat. We're also going to be improving the difficulty settings so that people can better adjust the challenge to their level of expertise, balancing the game, and working on fixing as many of the reported bugs / usability issues as possible. The project is entering an exciting period now and I wanted to say thanks to everyone continuing to read and contribute. Hope everyone had a good holiday!

I agree in large part with what you've said here. Definitely feel like Operation End Game arrives far too soon. I also liked the early scripted story missions, but feel like atm the Cleaners are more of an afterthought than a credible threat to your existence. Sure, the Cleaner Base has been beefed up to the point of likely taking some of your early soldiers out with it before you close them down for good, but other than whittling away at your funding governments' nerves with the increased monthly panic threats, they don't really do much other than sit there. Feel like they really need to be fleshed out in greater detail ... right now it's far too easy to track down the main base and put an end to them. I'd suggest actually having the Cleaners conduct some terror missions of their own in different locations across the globe, to give the monthly panic threats some actual merit. I'd also suggest adding some false trails/missteps along the way, that could end up in ambush situations, but would then provide clues to help triangulate the actual base if you survived those trials. A potential cleaner assault on your initial base when you are on the verge to discovering their location could also be .... fun? I also agree on the objective/research/interrogations/UFO wreckage exploration bit. I actually love the tactical combat missions, it's my favorite part of the whole game, and I'd love to see some more game mystery unveiled by doing more of those ops. Agree on the long stretches, at least on Veteran and higher difficulty, anyways. Maybe after the first few months, the aliens get smarter about direct contact with the countries you've got bases in and instead vigorously go after countries you have little or no presence in, while keeping you occupied in your base areas ... for instance, barraging you with light alien fighters and interceptors in your base countries, blowing up airliners, strafing airfields and oil rigs, etc and also threatening your troop transports when you send them out to tactical missions (something that rarely happens now) thus tying up the few fighters you've likely managed to afford to make defending home turf/protecting your troops while sending out more deadly, demoralizing bombing runs on countries further away from your bases, giving you a real chance to lose some of them over time. Alternatively or in addition, regarding the long stretches of nothing, this could be broken up by local forces requesting Xenonaut assistance in places that you do occupy, putting out less disastrous alien incidents to garner some small bit of panic reduction or perhaps something more useful (like minor monetary rewards). These could either be frequent enough to not all be doable, or sporadic enough to just add a little hint of extra danger/flavor to the game. I still haven't gotten to the endgame w/o a new experimental build coming out to distract me, so I can't comment on that bit, lol ...