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Hello everyone! April is now over and it's time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 progress update. Milestone 4: We've now done the bulk of the work on Milestone 4 and we've started internal testing on the updated campaign. Assuming there's no major issues we'll probably be releasing an early version of the build to the public early next week to get feedback - but initially this will be on our Protoype branches, as the build is currently too rough even for the Experimental branches. After a couple of weeks of polish the build should migrate to the Experimental branches, and hopefully into full public release on the normal Steam / GOG / Epic branches by the end of the month. Aside from the headline features for the build (Androns and the Harvester UFO for the aliens, the Colossus Battlesuit for the humans) we've got a long list of changes that should continue to improve the usability, balance, performance and stability of the game! Sound Design: Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important. This month we've updated the strategy UI, creating nicer sounds for the standard click / hover / error actions and then adding new clips so give subtly different feedback for different actions a click can cause (like confirming an action, closing a window, opening a tooltip, etc). There's still a bit more work to be done on the UI sounds, but after that we'll be moving onto the tactical combat sounds and trying to give the different alien species a bit more character. As a side-effect of this process, we've also noticed various places the game didn't have sound but needed it. Some of these are already fixed in Milestone 4, e.g. now Medikits and the Automed Unit play a sound when healing a unit, and melee weapons play a sound if they miss the target. Levels & Environment Art: As Milestone 4 contains over thirty new maps, we've also brought on a fulltime freelance environment artist to help us improve the variety and quality of our tactical environments. We worked on an assortment of smaller tasks last month ranging from improving the ATLAS Base command room assets (wall screens and the command table) to fixing up some of the assets for the Alien Base maps, but once those were complete we began to focus on the Farm biome. Our plan is to add some new terrain objects and update some of the ground textures for the Farm to try and make the maps feel a bit more like a real agricultural environment, and then we'll be moving onto the Tropical biome to do the same thing (as there's not really enough tiles to do the inhabited areas of the Tropical maps properly right now). Once that's done, we'll be able to move onto our final biome - the Soviet Town terror maps! Alien Crews: This month we updated the crews for all the various UFOs / alien ground missions to ensure there was a steady escalation of new enemies throughout the campaign. The addition of Androns means we now have enough units to group the alien races together, so each species now has a dedicated secondary support unit and a terror unit. As part of this task we've added "heavy" variants of the Mentarch, Servitor and Cyberdrone that are tougher and have more powerful weapons, which start appearing towards the end of the campaign. We'll be adding new artwork and 3D models for these units in the next month or two. General Improvements: We've also made an assortment of improvements to other parts of the game. The air combat now supports weapons that are capable of shooting down missiles and we've added a new late-game escort UFO that provides an alternative to the alien Interceptor. We've added support for transferring scientists and engineers between bases. We've added a new soldier module that gives soldiers a 180-degree vision arc. We've made further improvements to the loading times, added many small usability features, and added various small new bits of content to the game. So overall it's been a busy month for us, with lots of good progress made. Thanks for reading and we'll hopefully have Milestone 4 in your hands soon!

Hi all - Long, long time player of the og XCOM games here (specifically UFO Defense and TFTD), going back into the 90s. Loved those games. Haven't played the newer XCOM games or Xenonauts 1, but I decided to go out on a lark and pick up Xenonauts 2, as it looks great. Turns out, it's a great game! Just made it to the endgame message and really enjoyed my time playing, and as a result, I figured I'd stop by and leave some feedback. Gameplay Overall really solid. Really harkens back to the old school games, with some really great quality of life upgrades such as being able to see at a glance how many TUs your guys will have left after a shot, or knowing the percent chance to hit after a movement before you even move. That system felt really natural and user friendly. Geoscape is really cool, though it did tend to skip a little bit when dragging the focal point between hemispheres. Tactical combat is excellent. Even tactical air combat felt really nice. Overall, I'd give it an 8/10. Sounds Really enjoyed the soundwork as well. Could always be better, but I didn't notice anything really lacking. 8/10 Music Music felt great. Atmospheric. 9/10. UI Especially for experienced gamers, the UI feels natural and all makes sense. 10/10. Technical performance I only encountered a single noticeable bug through my playthrough, and that was when one of my agents was stuck in an "Airborne state" while healing and I could never get access to him again. He was good too, so it was a bummer. Not super impactful though. There were some other stuff that's clearly not fleshed out yet due to the next milestone not having been hit yet - missing images, missing descriptions, etc. 7/10. Timeline and Progress This is the area that really messed me up. I decided to play on a normal start to dip my feet in, and I found the timeline to suffer from some of the same challenges as earlier versions. First, research progress combined with limited capital doesn't really allow for advanced interceptors by the time you start encountering better UFOs. Same thing with upgrading to Gemini fighters. By the time I hit about six months in game, I already had 3 bases up, but not nearly enough alienum to provide me with enough materials to build more than a small handful of advanced fighters, and certainly not enough to equip the fighters, my troopers, get base upgrades, etc. That felt pretty rough. By the time I hit the endscreen, most of my fighters were still Angels, and they simply had no chance of competing against the waves of 1 large cruise w/ 2 interceptors. Every UFO spotted was either that make up, or a bomber, or some other equally large UFO flanked by two interceptors. In short, I got to a point where I had to start making my own alienum just to be able to get enough to get adequate weapons on my fighters or to build more fighters. This was after I was already taking every possible crash site and mission, and scrimping what little alienum I managed to salvage. In addition, the endgame started seeing waves of UFO's similar to the above. I'd have 4 UFO groupings all hit at once all around the planet. They'd buzz around between my bases pinging my radar, but I wouldn't have the ability to down them. Then after a few days of this, they'd leave, and I'd have a window where zero UFOs would appear. Something felt very programmatic about this and it took away from the gameplay. Four waves of 3 UFOs each for a few days, then like 8 days without a single sighting. Over and over again. This pattern should be tweaked so that singular UFOs or other UFO groups still appear, even into the endgame. Regarding researching, it felt great overall, but I couldn't help but wonder if it could use some editing. Normal weapons felt good. Even advanced weapons felt good. Same with Laser weapons. But I couldn't afford the materials to be able to upgrade to Gauss. And by the time I did I already had researched Fusion, but couldn't afford that either. I believe a lot of that came down to base expenses and funding - by endgame I had 4 bases to ensure adequate world coverage, but the costs to maintain them would leave me with only an extra million per month. I'm no expert, but I felt like I was defending the earth and my rewards for doing so actually felt as though they got worse the longer I played. Something felt off about that. 5/10 Overall 8/10 Overall I really enjoyed the game, and can't wait for it to make it to v1.0. Some really compelling gameplay here that's a ton of fun. I do wish there would be a lot of tweaks made to timeline and progress, but outside of that I was having a blast. I realize that a lot of the more hardcore gamers here will probably tell me I need to git gud and I clearly didn't know what I was doing. Maybe they're right - maybe I'm just old and don't have the skills I used to. But I have beaten the old school XCOM games so I feel like I at least understand the basics of what's supposed to done. And I'd argue that this makes me closer to the "average" gamer when it comes to being able to review the game, rather than someone who's already a die hard fan of Xenonauts 2 and knows all of the minor tips and tricks. Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this. Again, I can't tell the team enough how much fun I had playing the game. I wish you all the best in your quest toward full release!

As @Chris told us in his latest monthly update: "Sound Design: Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important." So Goldhawk is going to revamp some (all?) existing sound effects and also add some new ones while they are at it. This is of course very exciting, so let's make a list of sounds we want added or improved. Remember that UI and alien units sounds are already on the list. Needs better sfx: Human injury and death sounds Weapon sounds Needs new sfx: UFO ambiance (low frequency humming around and inside UFO's) Alien base ambiance (low frequency humming or something eerie and alien) Panicing units' screaming and crying Alien machinery proximity sfx (like abduction tubes, teleports, terror bombs etc.) Psionic effect sounds (mesmerize, psionic triangluation etc.)