This page contains the most frequently asked questions regarding Xenonauts. If you have a question that is not answered on this list, then the best place to ask it is on our community forums. You’ll get a faster response than if you email us direct, and it means everyone can benefit from hearing the answer to your question!
GENERAL:
1) IS XENONAUTS JUST A SINGLE PLAYER GAME, OR ARE THERE MULTIPLAYER ELEMENTS?
Xenonauts is a single-player only game, and will not include any multiplayer elements. As we are an indie team, we have limited resources and we decided to focus on making the single-player game as good as possible rather than potentially spreading ourselves too thinly by adding multiplayer.
2) IF WE PRE-ORDER THE GAME, HOW DO WE RECIEVE THE FINAL GAME?
If you pre-order Xenonauts, you will recieve a Desura key that allows you to play the latest public release of the game. Once the game is complete, you will recieve either a Desura key or a Steam key depending on your preference.
3) WILL YOU PORT THIS GAME TO MAC OR LINUX?
Yes, Xenonauts will be available on both Mac and Linux on release. Our Kickstarter led to enough interest in the project from both Linux / Mac porters and gamers that we decided a port would be worthwhile. The Mac port should work natively, but the Linux port will function through an in-built wrapper due to our engine (Playground SDK 5.0) not supporting Linux and us not having access to the engine source code.
4) CAN I MAKE AND MONETISE VIDEOS OF XENONAUTS ON YOUTUBE?
Yes. We think Xenonauts is sufficiently developed that you can make videos of it on Youtube if you want – provided you mention it is an unfinished beta! We’re also fine with you monetising the videos if you’ve bought the alpha.
GAMEPLAY:
1) WHY HAVE YOU REMOVED BLASTER BOMBS AND PSYCHIC POWERS?
We felt that both the Blaster Bombs and psychic powers unbalanced X-Com and made it too easy. As such, we have not included them in Xenonauts. For psychic powers in particular, we thought this should remain the domain of the aliens throughout the game, to give them an edge over the humans that no amount of reverse-engineering their technology could take away. As such, there will be more options for defending against psychic powers than there was in the original game.
2) WHY ARE THERE NO FEMALE SOLDIERS IN THE GAME?
Good news – there now ARE female soldiers in the game!
3) CAN I PLAY AS THE ALIENS?
No. This is an asymmetric game and it’s not been designed to be balanced from either side. Plus it would get rid of a lot of the mystery of the aliens if you were controlling them yourself. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.
4) HOW MODDABLE IS XENONAUTS?
Very moddable, at a basic level. Less so at a high level. Xenonauts has been designed so that pretty much every stat of every unit, item and research project in the game (as well as most global settings) can be changed usng only a text editor. You can also reskin any window in the game using a text editor. This means it’s ideal for any armchair game designers out there, as you can change and rebalance the game to your heart’s content. There are also powerful map generation tools available to the community, so creating your own maps is easy. However, deep changes to the gameplay aren’t really possible. You won’t be able to turn Xenonauts into a totally different game as you could with, say, the Source engine.
TEAM:
1) WHO ARE THE TEAM BEHIND XENONAUTS?
Goldhawk Interactive are an independent development studio based in London, United Kingdom. The team work remotely from all over the world; we’ve not actually met each other in person. Most people involved work part-time around another job, which is the only way we can create such a high-quality game on such a small income.
2) CAN I JOIN THE TEAM?
You may be able to if you see us posting up a specific vacancy that you have the skills to fill, but we generally don’t accept unsolicited job applications. Sorry. If you want to help out, the best thing you can do is to pre-order the game and become an active member of our community forums (we bounce most of our ideas off our community before implementing them).
