X-COM's creator believes the strategy genre's in dire need of innovation, and his new game is his attempt
“We still haven’t quite managed to form a bridgehead yet,” says Jullian Gollop, creator of the original X-COM (before Firaxis went and remade it as XCOM (no hyphen) in 2012). He and I are beating back waves of brain-in-a-jar aliens in co-op in his new game, Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids, and this is the second time he’s mentioned the bridgehead, causing me to detect just the tiniest bit of tension in his voice.
Chip n’ Clawz vs. The BrainioidsDeveloper: Snapshot GamesPublisher: Arc GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out TBC on PC (Steam)
“One of our buildings is under fire!” adds the disembodied voice of Clawz, not helping. In this moment I choose not to mention that despite my promises of genuine strategy gaming chops, I can’t remember, , what a bridgehead is (we are also literally attacking across a bridge, which confuses things a little bit). I throw down some turrets and nervously carry on with the whacking. A few moments of more zapping and combat barking later – during which I can’t quite shake the sense that I am playing with strategy and tactics game royalty, an eminently intelligent man, and in the process being an absolute bonehead – my little personal crisis is averted. “We’ve got a good bridgehead now,” Gollop says, almost to himself, in full tactical flow. Phew!
Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids is a curious real-time action-strategy mix, not too unlike Pikmin or Orcs Must Die!, where you’re on the ground adventuring and fighting, but also constructing buildings and defences, gathering resources and issuing commands. Gollop cites them as references, in fact. “Some of the levels we’ve got in here are a bit more Pikmin-ish, in the sense that you have to kind of use your minions to solve various puzzles and do stuff – although they’re not as smart as Pikmin, I must admit.”
Bundled in a very turn-of-the-century 3D platformer wrapper, Chip ‘n Clawz’s levels – at least the handful of early ones I played – typically involve running around a map picking up little collectibles and constructing resource-gathering buildings, which spawn little miner troops that pick away at stockpiles of Brainium. This is then spent on more buildings, which generate melee or ranged soldiers – each one unlocked, during each level, by you finding and hacking a little podium somewhere on the map – which you use to slowly push forward through increasing defensive waves of enemies. There’s a nice, light rock-paper-scissors triangle of counters and counter-counters, in classic RTS fashion: turrets are good at shooting down flying units, artillery units are good against turrets, flying units are good against artillery. There’s also a snappy, controller-friendly tactical overlay you can bring up to direct them in smartly pre-organised command groups.
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It’s an unusual pivot from Gollop’s usual bread-and-butter – turn-based tactics games such as Phoenix Point, which adhere much more closely to the now modern XCOM formula (a series he joked he’d be more than happy to return to, for that matter, were Firaxis to give him the call). There are a couple of reasons for it, he tells me. One is to make a game he can play with his kids – the co-op element in particular being crucial – and he cites Nintendo’s Pikmin and even Kirby and the Forgotten Lands as games that served as inspiration in their own ways, even if what their co-op amounts to is “a bit boring”. And the co-op here is handled well: it’s easy to drop into a game with a pal via simply sharing a code, and there are smart little touches like a one-touch share resources function that lets you give Brainium to your partner for them to quickly build or repair.
