The masochist inside me loves high stakes in games, permadeath being one of my favorites. Whether it be Fire Emblem, Project Zomboid, State of Decay, or RimWorld, losing a character that you’ve invested time and effort into is awesome.
You’ll recount the successful battles or relationships that the character made. Realizing now that the squad’s cook must replace the recently deceased medic and everything going forward is going to be a bloody mess. The replacement is likely going to be cannon fodder unless luck is on their side and even then they might just be a garbage addition to the team. These simultaneous realizations are what makes the loss so great because losing actually means something. No checkpoints, no do-overs, just reflection on what led to your mistakes and the direct consequences of having others die on your watch.
The Depth of Xenonauts 2
You can play Xenonauts 2’s demo during this week’s Steam Next Fest, and it’s in the deep end of the swimming pool for tactics games. Regardless of whether you save scum or ditch iron man mode (no manual saves), this game will require you to get to know its ins and outs quite well to be successful. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the presentation of information to the player.
With Xenonauts 2 you’re in luck, because they’ve created an intuitive “nesting” system within the UI. By hovering over most things in the game with your cursor a description window will appear. Within that window you can open additional windows for a chain of related information. It doesn’t sound that important on paper, but trust me, it’s going to help a ton as you assemble a worldwide task force to stop the alien invasion of Earth.
While the recent X-com games have primarily focused on squad based, boots on the ground styled gameplay, Xenonauts 2 is all encompassing with much more variety.
Radar will pick up UFO’s and fighters can be scrambled to intercept them in two ways; one giving players direct control over the dogfight that ensues and the other simply auto resolving the matter. These fighters are individual aircraft with pilots, weapon systems, fuel, armor plating and have to be launched from your hangers. Sending pilots into the skies is just as risky as sending soldiers to the battlefield which gives to a much more rounded gameplay experience.
Much like our bass line synth from the previous section, we are looking for a synth that can achieve a warm, lush timbre. For Ableton users, Analog is an obvious choice.
Why not just use another instance of Diva you ask?
Genres that rely heavily on texture and sonic character in the music work best by having a diverse palette of sounds. If you reach for the same synth in every situation, you run the risk of having your music sound like a demo track of a preset bundle.
Each synth brings its own character and nuance, and using a few different ones across the length of a project allows you to get the best of all worlds.
Soldiers get loaded on transports ships to be deployed in real time into combat zones. Bases can be constructed and defended anywhere on Earth and can be tailored specifically to your heart’s desire. Engineering, research, aircraft production, armored support, troop boot camps, if you can think of it, it’s there.
Customization can be incredibly specific and will be familiar to those who’ve played PUBG or Escape from Tarkov with it’s grid based inventory system. Every soldier, aircraft, armored vehicle, and base has this for you to play around with, allowing for a ton of equipment loadout possibilities.
At first it can be overwhelming, but take a deep breath, read a couple nested descriptions, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes because you’re inevitably going to lose Jenkins, he’s completely worthless don’t worry about him. (Yes you can name your soldiers)
80’s and Aliens
I’m a sucker for isometric games and Xenonauts 2 has a really nice clean aesthetic that compliments it’s 1980’s alt history cold war time period. It feels very Top Gun or even Starship Trooper at times, but in the good way. There isn’t a fixed camera either, which is a nice addition being able to rotate 90 degrees around to get better views of the map. A blend of synth and orchestra makes for both hopeful and hopeless feelings as you internally debate sending one of your better soldiers around a blind corner.
Once again, we will revert back to our piano harmonies MIDI file to use as an anchor point for the melody line we are about to write. Always being able to return back to the original piano chords that we wrote gives us a framework to continue to work from and can save you a TON of time and triple (even quadruple) your creative output if you know the proper steps here.
Start with a short riff and rthymn of notes and build it all out from there!
You may notice how the melody line I have written is fairly simply and repetitive. That’s because yours should be too! Simple phrases are easy for your listeners and dance floor to track as the song progresses. Let the bass line progression underneath change the context of the lead phrases and help push the song forward!
Too many new producers think they need complex melodies to make a hit track, when in reality this style of dance music is all about layering up a few simple loops into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Find a few choice moments in the progression to alter the notes ever so slightly. It could be timing adjustments or changing the notes of the chords themselves to add a sense of variety and change.
You’ll notice in the above example, I have changed the initial notes of the loop at the bar 5 mark of the loop. This small change essentially doubles the length of the loop, allowing you to get more mileage out of the simple phrase and your listeners are now expecting to hear that turn around.
It’s small edits and details like this that help your track not feel loopy and overly repetitive.
Atmospheric and emotional strings are a staple of these softer melodic genres for many reasons.
First, the timbre and texture of the sound is soft and slowly evolving which oftentimes compliments the more digital plugins and stabs of the rest of the sonic pallet of the track.
Second, strings simply are more emotional than many standard pad patches and the familiarity to the sound is pleasing for most listeners (it’s something easy to latch on to)
Finally, strings out of samplers and romplers usually have a very interesting width aspect to the sounds that is baked into the sample. As such, they often help elevate the stereo field of a record by occupying parts of the stereo field that otherwise go unused.
Combat will feel familiar for those who’ve dabbled in tactics games before. Get your units spread out and into cover, don’t use up all your AP so you can react off turn, and pray to the random numbers god that your 85% hit chance will actually land. It’s all by the numbers at first but remember we’re not wading in the kiddy pool. Grenades can realistically blast through walls damaging units taking cover on the other side. Soldiers that get hit in combat can start bleeding out instead of just losing HP or suffer fatal injuries.
Jenkins is out of ammo, of course he is, he’s a terrible shot and I hate him.
Losses can be debilitating at times, but it’s always a steppingstone to evening the odds technologically. There will be opportunities to recover alien technology or get a cash injection for the researchers and engineers for successfully completing missions.
Even victory has its costs as a transport helicopter returns from battle with an entire company wounded. Your veterans are forced into lengthy recovery and replaced by greenhorns who will in turn suffer a worse fate due to inexperience. The player’s ‘internal storytelling’ of events that transpire are at the heart of games like Xenonauts 2.
I imagine the scenes from Band of Brothers where fresh troops replace the battle-hardened veterans on the frontline fully knowing they’ll end up just like them in a best case scenario. While I’ve made fun of and despised Jenkins this whole time, he’s now my best soldier, and the only thing stabilizing this popsicle stick strength battalion that I keep sending into the meat grinder.
You can check out Xenonauts 2’s demo this entire week during Steam’s Next Fest alongside our Sons of Valhalla demo review that also debuts this week.
