You’re the leader of a cell of the Phoenix Project, a global organization that’s been hidden and dormant. Of course, all three factions struggle with the failings of their own philosophies as they battle the virus and each other. Instead, humans wall themselves off in one of three remaining global factions: One focuses on technology as the cure for the world’s ills, another leans on military options, and a third is driven by a cultish religion. Mankind can no longer think in terms of nations or empires. On top of that, thousands of people shamble directly into the ocean in pied-piper fashion and reemerge as tentacle-covered monsters themselves.īy the time we hit the mid-to-late 2020’s, that global apocalypse has brought the world’s populace to the brink of extinction. The weather goes nuts, sea creatures become aquatic horrors and a strange mist starts spreading across the land and destroying the world’s infrastructure. Once the virus dribbles into the ocean, all bets are off. Mankind’s calamity is sparked in the near future when the Earth’s warming patterns melt some Arctic permafrost and release a hidden-away Pandoravirus that mutates anything it touches. Is it a sudden case of long-abused seafood rising up to take its revenge? Well, not quite.

But this time, instead of staging turn-by-turn strategic battles against little space aliens with laser rifles, the threat is rising from the depths of the sea: You fight mutated crab thingies with organic … laser rifles. It’s called Phoenix Point, and it has the distinction of being designed by Julian Gollop, the man who created the 1994 original, X-COM: UFO Defense. For fans of the XCOM strategy video game series, there’s a new tactical battler out with a similar pedigree.

Phoenix point faction classes