Phoenix Point is a strategy video game featuring a turn-based tactics system that is developed by Bulgaria-based independent developer Snapshot Games. It was released on December 3, 2019, for macOS and Microsoft Windows, for Stadia on January 26, 2021, and Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 1, 2021. Phoenix Point is intended to be a spiritual successor to the X-COM series that had been originally created by Snapshot Games head Julian Gollop during the 1990s.
Phoenix Point is set in 2047 on an Earth in the midst of an alien invasion, with Lovecraftian horrors on the verge of wiping out humanity. Players start the game in command of a lone base, Phoenix Point, and face a mix of strategic and tactical challenges as they try to save themselves and the rest of humankind from annihilation by the alien threat.
Between battles, the aliens adapt through accelerated, evolutionary mutations to the tactics and technology which players use against them. Meanwhile, multiple factions of humans will pursue their own objectives as they compete with players for limited resources in the apocalyptic world. How players resolve these challenges can result in different endings to the game.
Setting In 2022, Earth's scientists discovered an extraterrestrial virus in permafrost that had begun to melt. Only about one percent of the virus's genome matched anything recorded by scientists up to that time. Named the Pandoravirus, humans and animals who came into contact with it mutated into horrific abominations. By the late 2020s, a global apocalypse began when melting polar icecaps released the Pandoravirus into the world's oceans. The alien virus quickly dominated the oceans, mutating sea creatures of every size into hybrid alien monsters capable of crawling on to land.
The oceans transformed in alien ways after which the Pandoravirus began to infect the world's landmasses with an airborne mutagenic mist. The mist was both a microbial contaminant and a conduit that networked the hive-mind of the Pandoravirus. Humanity was not prepared; everyone who failed to reach high ground where the mist could not reach succumbed to it. The monstrosities of this future world are intended to evoke themes of tentacles and unknown horror familiar to fans of H. P. Lovecraft. Likewise, the works of John Carpenter influence the themes of science fiction horror, particularly related to the mist that both hides alien monsters and creates them.
The game starts in 2047. The alien mist and monsters created by the Pandoravirus have overwhelmed and destroyed worldwide civilization, reducing the remnants of humanity to isolated havens that are sparsely spread across the planet. The Pandoravirus controls the oceans, contaminating all sea life, and has brought humans to the brink of extinction on land. Various factions control the havens of humanity, and they each have very different ideas of how to survive the alien threat.
Phoenix Project Players begin the game as the leader of a cell of the Phoenix Project, a global and secretive organization. Since the 20th century, the Phoenix Project has been organized to be ready to help humanity in a time of worldwide peril. The Phoenix Project activates the members of players' cell who then gather at a base called Phoenix Point. The cell includes some of the world's best remaining soldiers, scientists and engineers. However, after they assemble under the players' leadership, no further instructions come from the Phoenix Project.
Disciples of Anu The Disciples of Anu are a human cult with beliefs that synthesize parts of Abrahamic religions with aspects of pre-Pandoravirus doomsday cults. Their world view sees human nature as inherently corrupted by human biology. The Disciples of Anu worship an alien god, which they refer to as "the Dead God". Cultists view the alien mist as both punishment and salvation. They have found ways to develop human-alien hybrids. The process for doing so seems to involve the Disciples deliberately exposing humans to the mist in a way that can allow for the humans' intelligence to remain. The Disciples of Anu typically locate their havens in caves, and their haven leaders are called Exarchs. Disciples are led with absolute authority by a leader, the Exalted, who seems to exhibit highly advanced and stable mutations.
New Jericho New Jericho is a militaristic human faction which seeks to fight the alien threat directly by building a superior force. They are led by Tobias West, a former billionaire who also is a veteran mercenary. West gained his prominence in the 2020s as the head of Vanadium Inc., a technology and security firm which provided escorts for container ships as they traveled the world's oceans when the Pandoravirus mist and mutations first began to appear. Being a league of human-focused survivalists, New Jericho seeks to wipe out every trace of the aliens on Earth. Their leaders consider warfare and military technology, including enhancement of humans through technology, as the only solution to the alien threat. However they have conflicting ideas among themselves that threaten to splinter their faction before they can realize their objectives. New Jericho havens typically are fortresses at abandoned industrial or hilltop locations, and they have an extensive manufacturing base for military technology. Allied with the Phoenix Project, they successfully place a targeting beacon at the alien control node allowing for a decapitation strike. With the aliens leaderless, the war shifts in humanity's favor leading to an eventual victory. All of humanity is thus united under one government, and the Phoenix Project is given the resources to continue with its original mission and prepare for the origin of the Pandoravirus.
Synedrion Synedrion have the most advanced technology of all the human factions. They are radical ecologists who seek to build a new and better human civilization out of the detritus of the old. They value knowledge and seek to form a global nation that exists in partnership with both its citizens and the environment. Viewing aliens as part of Earth's environmental landscape, Synedrion seek to coexist with the aliens by using technology such as a wall that can repel the alien's mist. Synedrion generally place their havens on elevated hi-tech platforms. Overall, they are a decentralized organization that mostly is interconnected through shared philosophy and stable communication networks; however, havens that become disconnected from others prioritize self-sufficiency. The organizational decision-making of Synedrion is slow. Via an alliance with the Phoenix Project they are able to deliver a command virus into the alien control node, allowing them to take control of the Pandoravirus and use it to terraform the planet into one that is sustainably suited for the human race. The Phoenix Project resumes its original mandate.
Gameplay
Phoenix Point is described as a spiritual successor to X-COM. In the 1990s, the original X-COM series of video games introduced and integrated global strategy and tactical combat through which players try to save Earth from alien invasions. Though a multiplayer mode has not been ruled out, a survey answered by likely players has focused on developing Phoenix Point as a single-player game. Novel ideas include having aliens mutate and evolve in semi-random ways as they try to adapt to players' tactics and technology. Altogether, Phoenix Point is described as adding new and improved gameplay dynamics to the genre.
Mutating aliens
In Phoenix Point, the alien threat evolves as part of a gameplay system designed to generate a wide variety of challenges and surprises for players in tactical combat. Aliens encountered by players are procedurally generated on two basic levels: first, aliens will draw upon a pool of available, interchangeable body parts; second, aliens can change in size and shape. When the Pandoravirus encroaches on new regions, animals and other biological material found, including humans, are recombined to increase the pool of available body parts for the creation of new aliens, through mutations. For example, in Africa, the procedurally generated mutation system might mash up the body of a lion with body parts of humans and other animals to create alien monsters that resemble a Sphinx.
When aliens are victorious in combat, they may mutate more in order to use captured weapons and other technology. In contrast, aliens that are consistently defeated will continue to mutate in a natural selection process which mimics evolution. For example, a mutation might generate aliens with a new melee attack ability or a new defensive counter to certain types of weapons used by the players' soldiers. These mutations are somewhat random; however, the game's AI works in the background to find mutations that can defeat players' soldiers by discarding iterations that are unsuccessful. Aliens will continue to evolve until they develop a mutation that allows them to prevail in battle. Aliens with successful mutations then will be deployed in increasing numbers. Thus, the Pandoravirus responds and adapts to the tactics and technology used by players.
Competing factions While players contend with the alien threat, there are AI-controlled human factions in Phoenix Point that interact with the game's world much like players. The Disciples of Anu, New Jericho, and Synedrion with their conflicting ideologies are the major non-player factions in the game. These factions control most of the world's remaining resources. There are also independent havens who the major factions will try to recruit, and their isolated survivors that still can be found scavenging outside of havens.
The three major factions have unique technologies, traits, and diplomatic relations with each other. They have short-term and long-term goals consistent with their ideologies, and they act to accomplish these goals. For example, the factions can work to expand and develop their havens while players do the same. Players can obtain unique technology from the other factions through conquest or trade. Each of the three major factions also have secrets that can help resolve the alien threat.
The major factions thus offer three different ways that players can end the game. Players can ally with only one of the major factions. Therefore, players are not able to get all technologies and secrets from all of the non-player factions in the same playthrough. Players have to choose one narrative path of the game that forsakes other options. This means that players are not able to obtain access to all of the ways to defeat the aliens in a single campaign.
Global strategy
The world for each Phoenix Point campaign populates by means of procedural generation. Just to survive, players need to locate and acquire scarce resources and make strategic choices in how they obtain and use the resources. Players do not have a global reach initially, so they will have to expand thoughtfully. How players acquire resources can have dynamic ramifications for their relations with non-player human factions. Players can engage in open hostilities with other havens by either raiding them for resources or conquering their bases.