Last weekend Julian attended the EGX show to promote Phoenix Point. EGX is the UK's largest video game expo, taking place in Birmingham, England.  Close to 100,000 visitors attended this year.

Julian was at EGX to give two presentations. In a section titled From Laser Squad to Phoenix Point: The Evolution of a Game Genre, Julian spoke candidly about his early days of developing games, from his first works on the Spectrum through to present day. The section was wrapped up with a previously unseen live demo of the latest Geoscape prototype.

Following up just a few hours later, Julian was able to take the stage once again with Jake Solomon (Firaxis - XCom Creative Director) in a live interview with Eurogamer's Chris Bratt. In this interview titled The Past, Present and Future of XCom, Julian and Jake spoke at length about the origins of X-Com, the decline of the Turn Based Strategy genre, the success of the reboot and the long and difficult road to breathing new life into the franchise.

The Interviews

The two days Julian attended EGX were also packed with interviews for various outlets including PC Gamer, PCGamesN and Edge Magazine. In these interviews Julian talks more in-depth about the different factions and their roles within the game than he has before. He also talks about how he almost ended up working on Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle before leaving Ubisoft.

X-Com creator Julian Gollop was asked to work on Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle - PCGamesN

Julian Gollop charts the evolution of turn-based tactics, from Rebelstar Raiders to Phoenix Point - PCGamesN

X-COM's Julian Gollop almost worked on Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle - PC Gamer

The new XCOM game allowed me to make Phoenix Point - PC Gamer

In the meantime....

The development team are currently working hard on the ballistics system, terrain generation and destruction, along with creating the first faction havens. We will be able to show some of this in a future update. The team here at Snapshot also continues to grow and we'll me introducing you to some more new members next time.