Good evening you are listening to Through Moves Ahead, and I'm your host Rob Zakeney here with our friend, freelance writer, John Bolding.

Hey, y'all.

And today we welcome back after a long absence and many wanderings.

Writer, shut up and sit down co-founder, Paul Dean.

Hello.

So today we are returning to the old battle against the old ones with Xcom creator Julian

Gallup's new tactical combat game Phoenix Point by Snapshot Games.

This has been a long anticipated return for a legendary game designer, but also one with a lot

of angst attached to it.

In the time since he last made a game like this,

Faraxis essentially reinvented this genre

and applied a much higher degree of polish than we'd ever seen before.

Likewise, Gullops' own returns to tactics games over the years

were of significantly smaller scope and ambition, I would say,

particularly with something like the bite-sized, more competitive, tabletop scale, chaos

reborn. But now Phoenix Point is finally back with us, and it's available on the Epic Store.

And Paul, I guess I start off with you.

What is this game about?

What is its premise?

And is it too reductive to say it's Julian Gallup playing the hits and returning to X-com?

I don't think that's reductive at all.

I think that's a very good way to begin the discussion of what

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