Kickstarted in Less Than Twenty-Four Hours. Nice.
The in-game story of the X-COM franchise is equal parts simple and complicated. On one hand, it’s easy to sum up what the games are about: they tell the tale of an organization dedicated to defending the earth from malicious aliens and UFOs. On the other hand, the number of options, narrative unpredictability, and spin-offs packed in over the years makes it really hard to actually explain things beat-by-beat. But the games stay popular, the concept stays compelling, and there’s a lot of people (us included) who’d really love to see not just the story inside the X-COM games, but the story of how X-COM even got made in the first place. Fortunately, someone has written that book, and it’s been fully funded on Kickstarter after just twenty-four hours. Way to go, everyone!
Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense will tell the story of the original 1994 game’s development and creator Julian Gollop’s early career in the field of game design. Written by David L. Craddock, who is known for writing about the history of Blizzard Entertainment, the book is written in narrative-style prose and is based on interviews with Julian Gollop, his brother Nick Gollop, and many developers and producers they worked with. If that’s not enough, the book has also been praised by giants within the video game sphere. Sid Meier’s Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson called it: “An engaging history of not just X-COM, but also of Julian Gollop’s path to creating one of the cornerstones of strategy gaming.”
The book’s Kickstarter will be active until the morning of April 8th, 2021. It will be available in digital and paperback editions, including a special edition showcasing bonus content, so get backing if you want to read it.
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