When Jake Solomon and his team at Firaxis reinvented Julian Gollop’s original design for more modern sensibilities, they tried many things. As Solomon shared in Collected Works, two entire prototypes were scrapped, over the course of multiple years, for being too complicated. But eventually the team settled on a simplified format: two actions per soldier per turn, one of which is generally used to move them on a gridded map. (On PC – the grid was hidden for console players.) It ended up working so well that, as nudged the turn-based tactics game back into fashion in theworked in part because its mechanics served the theme: of soldiers on the ground, pushing gradually forward into the jaws of an unknown threat. This was something understood, keeping the grid and two-action format while putting a fresh emphasis on prediction and repositioning of enemies that suited its kaiju-wrestling mech action.
