We're getting a new XCOM game this month

It's been four full years since the release of XCOM 2, and three since War of The Chosen expansion. We were expecting that we might see a new XCOM game being announced, and we got it, but no one expected blitzkrieg release strategy - XCOM: Chimera Squad is coming April 24, just ten days from today's announcement.

XCOM: Chimera Squad is set 5 years since the events in XCOM 2. Aliens and humans are now living in peace, trying to build a better and more prosperous society for everyone. But of course, some bad things are happening behind the scene, trying to shatter this new era of cooperation for their own malicious reasons.

That's where we as players jump in. We're in command of Chimera Squad, a special unit designed to keep this new peaceful co-existence. And in order to do that, we must fight this mysterious force that wants to ruin everything and bring back war and destructions from the times of Overlords.

Developers see Chimera Squad as a spin-off title, and not a direct continuation of the series. They thought that there's so much more space for experimentation in terms of gameplay, and they wanted to explore that with  Chimera Squad. Unlike traditional XCOM games, here we have a set number of 11 agents, predesigned by Firaxis. They all have their personalities, skills, perks, roles, unique personal and race abilities, etc. All in all, they are fully fleshed-out characters.

You can not lose them, and they don't die in combat. Instead, they are put in a bleed-out state, and other characters can come and stabilize them in a set amount of time. If you fail to do that, you lose the mission, and you must play it again.

There's also a new Breach Mode, with Breach-specific skills. Here, your agents don't drop on preset locations, but you as a player choose entry locations, and then from there they use their Breach-specific skills. This sounds exciting, and we can't wait to see it in practice.

Developers promised around 20h of the single-player campaign, and as we already said, the game will release next Friday, April 24. What's really interesting is that the game will be half the price, just 9,99€ on Steam, until May 1, so make sure to get it before that day if you are interested.