I’m pretty sure Julian Gollop now thinks I’m an idiot, but his new game Chip n’ Claws vs. The Brainioids won me over

You are playing a co-op session with Julian Gollop, Snapshot Games’s CEO and the man who created XCOM. He’s showing you Chip n’ Claws vs. The Brainioids, a real time strategy game where you’ll gather resources, fabricate structures, and give orders to robot minions in battles against an alien menace. The twist? It’s all in third person, with split-screen couch co-op, real time ranged and melee combat, and even a little platforming.

You’re playing as robot cat Claws, and Gollop is plucky spacefarer Chip. He’s zipping around the map hoovering up resources on a hoverbike he’s nabbed from a building that gifts you both special tech. You’ve got a rocket pack that lets you double jump, accessing new structure blueprints hidden in high places. It’s time to take the fight to the aliens, and Gollop calmly suggests building troop spawners near your main structure – it’s got mounted guns, after all.

What do you do?

a.) For god’s sake, listen to the man. This is sort of his wheelhouse, not to mention his game.

b.) Gleefully sprint off, ignoring Gollop’s warnings as you hastily erect a haphazardly positioned forward base in a deeply suboptimal location, forcing you both to spend the rest of the level playing catch-up as angry brain aliens make mincemeat of your structures and waste the resources you’ve already invested.

In my defence, I’d pulled a shoulder muscle the night before and was mildly out of it on delicious painkillers. Also, I was having fun. I’ve taken solace in the fact he had several other interviews that day and probably doesn’t remember who I am. We won the level in the end, which I suggested was proof that my strategy was actually very clever. “No comment,” replied Gollop. I leave the session with a 92% chance to dunk my own head in the toilet.

You’ll likely have noticed the bright, Saturday morning cartoon vibes, and that’s a very conscious departure from the alien threat of Snapshot’s previous Phoenix Point. “There’s way too much grim, dark, horror, post-apocalyptic, zombie, whatever stuff going on at the moment in video games. The change in tone is obviously very deliberate indeed,” Gollop says. “The game is quite satirical, though. The aliens are essentially a kind of a dysfunctional corporation, and they have all the issues and backstabbing and infighting that corporations have.” You can still sense his old love for pulp sci-fi, too – most noticeable in the comic book collectables. “Mars Attacks is definitely an inspiration”.

Another was playing co-op games like the LEGO series with his kids. That’s how the game felt to me, too: something for parents or guardians to introduce their love of strategy to younger players as a shared experience. He also namechecks Nintendo’s Pikmin, evident in the rally points you can set for individual types of robots and puzzly optional challenge stages. Another inspiration is Sacrifice, Shiny’s 2001 third person RTS (“a very interesting little game,” Gollop says).

But that lighter tone is also a bit of a Trojan horse, I think. While the game is certainly very chirpy and accessible, it doesn’t take long to get the sense there’s some depth here, even beyond the more obvious aspects like hard difficulty or a competitive mode for up to four players. “Every story mission will introduce something new,” says Gollop – new buildings or abilities, or new enemies, allies, or objective types. “Sometimes you get a bit of a tower defense style scenario. Sometimes you have escort missions. Quite a few of them, you have to destroy the enemy HQ.”

Lots of options means lots of decisions – juggling real time building placement alongside commanding your robots. Destroying enemy buildings is best done with artillery bots – cute rockets that shuffle around on two tiny clockwork feet. They’re defenseless, though, so you’ll want to support them with a frontline of boxer bots and a few fliers. Both Chip and Claw have their own special abilities, too. Chip can poke both bots and buildings to send them into overdrive for a short burst, either boosting production or damage output. Claws can repair and heal. These both cost a small amount of Brainium, though, which is also your building resource – making multiple systems feed into each other nicely.

You’re also scoping out for when to get stuck into combat yourself. Melee is very simple and a bit stiff, but the one gun I tried felt fine. How much of a factor does this stuff actually play in the long game? Depends on your playstyle, Gollop says. You’ll collect blueprints for HQ mods (“the essence of your strategy”), and can equip up to three. “If you’re more strategy focused, you might go for, say, elite minion types, or economy mods. Or you can stick with more combat character focused mods”

“The weapons are also interesting,” he continues. “For example, Claws has a frenzy grenade, which will overdrive your own minions and cause enemy minions to go haywire, which is a panic status. There’s this constant consideration: am I doing something useful right now? Or could I be doing something more useful? And what would it be?”

Gollop has been designing strategy games for over 40 years now, starting with titles like Time Lords and Chaos: The Battle Of The Wizards in the early eighties, but he says the fundamentals of the genre are pretty consistent. “Outhinking, outwitting, experimenting with different ideas and different approaches.”

“The fundamental rules of strategy design is you’ve got to allow the player to experiment and bluff and counter-bluff,” he says. “Obviously PvP is a little different from single player, but strategy is about having a plan, trying to execute it, then when it goes wrong, coming up with a plan B. A game should allow the player to do all of this. You’re always trying to react to your opponents. Plan B and C probably come in because your opponent has probably done something you’ve not expected, and plan A isn’t working out. So that’s what I think strategy games are all about.”

He laughs a little when he says “your opponent has probably done something you’ve not expected”. I was experimenting, Mr. Gollop. Chip n’ Claws vs. The Brainioids is out this Spring, with a demo out for Steam Next Fest on February 24th.