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Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Video game developer |
Founded | 2013 |
Founders |
|
Headquarters | , |
Number of employees | 64 [1] (2021) |
Parent | Embracer Group (2020–present) |
Website | snapshotgames |
Snapshot Games is a Bulgarian video game developer headquartered in Sofia. [2] [3] Snapshot Games was founded in 2013 by Julian Gollop and David Kaye. [2] [4] Gollop is recognized for creating the X-COM video game franchise in the 1990s with X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Apocalypse . [5] [2] [6] [7] [8] [9] Gollop also is the CEO of Snapshot Games. [9] In addition to Gollop, the company includes about eight developers who are industry veterans with years of previous experience working for Ubisoft Sofia, Crytek Black Sea, and other Bulgaria studios. [2]
On November 12, 2013, Snapshot Games was founded as a privately held corporation in the state of California of the United States. [4] However, it is based in Bulgaria where its CEO, Julian Gollop, lives and where video game development costs are about one-third of what they would be for a similar studio in the United States. [2] [3] [9]
In April 2014, Snapshot Games launched a Kickstarter to crowdfund the development of its first video game, Chaos Reborn . [10] The effort was successful, generating over $210,000. [10] The game was made available through the Early Access program of Steam on December 9, 2014 before it was released officially on October 26, 2015. [11] The game received a score of 86/100 on review aggregation website Metacritic. [12] PC Gamer awarded it a score of 87%, saying "A true wizard’s wheeze, and a fine return for one of gaming’s oldest tactical classics." [13] The game also was nominated for a Golden Joystick Award in the 2015 Best Indie Game category but lost to Kerbal Space Program . [14] [15]
Julian Gollop teased the development of a new video game, Phoenix Point , on Twitter on March 18, 2016. [16] [17] For the next year, Snapshot Games worked on designing and producing the game. [18] After investing $450,000 into this first year of development, the company launched a Fig crowdfunding campaign in April 2017 to obtain the $500,000 they budgeted to complete the game. [3] [19] The future of Snapshot relied on the success of the campaign. [18] "There is no Plan B," Gollop said to the press at the time. [18] The campaign was successful, raising more than $765,000 from over 10,300 different contributors. [19] Snapshot Games has committed to release Phoenix Point in 2019. [20] [21]
In November 2020, Embracer Group announced that it acquired the company through Saber Interactive, which will be the parent company. [22] In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber and many of its studios to Beacon Interactive. However, Snapshot was not included in the deal and remains under Embracer. [23]
Year | Title | Platform(s) |
---|---|---|
2015 | Chaos Reborn | Linux, Macintosh, Windows |
2019 | Phoenix Point | Macintosh, Windows |
2020 | Phoenix Point: Year One Edition | |
2021 | Phoenix Point: Behemoth Edition | PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
Phoenix Point: Year One Edition | Stadia |
XCOM is a science fiction video game franchise featuring an elite international organization tasked with countering alien invasions of Earth. The series began with the strategy video game X-COM: UFO Defense created by Julian Gollop's Mythos Games and MicroProse in 1994. The original lineup by MicroProse included six published and at least two canceled games, as well as two novels. The X-COM series, in particular its original entry, achieved a sizable cult following and has influenced many other video games; including the creation of a number of clones, spiritual successors, and unofficial remakes.
UFO: Enemy Unknown, also known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America, is a 1994 science fiction strategy video game developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse. It was published by MicroProse for DOS and Amiga computers, the Amiga CD32 console, and the PlayStation. Originally planned by Julian Gollop as a sequel to Mythos Games' 1988 Laser Squad, the game mixes real-time management simulation with turn-based tactics. The player takes the role of commander of X-COM – an international paramilitary and scientific organization secretly defending Earth from an alien invasion. Through the game, the player is tasked with issuing orders to individual X-COM troops in a series of turn-based tactical missions. At strategic scale, the player directs the research and development of new technologies, builds and expands X-COM's bases, manages the organization's finances and personnel, and monitors and responds to UFO activity.
Chaos: The Battle of Wizards is a turn-based tactics video game released for the ZX Spectrum in 1985. It was written by Julian Gollop and originally published by Games Workshop. Based on Gollop's 1982 design for a board game / card game hybrid, Chaos received a positive reception and went on to influence various games, including Darwinia and King's Bounty, and spawned a sequel, Lords of Chaos, in 1990.
Julian Gollop is a British video game designer and producer specialising in strategy games, who has founded and led Mythos Games, Codo Technologies and Snapshot Games. He is known best as the "man who gave birth to the X-COM franchise."
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The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge is an unreleased video game for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 2 by Mythos Games. Developed by the team which produced X-COM: UFO Defense, including lead designer Julian Gollop, the game was planned to be "a remake of the first X-COM with 3D graphics," as the first of four games planned in the new series. Cancelled in 2001, the unfinished game was later bought and partially turned into UFO: Aftermath by Altar Interactive, which was in turn itself followed by two sequels. Some elements of the game are also present in Gollop's own Phoenix Point.
Mythos Games was a British video game developer company founded by Julian Gollop and Nick Gollop in 1988 as Target Games. It is best known for its 1994 strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense, which went on to become the first installment in the later XCOM series. Following the closing of Mythos Games in 2001, the brothers founded Codo Technologies.
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Video game development has typically been funded by large publishing companies or are alternatively paid for mostly by the developers themselves as independent titles. Other funding may come from government incentives or from private funding.
Chaos Reborn is a turn-based tactical role-playing game developed by Snapshot Games and was part funded through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in April 2014. Following an early access release in December 2014, the full game was released in October 2015.
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Phoenix Point is a strategy video game featuring a turn-based tactics system that is developed by Bulgaria-based independent developer Snapshot Games. It was released on December 3, 2019, for macOS and Microsoft Windows, for Stadia on January 26, 2021, and Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 1, 2021. Phoenix Point is intended to be a spiritual successor to the X-COM series that had been originally created by Snapshot Games head Julian Gollop during the 1990s.
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