X-COM: Alliance is a cancelled video game in the X-COM series. The game was developed by two different teams of MicroProse developers (first as a subsidiary of Spectrum Holobyte, then Hasbro Interactive, and finally Infogrames Entertainment) between 1995 and 2002. The game had the player assume the role of commander of the militarized scientific mission lost in space during the aftermath of X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Unlike other games in the X-COM series, most of which were strategy games, Alliance was a first-person shooter. It was described as having "strategy, adventure, and role-playing elements too." After being officially announced in 1998 for a planned release in the first half of 1999, the game was repeatedly delayed and put on hold, before eventually becoming vaporware; it was eventually cancelled in 2002. The game has numerous leaked builds online. Gameplay The gameplay of X-COM: Alliance would emphasize team management and tactics. Through the first-person perspective, the player would assemble and lead squads through a series of story-driven missions with various primary and secondary (optional) objectives. Teams of up to four members would be selected from a pool of soldiers, scientists and engineers (and later also friendly aliens). Each team member would have different skills as well as their own unique abilities, voices, personalities and attitudes, and was supposed to be acting differently from the others even if put in similar situations. The characters' speech, movement, and combat effectiveness would also rely on their emotional state, influenced by their individual personal traits and conditions such as their surroundings and levels of morale and fatigue. Additionally, a large 2D component was planned for the game's management and research part. Besides the single-player mode, multiplayer co-operative, deathmatch, and capture the flag modes were being planned as well. Plot The game takes place in the year 2062 (22 years after the events of X-COM: Terror from the Deep and five years before X-COM: Interceptor), when the research vessel UGS Patton, with a crew of top scientists and engineers and team of X-COM soldiers, travels to a site of the former alien base at Cydonia on the surface of Mars to retrieve alien artifacts and establish an Elerium mining facility. However, the Patton goes through an unexpected dimensional wormhole gateway and ends up stranded 60 light years from Earth, finding the alien invaders from X-COM: UFO Defense to be engaged in a war with a new