Julian Gollop | Code Like It's 198x

Julian Gollop spent the 1980s turning the board wargames he played with friends into Spectrum games, and the rules he settled on then are still recognisable in tactics games today. In Rebelstar each soldier has a stock of action points to spend on moving, picking things up, loading and shooting, and a soldier who keeps some back can fire during the enemy’s turn. Laser Squad refined the system, and with his brother Nick he carried it into X-COM, which sold more than 600,000 copies on the PC alone. More than forty years after his first game he is still making tactics games, now from his own studio in Sofia.

Fast facts

Born: 1965.
First games: Nebula and Rebelstar Raiders, written in Sinclair BASIC and published by Red Shift in 1984.
Companies: Target Games (1988), Mythos Games (about 1990 to 2001), Codo Technologies (early 2000s), Snapshot Games (2013 onwards, as chief executive).
Brother and collaborator: Nick Gollop, co-designer of X-COM.
Most recent work: Chip ’n Clawz vs. The Brainioids (2025) and Frosthaven, both from Snapshot Games.

Games

Year	Game	Machines	Published by
1984	Nebula	ZX Spectrum	Red Shift
1984	Rebelstar Raiders	ZX Spectrum	Red Shift
1985	Chaos	ZX Spectrum	Games Workshop
1986	Rebelstar	ZX Spectrum	Firebird, £1.99
1988	Laser Squad	ZX Spectrum, then other 8-bit and 16-bit machines	Target Games
1989	Rebelstar 2	ZX Spectrum	Silverbird, £1.99
1990	Lords of Chaos	Spectrum, C64, CPC; Atari ST and Amiga in 1991	Blade Software
1994	UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense in North America)	PC, Amiga	MicroProse
1997	X-COM: Apocalypse	PC	MicroProse
1998	Magic & Mayhem	PC	Virgin Interactive
2002	Laser Squad Nemesis	PC, online	Codo
2005	Rebelstar: Tactical Command	Game Boy Advance	Namco
2011	Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars	Nintendo 3DS	Ubisoft
2015	Chaos Reborn	PC	Snapshot Games
2019	Phoenix Point	PC	Snapshot Games
2025	Chip ’n Clawz vs. The Brainioids	PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series	Arc Games
2025	Frosthaven (early access; full release planned for October 2026)	PC	Arc Games

X-COM: Terror From The Deep (1995) is not his. MicroProse made it with a licence to the Gollops’ code.

Red Shift and Rebelstar Raiders

Gollop designed games before he could program them. His first computer game design, Time Lords, was programmed by a school friend, Andy Greene. He then taught himself Sinclair BASIC and wrote two Spectrum games of his own, Nebula and Rebelstar Raiders, both published by Red Shift in 1984.

Rebelstar Raiders came from the board wargames he played, above all one called Sniper. “The idea for the original Rebelstar Raiders was to create a complete tactical battle sim, simulating squad-based combat in any genre or era of history, which was a bit ambitious,” he told Edge in 2001. It was a two-player game on a single screen, with three scenarios. He was told it sold “about 40–50,000, which was good for the time. But I didn’t really see any money from it.” Edge’s own 1996 retrospective had it selling “less than ‘some’”, so the figure is Gollop’s recollection, not a published count.

Chaos

Chaos began in 1982 as a card-and-board game Gollop made in his school summer holidays. He had seen Games Workshop’s Warlock being played at school, thought its wizards “just stood there in a circle slinging spells at each other”, and wanted creatures that could be summoned and moved about a board. His brother and sister helped colour the cards, and he typed the text on his grandfather’s typewriter. The balance between Law and Chaos came from Michael Moorcock’s Elric books.

The Spectrum version was his first program in machine code. Red Shift collapsed while he was writing it, and his Red Shift colleagues found it a new publisher, Games Workshop, so he finished it at college. It came out in early 1985 at £7.95. Up to eight wizards, human or computer, share one screen, each with a random hand of spells. Every creature spell can be cast as an illusion, which always succeeds but vanishes if a rival casts Disbelieve on it. Gollop told Retro Gamer that the illusions were there because a computer could hide a choice that dice rolled in public could not.

Reviewers liked it. CRASH gave it 8 overall in May 1985 and welcomed “a game which can be played by a great number of players not in a token sense”. Sinclair User gave it four stars, and Sinclair Programs 66%, calling it “a good introduction to the realms of fantasy for novices”. Its reputation grew afterwards; Your Sinclair later gave it away twice on its cover tape, and Wireframe in 2021 picked it as the Spectrum game it would choose “for pure replayability”.

Rebelstar

Bored with college work, Gollop went back to Rebelstar Raiders and rebuilt it in assembly language on a Spectrum with two Microdrives, “the absolute minimum that I needed to compile the game”. The map grew to several scrolling screens and he added opportunity fire, which he said he took from board wargames: “One of the main anomalies with turn-based games is that you can be covering the end of a corridor and an enemy unit will just move past it during their move.”

He took it to Telecomsoft, which published the Firebird and Rainbird labels from an office on New Oxford Street, on his way to college. Firebird was not his first choice of label, he told Edge, but it was convenient, and Telecomsoft wanted it only if it had a one-player mode. He had never written a computer opponent, and remembered staying in his room in his hall of residence “for about two weeks solid” to write one. He later put its code and data at about 3.5K.

Firebird sold Rebelstar for £1.99 in 1986. Gollop remembered getting “quite a bit” from it, although he was paid about 10p a copy: “peanuts – or a fraction of a peanut”. CRASH gave it 93% and a Smash in August 1986, its reviewer calling it “the best strategy game I’ve reviewed in ten months of writing Frontline”. Edge, looking back in 1996, credited it with the two ideas the later games kept, action points and opportunity fire, and summed it up as the game that “introduced the concept of sugar-coated wargames”.

Target Games and Laser Squad

In March 1988 Gollop set up his own company, Target Games, to publish his own games. CRASH announced it in June. Its first release was Laser Squad, sold by mail order from Harlow for £9.95 on the Spectrum, with expansion kits of two more scenarios at £3.95 each. CRASH gave it 89% in December 1988. Your Sinclair’s reviewer, who admitted he had “never been interested in strategy wargaming before”, called it “mega fab”. Rebelstar 2, written before Laser Squad but released after it, came out on Firebird’s Silverbird label at £1.99 and was reviewed in May 1989.

That December CRASH asked programmers to name the programmer they admired most. Gollop named Ada Lovelace, “she wrote the first ever book about computer programs in 1843”.

Mythos Games and X-COM

Target had been co-founded with a partner who then left, and the name was the partner’s choice. So Julian and Nick Gollop set up Mythos Games, with Nick as a director. Its first game was Lords of Chaos (1990), a sequel to Chaos with the line of sight and hidden units of Laser Squad and more role-playing. Julian programmed the Spectrum and Amstrad versions and Nick the Commodore 64 one. The publisher, Blade Software, was in financial trouble, and Gollop believed the game “didn’t reach its full sales potential”.

The brothers then made a demo of Laser Squad 2 for the Atari ST, and it became UFO: Enemy Unknown, published by MicroProse in 1994 and sold in North America as X-COM: UFO Defense. In 1991 they had shown the demo to Krisalis, Domark and MicroProse, and chose MicroProse because it had published Civilization. MicroProse asked for the game to be set on Earth and made bigger, and Gollop added the strategic layer of bases, research and interception. Computer Gaming World credited the design to both brothers. Edge reported in 2003 that it had sold more than 600,000 copies on the PC, half of them in the United States.

After it, Gollop told Edge, MicroProse “wanted more of the same and they wanted more say in the project”, and licensed the code to make Terror From The Deep itself. Mythos made one more, X-COM: Apocalypse (1997), and then Magic & Mayhem (1998), a real-time fantasy game published by Virgin Interactive, which Gollop said “was intended to be something of a ‘Chaos 3’”.

The next game broke the company. The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge was a 3D successor to X-COM, financed by its European publisher, Virgin. In 2001 Gollop posted that it had been cancelled: “We have been looking for a publisher for a while now, but no agreement has been reached and we have run out of cash.” Mythos closed.

Codo, Ubisoft and handhelds

The brothers came back as Codo Technologies with Laser Squad Nemesis (2002), a play-by-email tactics game that they sold themselves over the internet as a subscription. Edge listed it at $15 for six months of play. A British shop edition followed at £13 with three months of online play. In 2005 Namco published their Rebelstar: Tactical Command for the Game Boy Advance; Edge gave it 7 and called it “the finest strategic outing the Game Boy has seen since its own signature franchises”.

By 2011 Gollop was at Ubisoft’s studio in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he led Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, a turn-based tactics game for the launch of the Nintendo 3DS. He told Wireframe that the team learned only months before launch that the top screen would be the 3D one, and had to swap which screen did what. He also worked on Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation before leaving Ubisoft in 2012.

Snapshot Games

In November 2012 Gollop announced Chaos Reborn, “part sequel and part reboot” of Chaos, with online play and a single-player campaign. He co-founded Snapshot Games in Sofia with David Kaye in 2013 and runs it as chief executive. Chaos Reborn was crowdfunded on Kickstarter and came out on 26 October 2015.

Snapshot’s Phoenix Point went back to X-COM’s shape: a strategic map, rival human factions and turn-based squad battles against aliens made by a mutating virus, with free aiming at body parts. It came out at the end of 2019. Wireframe gave it 66%, finding it enjoyable but “too slavish to push the genre forward”. In November 2020 Embracer Group bought Snapshot Games and placed it in its Saber Interactive group. In 2025 the studio released Chip ’n Clawz vs. The Brainioids, a mix of third-person action and real-time strategy, and put Frosthaven, a tactical role-playing game based on the board game, into early access.

Sources

Retro Gamer issue 112, March 2013, pp. 44–51: “The King of Chaos”, Martyn Carroll’s interview with Gollop (Time Lords and Andy Greene; Nebula and Rebelstar Raiders in BASIC for Red Shift in 1984; the Chaos board game of 1982, Warlock and Moorcock; Red Shift’s collapse and Games Workshop; the illusions; Target Games, his partner and Mythos; Lords of Chaos and Blade Software; the Laser Squad 2 demo; Magic & Mayhem as “Chaos 3”; Chaos cover-mounted twice by Your Sinclair; Chaos Reborn; the list of his games, including Rebelstar 2 written before Laser Squad).
Retro Gamer issue 110, January 2013, p. 11: Chaos Reborn announced, “part sequel and part reboot”; Gollop leaving Ubisoft, where he had worked on Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation.
Edge issue 93, January 2001, pp. 107–110: the making of Rebelstar (Red Shift, Sniper, “about 40–50,000” copies of Rebelstar Raiders, college, Firebird not his first choice, New Oxford Street, the Microdrives, the computer opponent, opportunity fire, 10p a copy, Target Games in 1988).
Edge issue 36, September 1996, p. 69: retro review of Rebelstar (“sold less than ‘some’”, £1.99, action points and opportunity fire, “sugar-coated wargames”).
Edge issue 131, Christmas 2003, pp. 128–131: the making of X-COM (the 1991 demo, MicroProse, sales of more than 600,000 on PC, Terror From The Deep, Magic & Mayhem, the closure of Mythos, Codo Technologies and the Laser Squad Nemesis retail deal at £13).
Wireframe issue 3, November 2018, pp. 6–9: interview with Gollop on Phoenix Point, Rebelstar’s computer opponent in about 3.5K, and Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars at Ubisoft Sofia.
CRASH issue 16, May 1985, pp. 120–121: Chaos review (Games Workshop, £7.95, overall 8). Sinclair User issue 38, May 1985, p. 32: Chaos review by John Gilbert (four stars). Sinclair Programs, June 1985, p. 14: Chaos, 66%.
Wireframe issue 44, October 2020, pp. 112–113: Chaos’s illusion and Disbelieve; Lords of Chaos (1990) and Chaos Reborn (2015). Wireframe issue 56, October 2021, p. 33: Chaos as the Spectrum game it would pick “for pure replayability”.
CRASH issue 31, August 1986, pp. 49–50: Rebel Star review (Firebird, £1.99, 93%).
CRASH issue 53, June 1988, p. 113: Target Games founded in March by Gollop; Laser Squad due in August. CRASH issue 59, Christmas 1988, pp. 100 and 103–105: Gollop’s profile and his choice of Ada Lovelace; Laser Squad review (Target Games, £9.95, 89%). Sinclair User issue 78, September 1988, p. 52: Target Games advertisement (mail order from Harlow, £9.95; expansion kits at £3.95). Your Sinclair issue 35, November 1988, p. 76: Laser Squad review.
CRASH issue 64, May 1989, p. 67: Rebel Star 2 review (Silverbird, £1.99; “Programming by Julian Gollop”).
Computer Gaming World issue 121, August 1994, pp. 108–110: X-COM: UFO Defense designed by Julian and Nick Gollop of Mythos Games.
PC Zone, Christmas 1998, p. 98: Magic & Mayhem advertisement (© 1998 Mythos Games, published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe)).
PC Zone issue 102, May 2001, p. 14: “The Dream Is Over”, the cancellation of The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge and Gollop’s statement. Computer Gaming World issue 202, May 2001, p. 31: the cancellation.
Edge issue 109, April 2002, p. 79: Laser Squad Nemesis review (Codo Games, $15 for six months, out now).
Edge issue 156, December 2005, p. 112: Rebelstar: Tactical Command review (Game Boy Advance, Namco, Codo Games, 7).
Edge issue 225, March 2011, p. 69: Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars preview, “with Julian Gollop at the helm”. Edge issue 227, May 2011, p. 101: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars review (3DS, Ubisoft Sofia, with Gollop on board).
Wireframe issue 31, January 2020, pp. 56–57: Phoenix Point review (Snapshot Games, £35.99, 66%).
Snapshot Games, “Our Team” (web, secondary): founded in 2013 by Gollop and David Kaye; Gollop founder and CEO; studio in Sofia. https://www.snapshotgames.com/team
Chaos Reborn on Steam (web, secondary): released 26 October 2015, developer and publisher Snapshot Games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/319050/Chaos_Reborn/ ; “Snapshot Games”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the 2014 Kickstarter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapshot_Games
Embracer Group, “Embracer Group acquires Snapshot Games”, press release, 18 November 2020 (web): https://embracer.com/releases/embracer-group-acquires-snapshot-games/
Chip ’n Clawz vs. The Brainioids on Steam (web, secondary): released 26 August 2025, developer Snapshot Games, publisher Arc Games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1332430/Chip_n_Clawz_vs_The_Brainioids/
Gematsu, “Frosthaven launches October 15”, June 2026 (web, secondary): early access from 31 July 2025; developer Snapshot Games, publisher Arc Games. https://www.gematsu.com/2026/06/frosthaven-launches-october-15