Sentinels
Sentinels: Returning in January
TL;DR: Not abandoned, not by a long shot, just accepting the inevitable that we need a longer break after the great lockdown of 2020 broke... literally everything. We'll be back at the end of the year after a proper recharge and upgrade.
If you want more details - we kept promising updates, and I know they never came through -put simply, I bit off more than I can chew. If you hadn't seen the general discussion posts, I foolishly thought that I could juggle full time gamedev work along with a new move, new job, and essentially new life, along with a whole host of other issues. I kept optimistically thinking things would get better, sugarcoated the posts here, and then promptly was dragged back under with a million things that demanded my attention. I've had far, far too many sleepless nights trying to put all the pieces together, and all it's resulted in is poor updates that don't even deserve to make it to the beta.
This game is an enormous passion project that I've poured years of my life into, and our other dev even more - and we will never abandon it. But it was a mistake to continue to try to jump in half-cocked when my outside life was in shambles. Despite our best efforts, all the coffee and goodwill in the world can't manifest a working build from a week of no sleep. This is the last thing I ever wanted to have happen, but I didn't forsee having to build everything back from the ground up, and at this point it's obvious that a proper break is needed.
For those of you who have stuck with us this long, thank you so much for your support. We'll be back at the end of the year, after we've had time to recharge and properly set a roadmap for the future. I'm hoping to sprinkle in some updates here and there, but promising absolutely nothing until this year is in the rearview mirror. But what I can promise you is we'll be back in January, bright and early, and hopefully a bit better rested. :)
New universal slot, more mods, and buffs are on the way
First off, there's the addition of a Universal slot.
This will allow for Sam, Kat, or Frank to have a slot that holds an ability that all commanders can accces. The effort here is to make the game a little less complicated by default, as the universal slot would be replacing one of the 5 existing slots, and allow you to make some more interesting tradeoffs for what you take into battle.
For instance, a simple one would be giving a morale boost to all structures when you kill a boss. This would change your strategy, as now you will want to aggressively take down bosses when they come on the board, as well as potentially change mods/items you use to take them down faster. If your goal is getting those sweet, sweet killstreaks, this would be a great way to do it. It will turn several currently default mechanics into equippable specials, allowing us to make them far more powerful.
We're also working on customizable loadouts.
The Universal slot started to make it clear that being able to customize loadouts would be great. So now, you can get loadouts that can have a wildcard slot on it, and it can be modified to add a slot of your choice. For instance, you might get one that replaces the Elite structure slot with a wildcard, then if you wanted to have a loadout with two energy specials, or maybe two activatables, that’d be an option.
Also adding in support for ultrawide monitors. Had a few monitors die on me at basically the same time, and replaced 2 with an ultrawide monitor… So yea, had to make that work. :)
Thanks for sticking with us, as always can't wait to hear what you think!
We're still alive!
Ha ha ha. Ha.... ha.
Yeah. So moved, tried to get settled, got computer and new office set up. Had 3 (? ish) days of getting things back up and running, then BAM. Lockdown.
Unsurprisingly, that darn beer bug threw a wrench into... well, everything. Still can't believe how fast everything happened; we both live in California, and things are more than a little chaotic over here. We're also pretty damn sure we both caught it. (0/10 would not recommend. WORST. COUGH. EVER.) But we didn't die! Yay! And we're really really hoping things are going well for all of you, it's scary times out there.
There may be no end in sight to the lockdown, but we still have our computers. Just wanted to post and say yes, we're both alive, we have an adorable new office dog, and we're back to work on Sentinels! Separately and somewhat haphazardly, as paying rent and wanting to eat is still a thing, but we're back and doing our darnedest.
Don't have any game updates for you quite yet, but can promise you'll like what's coming down the pipe. Assuming nothing else explodes, we should have a new beta for you soon! Despite the circumstances, we'll try to return to business as usual in every way possible. For now, we have a new team member! (Forgive the boxes, moving suuucks)
Say hello to Captain Sparrow Whiskey Tyrian Druid the Third... Sparrow for short. ;) Though to be honest, we're still not sold on Sparrow as her name - anyone got a fun name for her? We are accepting any and all suggestions, my eyes are crossed from all the online dog name lists. She's a corgi mix from the Ukraine and the best dog ever, as well as the literal only reason the lockdown hasn't driven me insane.
Wishing all the best to all of you and yours - stay safe out there!
Happy belated anniversary!
Both of us have to move (and I don't quite have a place lined up yet for myself, ha :)) and it is taking quite a bit of time. We've tried to juggle moving and game dev'ing, but it went exactly as you would expect- not so well. So, instead of rushing things, we decided to delay a bit and wait until things are settled to get things going. We'll keep you updated, and I can promise that good things are in the near future!
As always, we value your feedback and hope you're enjoying Sentinels! See you all soon :)
Winter is here!
Some creeps are also feeling a bit bah humbug, and didn't want to leave halloween behind... don't be surprised to see a few bats flying around here and there. (Real talk - a bug in the critical hit points are causing bats instead of snowflakes in some areas. Will patch out in the next couple days, but... honestly I kinda like it. :))
Patch notes:
Added christmas hats to runners and lights
Snowflake explosions added (accessible through founders only section)
Fix for creeponium being too dark in mission 2
Major improvements to missiles
Added red beam to enemy attacks
Reduced sniper recoil
Lots of tuning changes
Reduced enemy power on last wave of Iron Sky
Repair pack now only recovers half of hit wound points
Added animation for frenzy being active
Fix for doors opening on spawners
Fix for names of mods
We've also revamped our website! Let us know what you think, plenty of things to explore. :) mindwalkergames.com
And a bunch of little fixes per usual. Happy holidays!
New beta
(For instructions on how to join the beta, click here.)
Fix for creeponium being too dark in mission 2
Major improvements to missiles
Added red beam to enemy attacks
Reduced sniper recoil
Lots of tuning changes
Reduced enemy power on last wave of Iron Sky
Repair pack now only recovers half of hit wound points
Added animation for frenzy being active
Fix for doors opening on spawners
Fix for names of mods
And tons of little tweaks and adjustments per usual. If you do jump in to test the beta, thanks! Be sure to let us know what you think - your feedback is invaluable. :)
Happy Halloween
Fixed a few bugs this patch, (also an embarrassing bug that we should have caught previously) and pushing it straight to live because BATS. And bugs.
Patch notes:
Bat explosions
Pumpkin heads (I know they were in the last patch shhhhhh)
Did I mention there were bats?
Added turret animations so they actually look alive
Updated lighting
Added muzzle flashes and improvements for artillery launcher
Recoil! FPS weapons finally have it
Improved Justice attack
Disabled energy bar if no energy abilities are available
Locked skies to spooky moons only
And plenty of little fixes/tuning changes per usual.
We wanted to get in candy explosions as well, but couldn't quite make the deadline. Ah well, plans for next year :) Anyone want exploding turkeys for Thanksgiving?
New build, so much stuff!
To avoid being the next Crime and Punishment, I'll just put the juiciest updates here. When it goes live I'll be more specific, but you're just gonna have to jump in and play yourself to see all the fun stuff. We've gone ape on updating help things and even added new videos (!! click on the little red icons on the main menu) to help you find your way.
After surfacing from the mountain of changelists...
- Added pumpkin heads to runners (activated under 'founders only' in options)
- Added help videos to main menu screen
- Added new achievements to first 4 levels
- Updated runner model and animations
- New cinematics in Pit and Creeponium mine (please watch with the pumpkins enabled)
- Changed end of level stars to rank badges, so you can master each difficulty level
- Multiple Frenzy mode improvements
- Gun no longer available in frenzy mode - added invulnerability during duration
- Killstreaks added to frenzy bar
- Activating Frenzy repairs gun
- Moved ammo display to numeric counter at bottom right of reticle
- Difficulty level adjustments!
- Player attacks start at difficulty 2
- Enemy commander innate abilities at difficulty 3
- Elite abilities at difficulty 4
- Creep player detection at difficulty 5
- Player attacks start at difficulty 2
- Range is now shorter when enemies detect you, but they fire faster
- Mobile gun platform is rechristened to Goliath Armor
- Disabled micro and elite slots until later player levels, to simplify early game choices
- Added Mastered tag to levels indicating that you've gotten maximum medals and achievements
- Updated the loot box graphics, and added unique designs for each crate. (Protip: turn up loot box chances in development mode for some fun nonsense. You can drag them around with your railgun!)
- Loot boxes contents will now display on top of screen once collected, instead of at end of assaults.
There's more, but I think that's the most important stuff. Play, have fun, enjoy the latest build!
Flash sale! Last chance for 50% off!
You won’t be able to shoot while in this mode, but nothing can shoot at you either. So besides to just feeling cool as hell, it can also double as an ‘oh #&*@!!’ button when you’ve got too many fighters on your butt.
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In addition to that, we’ve added some new cinematics featuring some earnest bad guys with questionable intelligence. Enjoy a preview here.-->
It’s been a long journey (boy have I said that before) but I mean it when I say I don’t regret it for a second. With this new frenzy ability, as well as a lot of tweaks and QoL changes we’ve added, we’re finally feeling like Sentinels is nearly feature complete. We’ve come a LONG way from when we first released in 2017… I went back to check how the game looked when we first released, and it was a bit of an eye opener to say the absolute least.
As a fledgling indie dev, it’s impossible not to look at the mistakes we’ve made along the way. But we didn’t let it stop us, and I can finally say with certainty that we have a game to be proud of. I hope you’ll see that as well :)
We went from... this...
To this...
To this!
And it plays even better than it looks ;)
And if you wanted to see what happened when I revisited the 2017 version, well, here you go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-krdxLH4r8
We’ve decided to raise the price to fit the expanded roster and mountains of new content – but not before giving you one last chance to pick it up for the price of a cup of coffee. The sale ends on the 26th, after which the price will go up to what we expect to be at for full release.
Seriously, I will buy you a coffee if you decide to give Sentinels a chance. You can find me on twitter at Owlgreytea - message me! You buy an awesome game, I'll give your favorite coffee shop a call and hook you up with that sweet sweet caffeine (or herbal tea if that's more your... cup of tea. :))
The upcoming build will have Frenzy available immediately, just to see what you guys think about it, but it’ll eventually be a level unlock so it’s not too overwhelming at the start.Our focus from here on out will be less about new features and more about tuning the ones currently in game. Our vision changed a lot over the course of development, and some features still feel a little haphazard at the moment. We want to make the weapon mod system far more intuitive, and add more customization options. We want to add more loadouts and give you more options for what you want to do with your turrets and specials. And we want to work closely with you guys and make sure that we don’t get lost in the final stretch. Now, more than anything, we want to deliver a game that you’ll enjoy and have fun with. :)
tl;dr: we have a bunch of new features coming out, and price is going up in a few days. Get our badass TD/FPS hybrid for just $5 while you still can!
New beta - cinematics
We want to try a new structure with our betas, too. Instead of laboring for several weeks and then unleashing a boatload of new features on you, we’re going to try smaller, more frequent betas, where we can hopefully get feedback from you guys and make iterations before we push things live.
As always, we’d love to get your feedback. What would you like to see explained better in game? Any suggestions or changes that you’d like to see? Let us know. :)
For instructions on how to join the beta, click here.