In the last update we mentioned that we’d just started work on a new weapon which is now implemented. The SMG sits roughly between the pistol and assault rifle so is a lower-tier weapon, but we’ve been having a fantastic time spraying enemies with it (or more measured bursts of fire in its dual-shot alternate fire mode).
New Enemy!
We’ve also created a new ‘Wasp’ enemy (placeholder name btw!)
In our enemy roster we have aliens that occupy the lower-and-middle thirds of the screen, but were lacking something that would draw the players aim to the upper portion.
The wasp helps fulfill that space and we’ve made it a small target with low health, low damage but high speed that has already helped mix up combat in a positive way.
When we’re thinking about enemy archetypes we also need to consider how they gel with deployables (our term for traps and turrets) so the ceiling mounted Steam trap is essential in dealing with them.
We’ll do a video devlog soon where you can see both the SMG and the Wasp in action.
Dynamic Campaign!
Last month we commenced work on our Navigator mode, which sits above the Ship Overview (which in turn is above the level-based FPS/TD gameplay). These collectively form our dynamic campaign and is a substantial part of what differentiates SENTRY from other FPS and TD games, so is something we continue to spend a lot of time working on.
This month we’ve been putting together several sectors of space you travel through, as well as implementing some basic sound effects, music and camera controls to improve the experience.
We’ve also been refining the ‘boarding parties’, which are the alien forces that move around your ship trying to take over different levels. Because SENTRY isn’t a linear game, we need to ensure that when enemies attack they are comprised of different waves emerging from different breaching locations, so that should the same level be attacked a subsequent time, the gameplay will be different. This is one aspect that is already working particularly well!
While we’re holding off showing a bunch of this stuff until it’s ready, here’s some concept art of what the current ship class (called “The Roughneck”) looks like:
Other stuff!
Our recent playtests highlighted issues where our AI had a habit of piling onto the player, so we’ve been implementing additional AI target prioritization systems to ensure that there is a better balance between the level objective and fighting the player. This is an area that will undoubtedly continue to be refined the more we test.
We did an additional art pass on Fuel Exchange, Alex has been having fun adding incidental signage around the level:
This next item falls under one of those “not very exciting but still essential” features, but we’ve implemented a Control Rebinding menu for both keyboard and gamepad-based control schemes.
Our enemies have different coloured versions that denote an increase in their power and behavior. We took one enemy type and created some model variations to further differentiate them. As this has proven successful we’ll roll this out onto other enemies that have these variants:
Just for fun!
In May we attended Format, a nightclub and gaming event based in Manchester. Here’s our demo station set up and ready to go, and you can see a short video of the event in full swing here.
It was great fun but my voice was destroyed from talking to people above the music for several hours!
Hope you enjoy hearing about the latest updates, if you want to reach out to us we’re active on all these platforms:
SENTRY Video Devlog: New level, enemy + 50k Wishlists!
Hi, just a quick update to share a video Devlog we've created that shows some of our work in the last month or so. Enjoy!
Dev Transmission! (April 2023)
Hi everyone, here's what we've been working on this month:
Navigator Mode!
We have a dynamic campaign in SENTRY. This takes the form of two layers that sit above the moment-to-moment level-based gameplay. The first of these is the Ship Overview, a map of the ship that enemy forces move around and you choose when and where to fight them. Above the Ship Overview is the Navigator mode. This is a map of space that you choose a route through on your escape run.
We've spent the majority of our time in April working on this Navigator mode, taking it from a prototype to something suitable for a released game. That includes systems that populate the enemy boarding parties that move around the Ship Overview (and you thus fight in the levels).
We've still got lots of work to do on it but it's shaping up very nicely (and we'll share visuals at the right time!)
New Level!
The latest level we've added is "Engineering". This started off as one of our early prototype levels that we felt was strong, so we made some adjustments and did an art pass. Here's how it's shaping up:
New Enemy!
During March we created a new dog enemy. This charges toward the player and lunges at them, encouraging them to prioritise shooting them first, or strafing out of the way of their attack.
We felt like there was a good opportunity to make a variant of this enemy type, so created a dog with a ranged attack. This holds back and spits acid at you which causes damage over time, with the enemy performing occasional side-hops to throw off your aim.
Other stuff!
In early April we smashed through the 50,000 Wishlist barrier. For reference, that puts us at around the 370th most wishlisted game on Steam. This is an important achievement, thanks to all those that have Wishlisted thus far, it's a massive help!
We've started work on our next weapon, the SMG. We'll show you how it ended up in our May update, but until then here's the concept art of it:
And just for fun!
It seems like a long time ago now, but the start of April we were still demo-ing the game, this time in London for the WASD event. Here's the stand, along with the game being played:
This event was interesting in that there was a remote setup (the right-hand monitor). This meant that if I needed a break, Sean could connect and talk people through the demo. It's the first time I've seen this remote demo-ing and it worked well, so I imagine it'll become more prevalent in future shows.
We hope you enjoyed this latest update, we’re active on the following platforms if you want to see sneak peeks of the game or reach out to us:
Hi everyone, here's what we've been up to recently:
Physical Demo!
As we had several events we were attending at the end of March, the majority of our time was focused on polishing and bug-fixing a physical demo we were putting together.
This involved watching a lot of local people play the game, making notes and carrying out improvements, then repeating the process until we had to catch our flights :)
New Level!
We felt like a new level with a lot of windows would be a good thing for demo-players to enjoy, so we created "Fuel Exchange". Here is an in-editor work-in-progress shot:
And the same level after a weeks more work:
It's not quite finished yet as we'd like to do an additional art pass, but it worked well for the purposes of the demo.
New Enemies!
We had four enemies planned for the demo, and last month took two of these to the right level of quality. This month we took the additional two - nicknamed "Dog" and "Leech" - to that same quality level. Their behaviour is quite different from the bipedal enemies we've made thus far, so it provides a good mix in combat. We love making enemies, we've got loads more in-progress that we'll continue adding later!
Other stuff!
We added gamepad support! Doing this meant including a bunch of gamepad specific controls to adjust to do with deadzones, look acceleration, aim assist and more.
We set up auto-control switching so it's easy to switch between control methods
We also expanded some other settings for the visuals plus keyboard & mouse.
And just for fun!
The events I mentioned earlier included two press-focused ones at GDC in San Francisco across the 20th and 21st March:
One of them had a feature on Steam which got us a load of Wishlists, which is always good :)
Then on Wednesday the 22nd I flew to meet our artist Alex in Boston. We set up our booth ready to commence PAX East the following day:
This was four amazing days of players enjoying the demo and we even got to meet a few from our Discord which was a personal highlight. People loved how the game felt and the venting was a big hit! It was exhausting though, this is pretty much what our booth looked like across Thursday to Sunday:
Being selected by judges to gain entry to the GDC events plus the PAX Rising Showcase was really cool to have our hard work recognised :)
Once PAX East finished on Sunday we caught an overnight flight back to the UK, had a couple of days working before heading to WASD (a 3-day event in London) so we're pretty tired!
WASD is part of the larger London Games Festival and we're honoured to have been selected as part of the "Best of British" category:
We hope you enjoyed this latest update, we’re active on the following platforms if you want to see sneak peeks of the game or reach out to us:
Hi everyone, here's what we've been up to recently:
Enemy Focus!
Up till now, all our enemies were using basic AI, behavior and placeholder animations, so there has been a big focus on taking them one-at-a-time to the right level of quality.
First up was our most common soldier type enemy that has been seen in a lot of our videos we’ve been sharing. We’ve implemented a huge amount of new behavior which we’ll cover in a separate post at a later date.
We then moved on to our second enemy, seen in our announcement trailer wielding a one-handed melee weapon. In addition to the improved animations, AI and behavior, we’ve expanded the types of attack it can perform, and added a leap to the side which makes tracking them in combat a more interesting challenge.
New Deployables!
While the majority of our time this month was centred upon enemies, we still found time to introduce six new deployables. Here’s some concept art of them:
Upcoming shows!
SENTRY has made the shortlist to demo in three upcoming events. It’s our first time taking the game ‘on the road’ so we’re looking forward to it!
The MIX and European Games Showcase during GDC week are both press-focused events, however we’ve been selected for the PAX Rising showcase in PAX East – so if you’re planning on being there, stop by to say hello!
Other stuff!
Following on from the creation of our Mess Hall level from our last post, we created a bunch of breakable props to populate the level. Lots of fun shooting those up!
Created three new player abilities - a Bandolier, Health Stim and System Bypass Module
Our team T-Shirts arrived :)
Stay subscribed to our various social channels listed at the bottom, we’ll be giving some of these t-shirts away in the near future!
And just for fun!
While SENTRY is our priority, it was the anniversary of our last game Abandon Ship recently, so we found the time to add some free content to that game to celebrate – one of the new ships was inspired by a SENTRY, as you can see from this concept + model below:
It was fun to take a subject from one game and apply it to a game with a completely different art style!
We hope you enjoyed this latest update, we recently broke through an impressive Wishlist milestone so keep on hitting that Wishlist button if you like the look of the game!
Also we’re active on the following platforms if you want to see sneak peeks or reach out to us:
Hi everyone, I'm starting up a monthly post to keep you updated on cool stuff going into the game. For this first one we’ll take a look back at some of the headline additions over the last few months.
In the meantime, if you’d like to see some of the below in action then you should check out the videos we post on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. I post about three to four short videos a week at the moment.
Here's what we've been working on:
New Weapons!
In our Announcement Trailer we showed the Assault Rifle and Burst Pistol, while the co-op player wielded the Bolt Rifle (some of these may be placeholder names btw) and we’ve been adding more weapons. Here’s some concept art of the Shotgun:
Abilities!
We’ve added some abilities to the game, my personal favourite is the Vortex Glove that throws enemies and objects back.
New Deployables!
This is our term for the traps and turrets you’d find in other TD games. I'm loving the Wall Spikes (placeholder name), they're short-ranged but deadly. You can see that plus the Shotgun and Vortex Glove in action below:
New Enemies!
There’s quite a menagerie of aliens we’re building, although we’re holding off on showing these till our next big trailer (we have to keep some surprises). The eagle-eyed among you may notice some of these new enemies sneaking into a few videos I've posted on our various channels over the last few weeks...
New Levels!
Here’s a screenshot of one of our new levels called ‘Mess Hall’:
Other stuff!
There’s been A LOT of work on various aspects of the game:
We added a player Mantle ability to make traversal round the environments more fluid
Tons of feedback improvements to combat and the messaging around that
A Main Menu system - I'm really happy with how this sets the tone the moment you start the game.
Loadout menus for weapon/deployable/ability selection when entering levels via the pods.
A shutter system for stopping venting. Works whatever the size of the window:
And just for fun!
When enemy grenades are thrown at the player, you can now melee them right back. Feels especially satisfying when said grenade explodes next to a window and vents the aliens into space:
An achievement waiting to happen perhaps?
(you can also repel grenades with the Vortex Glove)
Let us know your thoughts on all this! You can reach us right here on the Steam forums, Twitter or our Discord :)
Season's Greetings!
As the end to 2022 rapidly approaches it's a natural moment to reflect on progress: when we released our announcement trailer earlier this year we were super-happy with the response, and since then we've had continued excitement from the community. Thank-you for that, it is much appreciated!
We're very happy with how SENTRY is shaping up. As we develop the game we make a lot of awesome content, so next year I'm planning on posting more frequent updates here to show off some of that cool stuff :)
One area where we often debut new features is our TikTok, so make sure to follow us there for some sneak peeks, and you can always chat to us directly on any of our platforms, including the Steam forums or our Discord.
We can't wait to get SENTRY in your hands in 2023, both in terms of demos and release :)
So however you celebrate, everyone at Fireblade Software (me, Adam, Alex, Sean, Barry & Mark) wish you a happy and fantastic end to 2022!
Guildford Games Festival 2022!
We're very happy to be hosting the third iteration of the Guildford Games Festival on Steam, which runs from December 1st through to the 5th.
All of the games on Steam developed in the GU postcode area can be found on this page, many with discounts so it's a great opportunity to pick up some deals!
Click on the image below to be taken to it:
Just like in the 2020 and 2021 versions, the page artwork contains nods to local landmarks (this time the castle and statue on top of the cathedral feature heavily) as well as plenty of references to the games made in Guildford.
Here's the artwork from previous years:
2020:
2021:
There's an unusually high concentration of games studios in Guildford and it has a rich gaming history, so it's awesome to be able to showcase these all in one place.
If you'd like to find out more, you can visit the guildford.games website.
Realms Deep 2022
Realms Deep 2022, the annual digital showcase organized by 3D Realms and friends was packed with all the coolest indie FPS gems:
You can see SENTRY at around 1hr and 28mins, but if you're into similar games there's tons more worth checking out :)
Newsletter Signup is now live!
It's been on my to-do list for aaaaaages, but we've finally got a Newsletter Signup sorted, which you can find here:
https://sentrygame.com/newsletter
Why do you want to sign up for our newsletter? Firstly, we get a lot of requests for people who want to be first in line for any demo-testing, and a Newsletter will be one of the first places we announce it.
Secondly, it'll be an awesome source of SENTRY knowledge delivered direct to your inbox. We only send emails infrequently and when we've got a lot to talk about, so it's not one of those spammy newsletters we all hate.
And perhaps saving the best till last, anybody who signs up to the Newsletter gets their name in the game!.
We did this with our previous title Abandon Ship, where newsletter names were used for randomly generated crewmembers. You can read about the details of how it was used by clicking on the image below:
How does it work?
Each SENTRY is responsible for repelling alien invaders, drawn from ship crew who are kept in stasis until your vessel is boarded. Should your SENTRY perish in battle, another crew member will be activated until the threat is eliminated. The name of each SENTRY is pulled at random from a database, and being subscribed to the newsletter means your name is added to that database. So anyone who plays the game will potentially see you pop up :)
TLDR; if you're interested in SENTRY, sign up now!
