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!
https://sentrygame.com/newsletter
Music Preview
Our composer Barry Topping has been busy recently, so we've compiled some of his recent work into this post :)
First up, here is a snippet of combat music from the game:
SENTRY uses a dynamic music system, which adjusts according to the events in-game. In order to reach this point however, Barry will create a fixed piece of music that he'll then create variations of, chop it into pieces and make stings to ensure a smooth transition between pieces.
If you'd like to hear him talk about this in more detail, there was a recent music-based event on Steam called "Save & Sound" that SENTRY participated in. During the event Barry and Design Lead Sean Noonan chatted with one another about their ambitions for the music, as well as how we approached the composition in the Announcement Trailer.
If you're interested in music and sound design in games, Save & Sound is an annual event you should definitely look out for in future.
Finally, the games section of music-themed Magnetic Magazine interviewed Barry, covering other aspects of being a composer in games, which you can read about here:
A while back we took a look at the development of our capsule art. This first article (which you can read here) looked at the latter concept stages, when we were honing in on what would be our final capsule art that you see on the game's Steam page:
In that post we mentioned our early images for this process, and how some were very cool but ultimately gave the wrong impression of the game, which is why we moved away from them. Well strap yourself in, because we're going to take a look at them now :)
Before we dive in, a quick recap on what we wanted people to feel when they look at our capsule art (in no particular order):
This game looks cool
It looks professional
It looks like a game where you shoot
It gives the impression of being sci-fi
This stood out when I saw it on a random Steam page
I want to learn more!
(We also had a technical requirement; that they worked in both portrait and landscape formats)
This should help frame why the following images didn't make the final grade!
In the early stages of concepting, you take the brief and create a lot of fast and loose variations - this is the art-based equivalent of chucking a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks! Several interesting ideas can come from this process, and you cherry-pick the elements you like to develop further.
These images felt a little too close to other games for us to progress:
On the left, the guns forming angel-like wings was akin to the first Gears of War cover, while on the right it had a very Doom-like vibe (this one was a real personal fave, and very hard to dismiss!)
Next up are playing around with some variations on enemies, players and deployables:
Both have an interesting composition, but neither worked immediately well in landscape format. The left image clearly showed the protagonists and antagonists, while on the right shows more of a chaotic snap of gameplay; the player, a co-op buddy and deployables defending a broken doorway against encroaching enemies. This was cool, but hard to parse.
The images below focus on some of the prominent mechanics in gameplay:
The left image has a SENTRY looking back at a damaged core (what the player is defending in some levels). The right image shows the venting gameplay mechanic. Both didn't feel right for the sort of game we were making though, feeling more suited to the survival horror genre.
These images revolve around another aspect of the game: the pods a SENTRY uses to enter levels:
Again, both of these were cool images in their own right, but didn't convey the other elements of the game that we wanted. You can see some inspiration from the Olly Moss film posters creep into the images :)
We also used this clean and simple design for the next two concepts:
Again, these were cool but didn't clearly communicate all of the aspects we needed to.
These final two show the player character front and centre, while also showing some enemies:
At various points we wanted to include enemies to help reinforce the sci-fi and combat elements of the game - and while we moved away from these specific designs, you can see aspects of them in our final capsule art - for example, the up-close view of the SENTRY visor, a strong-posed character with stark, simple colours.
If you want to see how we progressed from these types of images into the next stage of development, you can read all about it here.
Let us know what you think of these early concepts! And if you've read this far, you must surely be interested in the game enough for me to shamelessly plug Wishlisting it ;)
An exciting day for the SENTRY Defence Program - the Announcement Trailer is out:
In it, we see the player spawning in a level to help defend it from an enemy attack. As the battle progresses we see how player death is handled (something we talked about here) - but death doesn't mean defeat in SENTRY as long as there are crew in stasis to revive and throw into the fight. The new SENTRY gains the upper hand in a pyrrhic victory - of course beyond the events in this trailer the fight would continue in-game when the next SENTRY arrives in their spawn pod to deal with the fallout from their predecessors actions!
You may also have noticed when you navigate to the SENTRY store page that another video plays before the trailer. This is our Announcement Teaser:
It shows a few clips of gameplay and is a handy way of showing people what the game is like very quickly before settling into the full trailer.
We'll do a proper breakdown of the trailer in a future post that talks about some of the cool elements the team enjoyed making, as well as how difficult it was to capture - it's nearly 90 seconds to the first cut, and the vast majority of takes was me doing a perfect run... and then doing something silly in the last few seconds, invalidating the whole take...
Anyway, let us know what you think - and remember; the SENTRY Defence Program needs you, so sign-up today!
New screenshot showing the defence of a Power Core!
Here's a new screenshot we've just added:
(You can see a larger version by navigating to the store page screenshot carousel and clicking on the image)
In this one, the player is running toward their co-op companion who is defending a power core from a wave of oncoming enemies.
The co-op player has set up a good defensive position behind a barricade with turrets providing supporting fire. Hopefully the arrival of the player will help turn the tide...
Our announcement trailer is going to be unveiled in the next 24 hours, so make sure you're reporting for duty to watch it - the SENTRY Defence Program needs you!
