Dev Transmission (February 2024)
Hi everyone, have you seen the news? SENTRY is releasing into Early Access on Monday 25th March!
As mentioned in the previous Dev Transmission, our proximity to this important milestone means we’re spending most of our time polishing, bug-fixing and responding to Playtest feedback. We have done a few things worth specifically mentioning though:
Opening Sector!
We have created a more structured opening part of the game to help ease first-time players in. This is a sector you play through once per profile, so once you’ve completed this you enter the normal gameplay flow which is balanced for experienced players.
New Enemy!
When it comes to adding enemies, we look at gaps in the roster that make the player act in a certain way. One area we felt was missing was a slow moving, high health enemy that would force players to either prioritise whittling it down early (during which time other enemies are progressing) or leave it till late and risk it escaping. So we created the Giant Slug to fulfil this role:
If the player gets too close it’ll emit a high damaging psychic shockwave, so keep your distance!
Polish!
While we’re beavering away on bug-fixes and polish, there’s a few that have stood out as particularly enjoyable additions to the game:
- HUD changes that communicate which breach points enemies are spawning from, so you have some visibility about how many enemies remain
- Additional loudspeaker lines to help communicate level states. These range from blast doors being breached, to warnings about enemies being close to escape or which breach point enemies are attacking from
- A breach bar that replaces the numerical countdown. This helps communicate any scrap bonuses you receive per wave, including an additional bonus for breaching early (which was a frequent Next Fest demo request)
- Tooltips on the map nodes within the Navigator, and clearer messaging around when hunter ships or homing missiles will spawn and chase you down
- A polish pass over the environment art, helping to further differentiate between levels:
Playtesting!
ICYMI: we’re always on the lookout for more playtesters, details here if you’re interested…
Keep the feedback and comments coming! You can reach us on these platforms:
The March update is likely to be different from usual as it’s our release month so will be all about bugs and polish, but normal service should resume from April onwards.
Before we launch we’ll give you a heads up about taking the demo down, plus our Early Access Roadmap too.
Not long now… thanks for all the support!