Hello everyone,

Our Discord Playtesters are putting the full campaign co-op through its paces, so we’re keeping a keen eye on any issues that crop up from that!

As mentioned in last month’s Dev Transmission, we’ll follow the same template as we did with the combat co-op build, where we tested with increasing group sizes until the open Steam test. This worked really well in that we ironed out a lot of issues before the majority of people got to play it.

While we’ve currently got enough testing coverage, we’ll likely welcome another swathe of Discord members into the Playtest role in January to accompany an updated co-op build, so if that’s of interest head over[discord.com] and keep an eye on the Announcements channel.

The Autumn and Winter sales have recently added a lot of new members to the SENTRY community, so if you’re interested in playing the combat side of co-op now there are instructions here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/1252680/view/4438953498491486247

While co-op has been a large focus for Adam this month, we’ve still been making progress on some new features we touched on in the November Dev Transmission, including:

The vendor needed a vessel to be represented on the Navigator, so we’ve been concepting that:

Sticking with the vendor, our original plan was to just make the top half of the character for when they’re shown in the UI panel while selling their wares – however after discussion we felt it safer to make the full body to give us flexibility later (it’s a lot more efficient to make the full character in one go rather than add a bottom half down the line) – but what does that bottom half look like? Here’s what we’re currently deliberating between:

Alex has also made the character models for the three new enemies we showed concepts for last month. I got her to stick all our enemies (minus a few visual-only variants on the larger characters) in a lineup so you can see how the roster is shaping up:

We also started concepts on another new enemy, but I’ll show those once we’re further along.

As always, we finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.

This month Discord user Waste-o-Spacebar made us laugh when he shared this clip of him and a co-op buddy placing a lot of barrels before igniting one – it goes about as well as you’d expect…

Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
• TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
  
• Instagram[www.instagram.com]
  
• Discord[discord.com]
  
• Newsletter signup[sentrygame.com]

The end of the year is a natural time for reflection, and we’ve loved seeing how you’ve all reacted to the Early Access release of SENTRY.

Aside from people generally enjoying the game (which is ultimately why we’re all here) it’s been great to see your comments have been thoughtful, cohesive and aligned with our own plans. This helps us know we’re all pulling in the same direction. That’s important because being such a small team means we only have so much ‘muscle’, so a big thank-you to everyone who acts as a force multiplier and spends the time letting us know your feedback.

While co-op has certainly taken longer than we’d like, we’d rather not rush such an important feature and risk disappointing everyone who is keen to play it (this approach has thus far paid dividends with the co-op combat test). We’re conscious that any delays incurred here shouldn’t impact our plans for the main game – so rest assured it won’t have a detrimental effect on the rest of SENTRY. We’d rather take a bit longer to add everything we want than stick to some arbitrary date – the game is the most important thing after all. The eagle-eyed may have noted the Early Access blurb on the store page has been updated to reflect our current thinking, changing from our original estimate to Summer 2025. We’ll update this as we hone in on full release.

We’ll be taking the week between Christmas and New Years Eve off, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the forums in case anyone needs assistance or has questions.

However you spend this time of year, everyone at Fireblade wishes you a great end to 2024 :)

Hello everyone, here’s the latest SENTRY news!

At the start of the month we launched the first public co-op test (details here), which was focused on putting the combat side of co-op through its paces. We did a lot of private testing among our Discord community before we opened this up on Steam, but it was encouraging to see that it handled the greater volume of players well – so to everyone that tested this, a massive thank-you!

While we’ve got a list of things we’d like to improve/add in future, because there weren’t any emergency issues we felt it was better to plough on with the full campaign co-op. The basic navigator and overview are all networking correctly and we’re currently deep in adding the proper menu flow. Beyond that, it’s ensuring that the progression functions as it should, for example equipment discovered (and banked) while playing in a co-op partner’s campaign should then appear in your own profile for use in future sessions (whether those be in singleplayer, joining a friend or your friend joining you).

For the combat co-op test, it worked well ironing out the issues with our lovely Discord playtesters first before rolling this out to an open test on Steam, and we’ll follow the same procedure with the campaign co-op test. So Discord peeps: keep an eye on the announcement channel in December for news on this test :)

The existing combat co-op test will be available to play until the full campaign co-op is ready.

With our sole programmer being occupied with co-op, recently Sean and Alex have been either working on new levels – one of which you’ll have seen in the combat co-op test, or queuing up content for after Major Update 2 – so I thought it might be cool for you to see just a snippet of some of what we have in the pipeline. Big caveats apply with showing early work of course – it’s likely to change, has working titles, could ultimately get rejected etc.

First up is some new equipment. The Shuriken is an active ability that bounces from target to target, while the overhead laser is a ceiling-based deployable. The Steam Jets cover too many bases at the moment, so they’ll be adjusted to perform a slightly different function (like damage-over-time) which then provides an opening for this new instant-damage-dealing trap.

Melee weapons were a popular request, so a high-frequency blade and stun-stick are the two we’re looking at making next:

Not to be outdone, the Collective have reinforcements en route:

The two flyers will be larger than the current breed. While one will perform heavy bombardments from afar, the other will boost nearby enemies. The creature on the right will have a special ability that disables nearby deployables.

We’ve picked these enemies as next up in the queue because their behavior is different from the existing roster, and should provide an additional consideration when it comes to target prioritisation – you probably don’t want to leave an enemy that boosts allies for too long, nor one that temporarily disables your defences…

Next up is another alien – but this one isn’t trying to kill you!

(we haven’t decided on the colour scheme yet)

These vendors will appear on the navigator, and visiting nodes with their vessels present will allow you to see what equipment they have for sale, which should make getting those missing weapons etc. a bit easier to obtain.

Finally – and while there’s nothing visual to accompany this – one thing you will see in Major Update 2 is that enemies now have differing escape costs – so a larger escaping enemy will do more damage to the sub-system health than a tiny one. As this nudges the difficulty higher, Sean has done some equipment rebalancing to compensate.

He’s also been adding more wave types – partly in preparation for when we do the next campaign above Starfarer – but you’ll see some of these changes bleed into the existing campaigns too.

We’ll finish off this post with some cool stuff from the community.

Discord user Jajomba is always digging around in the game files, so we had a good chuckle when he took our alien soldier and modded him into Bomb Rush Cyberfunk:

If you have (or see) any cool SENTRY-related stuff, send it my way :)

Feedback is invaluable help in improving the game, so keep it coming! You can reach us on all these places:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
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Thanks for the support, it’s been great to see the campaign co-op coming along – but we’re equally excited about returning to the long list of things we want to improve and new features to add once Major Update 2 has been released! And just a heads up, the December Dev Transmission will be posted a bit earlier as we’ll be taking the Christmas week off.

Hello everyone, we've released a build you can opt into to play combat in co-op!

Before I dive into the details: a big thanks to those in our Discord community who have helped playtest co-op thus far, a lot of the revisions and bug-fixes have been a direct result of your feedback.

The Combat Co-op Technical Test (which is a mouthful, but an accurate description) is designed for you to help us put combat co-op through its paces and stress how it performs to a larger audience - and have fun while doing so :)

If you wish to play it, right-click the game in your Library and select "Properties", followed by "Betas". In the drop down list, select "cooptest - Public Co-op Playtesting" and you should see the branch name appear next to the game in Steam. Once you're playing, the bottom-right of the main menu should display a build ID "Co-op Playtest 0.7.25115" (or higher)

Some important information to read before diving in:

• This is for combat only - the full campaign co-op is in progress and will be released in a future test.
  
• The demo takes the form of two levels that are randomly selected when you play: an updated Mess Hall and Logistics, which outside of playtests you wouldn't have seen before. We've picked these levels because between them they cover most level systems (death pits, venting, overhead cranes that drop explosive crates)
  
• The co-op front end menus are very minimal at the moment, they test the underlying code which is the most important thing, and the proper menus will follow along with the full campaign co-op test.
  
• This doesn't use your main game profile and saves, so it won't impact your campaign playthroughs. It's never a bad idea to back up your saves though!
  
• The "Find Game" option is essentially Matchmaking and is for open play with strangers.
  
• The "Private Game" option is for you to host. Choose the "Invite Friend" option to invite someone on your friends list who owns SENTRY to play with you. I've put the game on discount this week so you can tell your friends now is an ideal time to jump in :)
  
• The in-game voice chat has settings to change. If you're using an external source like Discord you may want to switch off the in-game chat otherwise you'll hear it twice.
  
• If one person disconnects, the other will too. In the full campaign it'll be different because there'll always be a host, so if the client disconnects the host will continue playing their campaign.
  
• As this is a beta, please report any bugs/feedback in the dedicated Steam forum or on our Discord.

Oh, and because this is a standalone test please don't focus too much on the difficulty as the context of the full campaign matters a lot! It's why we're referring to this as a "Technical Test" - we want to know about bugs, or anything you feel that is missing from the experience (for example, one thing on our to-do list is to add a log so you know when your partner dies etc).

We know that having standalone combat gameplay modes outside of a campaign is a highly requested feature, and we're planning on those modes being added at the end of Early Access.

As it's the end of the month, I thought I'd wrap our usual Dev Transmission into this post too - so here's what other stuff we've been doing in October:

• A new level called Storage:
  
  
• Tweaks from feedback on the recent new or updated levels and arting up those changes
  
• The co-op test build is a snapshot of our latest changes, so it’ll have picked up a bunch of weapon and deployable balancing changes Sean has been making
  
• You’ll also see that the early start bonus is gone. This was making people feel too under pressure, but will probably make an appearance in a new ship type for those that want it
  
• There has also been some enemy balancing tweaks, with a lowered chance of soldier enemies throwing grenades. There's still a chance that grenade spam can happen, but it should be less frequent now (as much as I know some of you love “GRENADEGRENADEGRENADEGRENADE”…)
  
• The Storm Warden’s hand cannon now has unique audio (it was previously using the alien shotgun sound effect)
  
• With our sole programmer being wrapped up in co-op, Alex has been concepting up some future deployables and enemies to get ahead on future content – I’d love to show them as they’re very cool, however I don’t want to get ahead of myself quite yet just in case they don’t make the cut for whatever reason :)

I don’t normally ask for this sort of thing, but as we’ve been nominated for an award and I was writing this post anyway I figured why not?

Anyway – the award is essentially a popularity contest and as we’re the only self-published game in it I’d love to stick it to the games that have big teams and publishers (just kidding, I have buddies at those studios). Simply quote tweet this post[x.com] with the text:

“I vote for SENTRY to win the @gugamesfest Players’ Choice Award at #ggAwards24”

Much appreciated!

We’ll finish off this post with some cool stuff from the community.

Steam user Grinnij created their own render of the P9:

We always get a kick out of seeing this sort of thing, so please flag any fan art you see on your travels!

Feedback is incredibly important in improving the game, so please keep it coming! You can reach us on all these places:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
• TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
  
• Instagram[www.instagram.com]
  
• Discord[discord.com]
  
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Thanks for the support, while we’re keen to resume work on the full campaign co-op, if there’s anything particularly urgent that crops up we’ll update the combat test build and let you know.

Hi all, our programmer Adam is continuing to work through the mountain of tasks in order to get the Combat Co-op Test ready for public consumption, which is his primary focus – it’s getting closer!

Originally, we were thinking that this upcoming combat co-op test would be friends/invite only and thus those people could utilise Discord for voice chat, however we felt that it was important to also test open play, and therefore needed to add in-game voice support. This includes various additional voice-related settings to tweak to your preference.

We also found that when designing how you’d logistically connect and play with one another, we had an increasing amount of questions around how this would work in the full campaign. While we had designs for this, the devil is truly in the details and creating the exact UI flow, answering those specifics and solving those edge cases flushes out all sorts of horrible problems that needed resolution. An added benefit to doing this is that there are some shared assets and code between both the combat co-op test and what will be used in the full game.

Our testing has also thrown up some issues that we’d ideally sort too, things like one player sneaking into the other player’s pod at exact moments and getting stuck.

All told, that’s put us a bit behind where we were hoping to be, but important progress nonetheless. We’re just as eager to get this out as you are to play it; we just need to make sure we do it the right way and not rush something that doesn’t meet your expectations.

With our sole programmer working on co-op, we’ve got Sean and Alex churning through new levels.

With Logistics and Chasm having had multiple playtests and refinements, both have now had their art pass from Alex.

I’ve personally been having a lot of fun with the Vortex Glove, Vortex Grid and Conveyors in Chasm – there’s lots of opportunities to throw enemies into the abyss:

In Logistics, we’ve made the overhead conveyors MUCH easier to hit so they release their crates directly below them. We also made the non-explosive crates they drop stun any enemies they hit, although the image below shows the explosive variety:

We have a reworked Central Processing out with our playtesters. Sean has simplified the routes into the core room and ensured the walls next to the windows were adjusted to allow effective deployable placement when the shutters were closed:

We’re working to close off those long sightlines the enemy had on the core, so they shouldn’t be able to snipe it from as far away as they could previously:

The player spawn area has been completely redesigned. It’s simpler and shorter so you can quickly get back into the action:

All enemy spawns (the old A and C, along with new placements for B and D) are situated in the same cardinal direction, so you're able to better defend on a single front:

That means the old B and D spawns have been removed – we’re thinking the layouts for that side of the original map could be the basis for a future level. Sean talks about some of his workings and thought process here[x.com], if you’re interested.

With this rework of Central Processing, we’ll also use this opportunity to ensure the level has an improved framerate, as it was one of our worst performing levels. And speaking of optimisations, Alex has done a pass over the Crossing, so you’ll see improvements to loading times on that level once the Major Update releases.

Fuel Exchange has also got a design pass to improve it. Some of these original levels may feel acceptable as they are, but as we saw with Mess Hall having a subsequent pass accounting for player feedback can really improve things (although at the time Mess Hall had more overt issues!)

The primary change is around the old Operations room. Whereas three routes used to converge at this point, now the old A spawn meets up with D and the old B and C routes go through here:

I talk about “old” breach points, because we’ve renamed them so that A to D goes from left-to-right as you enter the level. So that means the new A & B (old A and D) are off to the left, while the new C & D (old B & C) are off to the right. A bit initially confusing for veterans, but the objectives are easier to read now.

There’s some good places in the map for the player to rotate between A/B and C/D, some of these are one-way drops:

The new Fuel Exchange hasn’t gone out to playtesters yet, so we’d expect some changes to come from reviewing their feedback.

As with all our new levels, once we’ve had the chance to incorporate playtest feedback we’ll pass it over to Alex so she can finish the art.

As is usual, we’ll finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.

Discord user TheCartoon1st has drawn one of our enemies emerging victorious from a battle with a turret:

We love seeing this sort of thing, so if you spot anything cool on your travels please send it our way.

Speaking of community, thank-you to those that supported any of the games in the recent Special Effect sale we participated in. All of the games on this event page contribute toward the charity, so hopefully you picked up some good games for less, along with helping a good cause at the same time :)

We track all of your feedback in a big list, so keep it coming! If we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
• TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
  
• Instagram[www.instagram.com]
  
• Discord[discord.com]
  
• Newsletter signup[sentrygame.com]

Thanks for the support, as soon as the co-op combat test is up I’ll be posting about it!

Hi everyone, work is progressing nicely on Major Update 2 and all being well we’ll be having a public co-op test in September. As mentioned in the previous Dev Transmission, this first test will be focused on combat only, the campaign co-op test will follow on from that.

Some of the co-op focused tasks we’ve done in August relate around people playing in edge-case but valid circumstances. For example, what happens when people playing together have differing Dispenser upgrade levels? How does the game treat pre-placed dispensers?

We’ve solved this by differentiating player-placed and pre-placed dispensers, and these have differing models to reflect the changes:

As we were making changes in this area, we thought it’d also be nice to have model variants for Mastered versions of the dispensers too.

Another edge-case we’ve tackled is how co-op handles lives – specifically what happens when there are no more crew for a respawn? When this happens the dead player will enter a spectator mode. We’re putting a bunch of security cameras around levels and players that cannot respawn will commandeer them. The image below shows the three states security cameras can be in; inactive, active and controlled by a player. The latter is useful so the person still in combat can see which camera is currently controlled by their ally:

In order for players in this state to still contribute to the fight, we’re looking at giving certain abilities in this mode. Tagging enemies, remotely collecting scrap, some form of enemy stunning and more are all being considered for implementation.

At some point it’ll be good to expand this functionality out to spectators controlling turrets, but that’s a future task as it’s a bit more involved.

We’ve implemented the final set of third party animations so you can now see the other player perform all crouch-related actions and fixed a lot of sound effects that weren’t playing correctly in co-op.

We’ll be putting the combat co-op test through its paces among our Discord community first, but as soon as the public branch is available we’ll create a Steam announcement so you can dive in and let us know your thoughts.

Barry has been back on the project in August and has made a bunch of new tracks which we’re planning to include as part of Major Update 2. While the majority of these are new music for combat, there’s some new Navigator music too.

As a sneak peek, here’s a snippet of one of the new combat tracks:

We get a lot of questions around when we’ll be releasing the soundtrack, this will be closer to full release.

Sean has created two new levels: Logistics and Chasm. Our Discord playtesters have provided feedback on the greybox versions which we’ll action before these get handed over to Alex to finish the art.

Chasm has a lot of places where you can throw enemies into the abyss:

Logistics allows you to shoot overhead conveyors to drop explosive crates on enemies as they are on the final stretch to the exit:

We’re also planning on giving Central Processing a pass for Major Update 2, it’s our oldest level and it shows!

When you master a weapon, you’ll now get a special weapon skin for it:

Weapon skins have been a popular request, so this is likely an area we’ll expand upon in future.

With one programmer, one artist and one designer Major Update 2 has thus far proven to be a dependency nightmare – Adam is almost exclusively working on co-op, which is a very technically intensive task – so Alex and Sean have had to work on areas that don’t require a lot of code support (like the levels mentioned above).

It has however given us the opportunity to look further ahead at content that would be added beyond Major Update 2, so we have some early concepts of melee weapons, designs for adding vendors into the campaign, visualizing attacking enemies before entering levels and some other cool things that are part of the longer-term plans.

As is usual, we’ll finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.

This month, Discord user Jajomba has put together a mockup of a new enemy he’d like to see in the game:

He described this as a back-stabbing, vent-crawling, wall-climbing commando type enemy:

We love seeing this sort of thing, whether it be fan art, impressive gameplay clips or whatever – send them our way on any of our socials or direct to me via our Discord and we’ll share with the community (with your permission of course).

Keep giving us your feedback! We track it all in a big list and even if we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
• TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
  
• Instagram[www.instagram.com]
  
• Discord[discord.com]
  
• Newsletter signup[sentrygame.com]

Thanks for all the support and I’ll post up on Steam as soon as that public co-op test is live :)

Hi everyone, check out our latest Devlog diving into Major Update 1: Starfarer:

Sean hates it when I ask him to make one of these, so if you enjoyed it do please give it a thumbs up to help him forgive me :)

As we enter a new month I’ll also use this post for our July Dev Transmission!

At the beginning of the month, we followed up the Starfarer Major Update with a patch – you can read about all those changes here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/1252680/view/4383774438051194459

Aside from the Devlog and Patch above, co-op – which is the headline feature of MU2 – has been our priority.

Co-op is split into two areas on SENTRY; Combat and the Campaign. The combat co-op requires a lot of technical support but is reasonably straightforward from a design perspective. The Campaign co-op is the exact opposite; it being turn-based doesn’t require any of the same level of technical investment as fast-paced FPS/TD combat gameplay does, but ensuring it works well with progression sharing etc. involves a lot of design planning.

That means during the development of MU2 we’ll likely run two public beta branch tests. The first would be in a demo format that allows players to really hammer the co-op combat gameplay and flush out any issues there that we can work on, with the latter beta branch test being the fully fledged campaign co-op. We’ll keep you updated with our progress!

With all eyes on co-op this month, this’ll be Adam’s focus for a while. We’re expecting Sean and Alex to increasingly work on other areas while Adam is ploughing through his co-op tasks – but more on that in the next Dev Transmission…

I’ll finish off with some cool stuff from the community – I’m often posting impressive gameplay clips to various short form video sites (TikTok, FB/Insta Reels and YT Shorts links below) and it’s always cool to see the amazing skill levels on display.

Here’s some fan art from Twitter user CN_Blackraven, imagining the Soldier enemy and Auto Turret as female variants:

SENTRY dating sim when?

Finally Discord user “The Darter” has made it his personal mission to escape every level and go where no designer ever intended. Here’s a screengrab of one of his escapades, getting into the Server room under the glass floor in Mainframe:

If you can see it, The Darter has probably been there.

If you’ve got any interesting gameplay captures, fan art or anything cool you’d like to show us – share them on any of our socials or send them direct to me via our Discord. We’ll share it (with your permission of course) on our various channels and we love seeing it – I’ve been sent some exceptionally awesome stuff recently I’ll share in a future Dev Transmission.

Keep telling us your thoughts! We keep track of them all in a big list and even if we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:

• Steam forums
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitter
  
• Facebook[www.facebook.com]
  
• TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
  
• Instagram[www.instagram.com]
  
• Discord[discord.com]
  
• Newsletter signup[sentrygame.com]

Thanks for all the support and if you haven’t done so already, please leave a Steam review!

SENTRY is in the Steam Tower Defense Fest! Unsurprisingly, we’re big fans of the genre – but SENTRY isn’t your typical Tower Defense/FPS hybrid, so I thought it might be useful for people checking us out for the first time to have a little explainer.

We wanted to do something different with Action Defense games. After all, OMD, Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum already exist and therefore our vision is a twist on the usual format :)

This originally stemmed from thinking about what defending a spaceship from an alien horde would actually be like. For us, we felt that it should be less passive and involve a desperate, attritional defense with opportunities to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This feeling has ultimately driven what SENTRY became, and how it differs from other games in the genre.

For example; while you absolutely need deployables (our name for traps and turrets) to help repel the hordes, you are the most powerful weapon and success relies on you constantly fighting. You’re a fast, responsive character and as you can output a lot of damage, should be where the action is heaviest. To match that, enemies are less zombie-like and will put up a fight.

The game takes place in a non-linear campaign. As you pick an escape route from Earth, you’ll be constantly boarded and attacked in random parts of your ship. Often, this will be in multiple places at once, so you’ll have to choose where and when to defend. For each enemy that escapes, that level will be harder to defend if it’s attacked again – so make every bullet count.

This also means that sometimes you’ll lose levels and victorious enemy forces will progress through your vessel – as long as the enemy doesn’t destroy the Ship’s Core or all of the defending crew, the campaign and your escape attempt continues. This is a different approach in the context of a linear TD game, where losing is a blocker to progression. In SENTRY however, occasional loss of levels will happen and is okay! Think of it as losing the battle but not the war :)

Depending on your performance in combat over the course of a campaign, you could succeed in a blaze of glory, limp over the finish line… or die trying. Because the game is run-based, there’s always another escaping ship that needs your help. Each run is varied by choosing different vessels with modifiers, campaigns, randomised enemy forces and the weapons/deployables etc. you’ve unlocked on previous escapes. Each piece of your equipment has an upgrade path too.

Because we’re in Early Access, you can find our Roadmap here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/1252680/view/5921742839579227575

We’re currently working on Major Update 2, which is the co-op update. If you’re interested in what was in Major Update 1, you can read about it here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/1252680/view/4235154200342543684

So that’s SENTRY – if all of the above sounds to your liking, please check us out! To those TD fans finding us for the first time I hope this post has proven helpful. Hit us up on the forums or any of our socials (links are on the side bar of the store page) if you have any questions - and enjoy the TD Fest :)

While we were waiting for our translations to be supplied, we took the opportunity to fix some bugs and do some balancing based on your feedback:

• Added the translations for new text that came in Major Update 1: Starfarer (details of that update can be found here)
  
• Peacekeeper now shows secondary ammo on Equipment and Loadout Menus
  
• Flame Shot primary fire no longer does friendly fire damage to Turrets
  
• When performing a melee attack with the Flame Shot, it now plays the correct impact VFX
  
• Flame Shot and Peacekeeper bars weren't updating as you upgraded the weapons
  
• Fixed a bug where the SMG could disappear when switching to it
  
• Adjusted some wall decorations so it's easier to place deployables on them
  
• Tagged a small sign as illegal for building purposes, so that you won't have the deployable ghost appear on an area that is far too small to build on
  
• Fixed the small hitch that can occur during simultaneous character spawning
  
• The Launch menu will now remember the last ship/campaign setup
  
• Fixed the broken aiming on the shotgun-toting alien soldier after they flinched
  
• Did a balancing pass on all deployables, including their upgrade paths
  
• Adjusted the frequency of ammo drops
  
• Changed how countdown lengths were displayed so that they're visually more consistent
  
• Fixed a bug where enemies could occasionally get stuck if they collided with the bottom of a ladder
  
• Fixed an issue where some larger enemies could get stuck in the doorway from the pods into the canteen area in Mess Hall
  
• Fixed some grammar and punctuation issues in English. Also improved consistency in some of the gameplay terms we were using
  
• Fixed an issue in The Pit where scrap wasn't being auto-collected if it fell into the central hole
  
• Landmines and Rivets now do bonus damage to Giant Slugs
  
• Reduced the maximum amount of Charger enemies that can spawn at a time
  
• Reduced the damage from the Dog lunge attack
  
• Improved the Railgun Mastered upgrade
  
• Flame Shot and Peacekeeper balancing pass

Now that's done, we'll continue with our Major Update 2 focus. But rest assured if anything critical crops up we'll jump on a hot-fix.

Hi everyone,

Major Update 1: Starfarer is out now! This post collates all the changes we’ve made. Firstly, a massive thank-you to everyone that tested the beta branch and provided feedback across Steam and Discord – we’ve been stomping on the bugs as they’ve been coming in and it was great to have your validation and extra testing muscle, particularly as the game has now significantly expanded.

Steam should auto-update to the new version, which will have 0.6.24473 or later in the bottom-right of the main menu. Your profile saves (i.e. equipment and slots) will carry over. If you’re in the middle of a run though, that won’t carry over. If the game detects you’re trying to load an older save, it’ll give a reminder message in case you want to finish the run on that old version.

The original version is available as a beta branch called “0.5.23844 - Launch Version”. Please bear in mind that if you unlock new ships and campaigns in the latest version, go back to the original and play that profile, and then come back to the new version again, those ship and campaign unlocks will be lost on that profile. I don’t expect many would choose to do that, but I thought I’d mention it just in case.

If you’d like to back up your profile saves for whatever reason, you can find your save folder here: C:\Users\<YOURUSERNAME>\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam

Housekeeping done, so on with the cool new stuff :)

This is most likely the biggest change to the game and as mentioned in previous Dev Transmissions is the foundation of the campaign going forward. Two of the most frequent issues people noted with the first Early Access release was the volume of content and the difficulty; this improves both.

You may remember we posted up some details on this screen before, which can be found here:
https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/1252680/view/6232499459766436169

In short, when you launch a campaign you’ll be taken to this menu where you have a choice of vessels and campaigns:

Vessels are unlocked by satisfying certain requirements and provide modifiers on your run. This provides variety and if you’re struggling with the difficulty allows you to work towards ships that help you in specific ways. Running out of crew? Choose the Medical ship. Suffering from a lack of Materials? Choose the Mining vessel etc. The current four are just the start, in future updates we’ll add more vessels.

Campaigns provide different difficulties. In this update there are two, but more will be added in subsequent Major Updates. Starfarer is approximately the same difficulty as the original campaign, but across three sectors. Initiate is two sectors long, doesn’t have homing missiles and is easier than Starfarer. Note that I said easier, not easy :) SENTRY is meant to be challenging, evoking emotions of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and limping over the finish line. But it shouldn’t be impossible for people who are struggling and Initiate is a campaign more suited to those people who can spend time learning to play and banking a selection of equipment before stepping up to harder campaigns.

Oh, and on that note – equipment is now split into two tiers: Common and Uncommon. On Initiate you can only acquire Common equipment, so if you want the bigger toys you’ll need to venture into Starfarer.

Difficulty has been an interesting problem on SENTRY. Some people found the game too easy, some too hard while others just right. One issue with a single campaign – and why we didn’t just rush out balancing tweaks – is that we couldn’t balance toward one side without alienating the opposite end of the scale. Having multiple campaigns allows us to tackle this in the right way. The trouble with a dynamic campaign is that we’re not only having to consider players varying skill levels, but what the game throws at you, when and where (both in terms of level location and where you may be on upgrade paths) – all can provide varying results. It’s partially why I described Starfarer as “approximately” the same as the original campaign difficulty – at points it may be easier, at other times harder depending on all those various factors and your personal experience. All these variables mean that’s why your constructive feedback is essential in helping us adjust these difficulties and create new ones along our Roadmap.

We’ve made a lot of other changes that would impact difficulty, so I’ve collated them here.

Previously, breach locations would be random and we only had control over the number of breaches. This randomness could provide some very spiky random difficulty, so we’ve created a system that gives our designer Sean greater control. So in Initiate for example, the spawn locations won’t stretch your defense in the same way Starfarer would, and we can provide broader escalation.

The spawning system has also changed to accommodate the new difficulty tiers. Enemies are divided into Boarding Parties (i.e. the force that moves around your ship), which are comprised of waves, with each wave comprised of multiple squads. There’s been a lot of work at the Squads level to ensure that we have greater control over the difficulty but can also ensure enemies are introduced at the right points, because some of those enemy archetypes provide a spike in challenge, especially in combinations. Taking Initiate as an example, there’ll be more “Grunt” level enemies (i.e. the grey ones) and less Veterans/Elites (blue/red variants), along with lesser occurrences of the special enemy archetypes versus Starfarer. There’s lots more variety and granularity we can add in future here too.

The tutorial sector has been shortened and made easier. This is so we can get people into the proper game loop faster and for a tutorial, it was previously too hard and not a welcoming experience. You only play this once on a new profile, so this point is more for new players than existing ones – but an important change nonetheless.

Enemy reinforcements have arrived! The Flamejack and Bilejack inflict burn and poison damage on the player. A charging enemy adds chaos to combat as it bashes into you, enemies and props alike. Our heavier bipedal enemy now has additional tier variants and some come with a shield and flak pistol, requiring a step-change in your approach.

Last but not least, you’ll see our grub enemies now come in a different colour. I’ve no doubt the green ones will make a return in future with some different behaviour.

The SENTRY Defense Program isn’t blind to your plight and has made additional equipment available.

The Peacekeeper and Flame Shot are three-slot weapons, giving some much-needed variety to sit alongside the SMG tier:

Two old friends from the demo have returned; the Exploding Barrel and Landmine:

An Extractor deployable is useful against flying enemies and is joined by the Stun Grenade to complete the new roster:

I won’t go into detail here, half the fun is getting to try them yourself :)

In the Navigator, derelicts have been replaced with Supply Beacons that denote their level (Common or Uncommon).

Derelicts may make a return in some other form later in Early Access.

Also, when receiving a blueprint that you already have, it’ll be at a random upgrade level.

There is a new sub system on the Roughneck, which is called The Crossing. The main area is a large room with plenty of places to throw enemies into the abyss.

You’ll also notice that the levels on the Ship Overview are now randomised (except if you’re playing the Tutorial sector) which provides greater variety on subsequent escapes.

While we’ve done lots of tweaks to existing levels like adding more places for deployables and other fixes, Mess Hall has had an overhaul. It’s a similar layout, but the exit has swapped places with one of the other spawn locations, meaning that the level is no longer all about that single corridor. There are still spawns that utilise that corridor so there’s plentiful venting opportunities.

About half the comments on Mess Hall were negative, the rest positive. But the positive comments frequently alluded to using that level as a crutch to handle difficulty – which is not ideal. This, combined with a more balanced overall game means that Mess Hall is actually fun now.

There’s a whole heap of miscellaneous bug fixes, polish and improvements that we’ve done too. In no particular order:

• Poison and Burn status effects impact the player
  
• Barrels on the back of the Tank enemy now show damage and we've improved the hit impacts on this enemy in general
  
• Explosions now don’t destroy barrels, but set them on fire
  
• Explosions will tend to throw enemies further than before
  
• Rivet Grid now restocks in preparation phases
  
• Deployables reload bars are now desaturated until they are fully recharged, at which point the bars colour is shown making it easier to identify between states
  
• Increased speed of enemy boarding parties moving in the Overview
  
• Optimisations on visual effects, enemies and levels – there’s still lots more work to do on this throughout Early Access, we are by no means done – the guidelines on this performance post are still accurate
  
• Forcefields change colour when all enemies have left the forcefield area
  
• Sound now plays to denote the final wave banner
  
• Player and enemy now play burning audio if affected by the burn status
  
• Suit VO for when there is only one SENTRY left and they arrive in a level
  
• Removed delays on loudspeaker audio so the warnings are more prompt
  
• Enemy grenades now have a different sound effect when exploding
  
• After Action Report, Equipment, Navigator and Overview menus are functional with gamepad (note these are functional, they are not polished or anything that we deem to be “full controller support” - that is in the pipeline)
  
• Balancing tweaks to most equipment (DMR, Boltgun, Railgun, all pistols, AR44 and its secondary to name but a few)
  
• Various balancing tweaks to Deployables and Gear
  
• Various enemy balancing tweaks
  
• Fixed an issue with soldier enemies getting stuck in Central Processing because they couldn’t find an attacking point on a damaged Core
  
• Made some tutorial messaging clearer
  
• Enemies no longer get stuck on the lip round the edge of The Pit
  
• Fixed pulse pad, conveyor and vortex grid not starting fully charged when placed during a preparation phase
  
• Fixed some holes where you could see out of the level in various places
  
• Removed HUD opacity setting from the game as it was buggy and there are already options to turn the HUD on or off
  
• Fixed shutters in Mainframe and Fuel Exchange so you can now build on them
  
• Soldier enemies no longer throw grenades if the player is too far above them
  
• Removed floating player health bar that could appear in certain situations
  
• And finally, fixed the vending machine stock error so the Strawberry and Mint flavours are no longer mismatched:

Actually, maybe that last one was the most important update of all…

We hope you like the latest updates for Major Update 1. We’re waiting on translations, so will patch those in as soon as we have them all. We’ll also be keeping an eye on our various channels to pick up any feedback or thoughts on the latest additions and will fix anything important that crops up, so please continue telling us your thoughts.

Remember this is just the first Major Update, there’s more to come and we have a huge list of all your feedback that we’re working through alongside the Roadmap.

Once you’ve checked out the latest changes, don’t forget to leave a Steam review!

Aside from any patches that require our attention, work will commence on Major Update 2: which will be focused around co-op.

Thanks for the support!

The Fireblade Crew