SENTRY News

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:

[h3]Opening Sector![/h3]
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.

[h3]New Enemy![/h3]
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!

[h3]Polish![/h3]
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 differentiate between levels

We’ll continue cramming in as much as we can before release, so there’s plenty more improvements to come!

[h3]Playtesting![/h3]
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:

• Steam forums
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• TikTok
• Instagram
• Discord
• Newsletter signup

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!

All civilians are to be enlisted into the SENTRY Defense Program on the 25th March.

Hi everyone, as we rapidly approach release we're holding weekly playtest sessions with our community.

if you're interested in helping us playtest the campaign for SENTRY then you should head to our Discord and check out the Announcements channel for more details.

The SENTRY Defense Program thanks you for your service.

Hi everyone, it’s been a very productive month – no time for suffering the January blues! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

[h3]The Campaign![/h3]
The big focus this month has been continued work on our campaign and how the three layers of the game (Navigator, Overview and the battles) link together. Some highlights include:

• Level health now persists across a run, so if you let enemies slip through, the next time that level is attacked means fewer enemies need to escape
  
• If a level has been lost, enemies get a free move past it in the Overview. This means they can approach your core much quicker and impacts your choices about where to defend.
  
• You can repair levels, meaning enemies need to take those levels over again to progress – but this comes at a high resource cost that could be spent on upgrades
  
• Further improved messaging, such as a picture-in-picture display of chasing vessels/missiles while you’re in the Overview
  
• Derelicts used to give you a random blueprint, you now get to choose from three types including additional resources if you’d prefer to focus on upgrades rather than new weapons/deployables/abilities
  
• Victory and Defeat screens that communicate what you’re carrying through to your next run – or in some cases, what you’ve lost
  
• When you travel through a sector gate, you can now choose to either increase your weapon/deployable slots, or bank any new blueprints you’ve acquired
  

[h3]New After Action Report![/h3]
The After Action report is your end of mission debrief screen. We reworked this from the demo to be better suited to the campaign and freeplay modes:


You’re now awarded a S, A, B, C or D grade based on your level performance, as well as displaying information that carries across to the campaign, such as rewards and level health.

[h3]Polish![/h3]
As we get closer to release, we’re spending more time polishing the build. This is where a lot of the feedback from the demo has been incredibly useful to help us prioritise. A handful of tasks we’ve completed recently are:

• Sprint jumping now has the correct momentum :)
  
• More camera settings to help with motion sickness
  
• A swathe of additional actions can now have their key bindings changed
  
• Doors can now only be opened/closed during the prep phase, but are free to use. Combined with increased health they’re more useful as a delaying tactic
  
• Scrap that falls out of level is now auto-collected, so you won’t lose anything if some scrap tumbles into a pit!
  
• Enemies can now attack through the breach forcefields, reducing how overpowered it was to camp the breach points
  

There’s tons more we’ve done, and an even bigger list for us to work through – but the above points came up a fair few times as feedback so it’s good to get those improvements in.

[h3]Playtesting![/h3]
We’re back into a serious playtesting phase, so if you fancy getting a sneak preview of the campaign, sign up to our Discord.

We’ve got this weekend’s playtesters sorted, but the plan is to do more playtests every 1-2 weeks and so we’ll be taking in more valiant volunteers during that time.


We love it when we hear from you! We try and respond to every post – but if we don’t please be assured we always read them and take note of feedback and comments! You can reach us on these platforms:

• Steam forums
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• TikTok
• Instagram
• Discord
• Newsletter signup

Our primary focus from here till release is improving what’s already in the game, which means February’s Dev Transmission might not necessarily be full of big new features – but it does make the game a much tighter and fun experience.

That said, we are planning on squeezing in at least one more enemy, but we’ll see…

Oh – and we’ll leave the demo up for a while longer. Even though it’s not been updated since early October we’re still getting hundreds of downloads every week so it makes sense for people just discovering SENTRY to get their taster before we release.

Thanks for the support!

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! Although confusingly this post is about the work we did in December because I didn’t have time to write it up before Christmas hit… Anyway, here are the headline areas we worked on:

[h3]New Deployables![/h3]
We’ve added some new deployables that provide additional gameplay variety and act as counters to certain enemy types.


[h3]New Levels![/h3]
We’ve been putting two new levels through their paces with our playtesters on Discord – The Pit and Mainframe.

In the past we’ve revisited old levels and reworked/improved those, so it’s been good to create two completely new levels with all of the lessons learned from watching people play.

[h3]Overview & Campaign![/h3]
With a lot of time in previous months spent improving the Navigator portion of the campaign, we’ve turned our attention to the Ship Overview (the part where enemies move around your vessel). What we’ve found is that a lot of messaging and feedback is required regarding how the two parts blend together, which we’ll continue to focus on in January.

[h3]New Enemy Weapons![/h3]
Our standard soldier enemy is one that has a lot of versatility in combat, so we wanted to expand this by creating additional weapons that they can carry.

The image in the top-right is their existing weapon; a three-burst mid-range rifle you should be familiar with.

In addition to that weapon, they can now be equipped with a pistol, a shotgun-equivalent or a longer range rifle and their behaviours are adjusted to suit the weapon they carry (i.e. if it’s shorter-range they’ll look to close the distance more).

This also allows us to balance enemy forces to a greater degree – such as weighting more pistol-based enemies at the start, and mix up additional weapons as the wave difficulty increases.


In January we’ll look to improve this feature by giving them custom animations and visual effects to help differentiate them in combat, which will help you prioritise who you should target first!

We’ve got thoughts on a couple of our other bipedal weapon carrying enemies that could be prime candidates for this kind of treatment, but we’ll cover that in a future post.


We love it when you speak to us! We try to respond to every post – but if we don’t please be assured we always read them and take note of feedback and comments! You can reach us on these platforms:

• Steam forums
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• TikTok
• Instagram
• Discord
• Newsletter signup

We’ve got so many ideas for extra deployables, weapons, enemies etc. but as we approach release we’re gradually shifting into polishing and improving what is already in-game. This is so that we can maintain a consistently high quality – after all, Early Access major updates are a perfect time to introduce more cool content :)

Thanks for the support and see you next time…