SENTRY News

Hi everyone, we've made another Devlog that delves into the details of our last Major Update and explains some of the thinking behind our approach. Check it out:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And don't forget to smash that like button :)

Hi everyone,

Our main priority in March has been working on what we’re considering to be the headline feature of Major Update 3. While we won’t spoil the details now, the idea of this addition would be to provide much greater variety when playing campaigns.

How we present this new feature ended up combining with some other areas we’ve been working on, such as showing more information in the Deploy box (like threat levels, enemies in that boarding party etc.) as well as our plans for later in Early Access (adding a Crew Menu and Codex) so we took the opportunity to rework the menus so that it accommodates all these changes and future ideas. That has been quite time consuming, however it means that they should all be more intuitive. The danger with Early Access is that sometimes you can keep bolting on features to the user interface and it becomes a poor experience to use, so we wanted to avoid falling into that trap. It's shaping up quite nicely!

Here’s what else we’ve been up to this month:

[h3]New Weapons/Gear![/h3]
Major Update 2 was very code heavy, so while Adam was focusing on that Sean and Alex were laying the groundwork for future content creation. Now various dependencies have been freed up we’re going through and implementing some of these queued up assets – those who have followed previous Dev Transmissions may remember seeing concept art for some of these:



Melee weapons are 1-slot, so while they have limitations they still conform to the general rule in SENTRY; that any weapon should feel good to use and be perfectly viable for certain situations.

The HF Blade stores a number of charges that can be expended on ranged attacks, while the Stun Stick becomes more powerful when it’s fully charged – which can only be accomplished by smashing props or enemies. You can also choose to unleash this charge in an explosive secondary attack.

We’ve also introduced the Shuriken as a new Gear item. When thrown, this bounces to nearby enemies – something that can be increased as you upgrade it.

On the subject of gear, we’ve moved the Jump Jets to be a permanent player ability so you can now double-jump all the time (we’ve also made the double-jump more reliable, so it feels like you’d expect it to). This leaves the number of passive gear items quite low, but is in advance of a change we’ll likely make after MU3 to how passive items are assigned to crew.



[h3]New Levels![/h3]
We’ve got two new levels that should imminently be going out to our Discord Playtesters: Junction and Thermal Vats.

The former has echoes of Hallway, in that it is compact with some short distances between the breach points and exit, so can be quite intense when facing larger forces. The main corridor is wide and a natural defense point for 3 out of the 5 breaches, but it’s split in the middle so can present a challenge!


Junction is partially built on a layout we created very early on in development, so it’s been great to revisit it. This area appeared in some of our earliest (and now nuked) screenshots on the store page.

Thermal Vats has several areas of molten metals scattered around the level, ideal for using Conveyors or the Vortex Glove to push enemies into :)


[h3]From the Community![/h3]
This month Discord member TheCartoon1st has created an image of them and their friend playing co-op together:


We absolutely love seeing this stuff, so keep sending anything cool to us!


Keep giving feedback via our channels below – we try to respond as much as we can, but even if we don’t personally reply we read and note everything. Here’s a bunch of links to where we can be reached:

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

Thanks for your continued support!

We've updated the translations for build version 0.7.25599

Because the text files are outside of the packaged game this means the build version number hasn't been updated from the last patch.

Steam should auto-update, but if you're running the game in any language other than English and you're still seeing non-translated text, try validating your files to nudge Steam into downloading them.

Hi everyone,

Here's a recap of February - obviously dominated by the release of our latest Major Update earlier this month!

[h3]The Co-op Update[/h3]
The first half of February was spent fixing bugs from the latest build on the Beta Branch Update. Once we’d ironed out a few issues we released Major Update 2. The main feature was co-op, but it included a bunch of new levels, revisions based on popular requests and more.

If you’d like to read all of the latest additions in Major Update 2, check out this post:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/526460937466544207

[h3]MU2 Patch[/h3]
With translations of the new text in progress, we set about working on a patch that fixed a few bugs that cropped up, along with refining some of the balancing based on your comments. You can read about those changes here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/534343407476146376

[h3]Major Update 3 Planning[/h3]
Whilst we were working on the patch, we were also able to set up plans for what we’ll be doing next (i.e. Major Update 3). We’ve got a huge backlog of work based on our own ideas plus feedback from the community, and while we have a rough structure of when we’ll tackle certain items, it’s always good at times like this to revisit the plan, make necessary adjustments and put everything in place to commence the next phase.

I’ll avoid going into too much detail right now, but the headline feature will be improving the replayability of the core game loop, combined with a bunch of new content (some of which we’ve previewed before), tackling some of the feedback you’ve provided, a bunch of polish/bug-fixes/balancing and more!

[h3]Guildford Games Festival[/h3]
One other thing that happened this month was a personal side-project that SENTRY participated in.

If you keep a close eye on the Steam front page you may have spotted this appearing from the 13th to 17th February:


In 2020 I thought it’d be cool to have a Steam event page that ran alongside a local convention called the Guildford Games Festival, and I’ve been doing it every year since. Why? Because Fireblade HQ is located in that small town in the south of the UK and the local area has an unusually high amount of game studios. Physical events are great, but I felt that having a Steam page would help put a global spotlight on the area and also provide some bonus visibility to games both big and small.

It shows every game on Steam developed (or co-developed) in the GU postcode area – and while the discounts have ended, check out the event here:

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/guildfordgamesfestival2025


It’s funny to think how all of these games are within 25 miles of Fireblade HQ, many within walking distance and tracing their heritage back to Bullfrog.

Keep an eye out for future iterations!

[h3]From the Community![/h3]
With Valentine’s Day falling this month it felt appropriate to post this unexpected image from Discord user CN_Blackraven, who was back creating female-themed versions of weapons:


Keep sending your fan art, funny/impressive clips and screenshots to us!


Please continue providing feedback via our channels below – we try to respond as much as we can, but even if we don’t personally reply we do read and note everything. Here’s a bunch of links to where we can be reached:

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

Major Update 3 should be back to the cadence we set for MU1, and we can’t wait to show you what’s in the pipeline.

Don’t forget if you like what we’re doing please leave a Steam review – I know developers bang on about them a lot, but they do help :)

Thanks for your continued support!

Generally speaking, this patch makes the balancing feel more refined and we've fixed some issues that people had reported. Specifically:

• Fixed a seam in the door collision that meant there was a (very small) chance that Grub enemies would get stuck just below the ground if the door was destroyed. If this happened it would seem like the level couldn't complete because of this rogue enemy that was trapped in a hard to spot location.
  
• Client can now see the picture-in-picture when enemy vessels/missiles are moving
  
• Fixed the "Waiting for other player" text that would flash on for 1 frame on the After Action report in singleplayer
  
• Guardian Camera UI now correctly shows the Steam username of the player operating it
  
• Fixed an issue where the Steam username would occasionally appear blank
  
• After seeing the campaign victory/defeat screen and both players click continue, the client would be told they were disconnected if they clicked continue first. We've fixed it so in that situation they now go to the main menu without the error message.
  
• Disabled a rogue piece of collision on the Guardian cameras that was making building on them slightly finicky
  
• Fixed an issue on the friends UI that meant if you had enough friends for the menu to have the scroll bar appear, the "add" buttons would get misaligned
  
• Tweaked some escape values on enemies
  
• Increased the health of the Core
  
• Adjustments to the final battle in Sector 3 so it should feel more suitable to end the run
  
• Refined Research values, so there should be less spare by the end of a campaign
  
• Fixed a bug where boarding parties with Rambulls would only have them appear in the breaching waves, not subsequent ones.
  
• Made some adjustments to the frequency of the Needlejack and Grubs appearing throughout the campaign. Needlejacks weren't populating enough early boarding parties, while Grubs were populating too many.