SENTRY News

Crew Menu and Getting Your Name in the Game!

Hi everyone,

I thought I’d write a post that covers the new Crew Menu as it’s an addition that doesn’t deserve to be buried in a monthly Dev Transmission. It also relates to how you can get your own name in the game, something which we’ll detail below.

First, a bit of context: We had a rough plan for what Major Updates 3 and 4 would entail, fleshing out the core loop of the game and providing greater depth and variety. The first part of this was the Hazards and Rewards system, which we made available to test on a beta branch at the start of the month. Hazards essentially made combat spikier, with Rewards predominantly providing bonuses in the areas outside of combat.

For MU4 we’d planned a Crew Menu and a new player perks system that would replace Passive Gear, providing an additional layer to combat. Combined, all these systems should lift the core loop to a much better place whether it’s your first campaign or you’re a veteran.

While we were working through the much-appreciated feedback you’ve provided for the Hazards and Rewards system, we felt that the general impact of this new feature on the campaign meant the Crew Menu was needed sooner rather than later, so we’ve brought it forward into MU3. Our Discord Playtesters have this new system to test now – and the public Beta Branch should be updated once it's had some testing.

[h3]The Crew Menu[/h3]
Crew were previously just a numbered resource, whereas they are now characters. Characters whom you can rename, equip with armour, revive deceased ones – and once we’ve implemented it, equip with new uniforms/skins. Here’s a glimpse of the latest WIP version of the Crew Menu:

Previously, armour was a piece of Passive Gear equipment that – once discovered – started at level 1 and you could upgrade to much greater effectiveness. Now, for a small materials cost that SENTRY gets the top level version and you can choose to replenish it in the crew menu as the armour gets destroyed over the course of your escape run.

This means armour is no longer a piece of Passive Gear, and as we’ve also given the Jump Jets as a default player ability means only the Bandolier remains. As I mentioned earlier, Passive Gear is being phased out for a replacement system with much greater depth and gameplay possibilities.

We had fun making a more beefy armoured SENTRY, while ensuring that the base version still looked cool. We did see what a SENTRY looks like with zero armour plating and just wearing the red jumpsuit, however this basically looked like they were wearing pajamas. Not cool, but it was amusing and I’ll share an image of that someday…

You can also now spend research to revive a deceased SENTRY, which is a benefit to those who have been losing campaigns due to running out of crew. It’s also helpful to those in co-op who have one crew member and don’t want their friend to be in spectator mode until they find a crew pod on the map.

These changes to armour and revivals provides much greater control over how you want to play your campaigns.

[h3]Getting Your Name in the Game[/h3]
Which brings me to the crew names. On our previous game, we allowed crew names to be taken from a special database derived from our newsletter subscribers:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/551860/view/3580850447657046527
This proved very popular, so we’re doing it again!

(Please note as Abandon Ship released several years ago and is updated infrequently, we closed new newsletter signups for that game. Just mentioning that in case you go to sign up on the link in the post above, as it’ll lead nowhere)

If you sign up to our SENTRY newsletter then the name you submit will be added to a database that crew names are drawn from. We’re running this in a similar way to our first game:

Newsletter names are added to a special database, and crew are assigned names split between this and the “default” database
Names are randomly picked from each database
If you don’t want Newsletter names in your game, then there is an option in the “Interface” part of the Settings menu where you can stop them from being generated
All names can be manually edited in the Crew Menu
Our Newsletters are occasional (a handful a year) and not spammy in nature
Any bounces or unsubscribes get their names removed from the database
Every time we update the game we’ll update the Newsletter Names database so that it is current
Any rude names won’t be added to the database. This relies on me picking up on them though, so if you spot any please let me know – on Abandon Ship someone snuck past “Dickson Balzac” and it was several months before I twigged…

We’ve been running the newsletter for a while now, but haven’t really pushed the whole “getting your name in the game” aspect until the Crew Menu was ready.

When you see the Crew Menu, you may note that we include a randomly generated occupation for each crew member – this is a bit of fun, but also helps to reinforce a narrative purpose; that a SENTRY is an escaping civilian drafted into service – not a soldier, and certainly not a robot/android that we’ve heard the occasional person mention! We’re happy to receive suggestions of occupations from the community too :)

As I mentioned earlier, once we’ve got our Discord Playtester feedback and had the chance to do any fixes we’ll get this rolled out onto the Beta Branch for some broader community testing – and as usual there’ll be a monthly Dev Transmission soon that rounds up all the other latest SENTRY news.

Thanks for your support!

Major Update 3 Beta Test (and May Dev Transmission)

Hi everyone,

A beta version of Major Update 3 is now available!

The new hazards and rewards feature has exponentially increased the various gameplay systems so we’d massively appreciate you letting us know your thoughts, along with any bugs you may find.

To gain access to version 0.8.26211, you’ll need to switch to a beta branch:

Find SENTRY in your Steam library and right-click on it, selecting “Properties”
In the menu that pops up, choose “Betas”
Select “Beta Branch” in the “Beta Participation” drop-down list
In your Library you should see “[betabranch]” appended to the game name

When you play the new version, the most important thing to consider is that while your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), your current escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a run and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version.

It’s also generally good practice to back up your profile saves ahead of any Major Update, just in case you’re the one that finds an obscure bug. You can find your profile and save folder here:
C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam\[SteamID]

[h3]Hazards and Rewards[/h3]
The headline feature in this update is the Hazards and Rewards system.

The idea is to provide greater variety and spikes to the difficulty throughout your escape runs. A personal favourite is the “Barricades” reward, which places defensive positions throughout levels for a set number of battles.

The rules for this new system are essentially:

Each boarding party has a hazard and a reward
These re-roll when the enemy takes over a sub system and moves onto the next
When you fight a boarding party, the hazard gets applied to you
When you beat a boarding party you gain a reward (these last either a number of uses or are one-shots)
If you lose a battle, the boarding party doesn't generate a new hazard (but the reward will be re-rolled)
The boss encounters before a gate have a harder “boss” hazard
When you go through a gate, your hazards are wiped
Some will stack, so for example if you are infected with the ‘Tight Budget’ hazard (where 25% of enemies will no longer drop scrap), this would increase to 50% if you were infected with another ‘Tight Budget’ hazard

We’d love to know your thoughts on the meta, individual hazards and rewards and any combinations that stand out – our Discord Playtesters already highlighted a bunch of particularly brutal combos which we’ve re-balanced for this version but you may find others.

There's some clearer messaging of these that we have planned, plus we have a long list of other hazards and rewards we’d like to implement. We can’t wait to hear your own suggestions!

[h3]Other Big Additions[/h3]
A few other things that may interest you…

There are two new levels: Junction and Thermal Vats – the latter has a lot of lava pits waiting to consume enemies you throw into them…

We’ve implemented melee weapons: The HF Blade and Stun Stick:

The Navigator and Overview UI have been reworked. This was largely to allow the new Deploy box to contain useful information about what you’ll face in combat.

There’s a bunch of smaller changes worth calling out because previous behaviour has now changed, just in case you were wondering if that was intentional or not:

When blast doors are closed the enemy will choose an alternate route. If no alternative is available they’ll attack the door. This means you can still close them to buy you some time, but in certain areas you can now re-route them.
We’re trialing having any piece of equipment appearing in any Supply Beacon
The Giant Slug now spawns Grubs upon death
Jump Jets are no longer a Gear item and are something you have all the time. They now double-jump more predictably too.

There are loads of other smaller changes and additions, but I’ll collate the changelist when we officially release MU3.

In order to not mix up beta branch feedback with the main game, there’s a dedicated area on the Steam forums to post your beta branch comments: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1252680/discussions/0/

We endeavour to respond to comments and feedback as much as we can, but rest assured that even if we don’t personally reply we do read and note everything. Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:

As always your feedback is essential and helps determine our focus. We’re very interested in reading your thoughts; so please drop them in the comments below, in a separate post on the Beta Branch forum or on our Discord.

There are some additional systems we originally had planned for MU4 that we’re thinking of bringing forward. They are not only a net positive for the game but also compliment the new hazards and reward systems, so we’re going to investigate those next (along with working through your feedback).

Overall though, once we feel MU3 has had sufficient testing and we’ve accommodated your feedback we’ll officially release it. As always we’ll keep you updated :)

Thanks for your continued support!

Dev Transmission (April 2025)

Hi everyone,

Our current main focus is on what will be the headline addition for Major Update 3. This aims to give a greater amount of variety and ‘spikiness’ in campaigns and individual battles.

To elaborate on that, enemy boarding parties will be infected with randomised Combat Hazards, something that will pass to you when you engage them in battle and stack up throughout a campaign. To offset this, they’ll each carry an Encounter Reward that will be granted when you defeat them.

We’ve been having great fun coming up with dozens of hazards and rewards, and the nature of how they tie into a campaign can provide some fantastic combinations and surprises along the way. I’ll avoid going into too much detail on this right now, but we’re looking forward to hearing about your own suggestions for hazards and rewards once you get your hands on the update.

In order to communicate this new system, we’ve taken the opportunity to rework how the Ship Overview is presented. This not only allows us to provide extra information that will result in more meaningful decisions, but also lays the groundwork for some new features coming after MU3. Here’s a sneak peek, although bear in mind some visuals are placeholder:

This required quite a bit of unpicking of the old format, so for SENTRY veterans some of the changed locations of buttons/UI may take a bit of getting used to!

You’ll be pleased to know the Deploy box will now show what enemy types are present in that boarding party – and if the sub system is below 100% health, then the repair information is always displayed, not just when you have the resources to make the repair!

[h3]New Deployable![/h3]
The Flechette Strip is a straight-forward damage-dealing deployable that spits out metal projectiles:

As you can see from the concept, rather than the usual square deployable shape this is long and thin. Because it can be rotated to place horizontally or vertically it offers a lot of flexibility in its potential placement locations.

[h3]New Enemies![/h3]
Alex has created a higher and lower tier variant of the Storm Warden, which brings it in line with the other enemy archetypes with tier variants.

A few people have asked where the higher (red) tiered enemies went in the last update – don’t worry, they will be making a return…

[h3]Polishing New Levels and Melee Weapons![/h3]
In our last update we mentioned that we had created two new levels plus two melee weapons –these have been with our Discord Playtesters who have been providing their thoughts, so Sean has been working through their feedback and making the necessary adjustments.

If you missed the last update and want to read about what those new levels and melee weapons were, check out the post here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/534345939582715877

[h3]Devlog![/h3]
In case you missed it, Sean also created a video covering the co-op update:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Abandon Ship![/h3]
I’ve been occasionally grabbing a bit of time to do a free content update to our previous game:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/551860/view/528718979655533049

While our focus is very much on SENTRY, I thought it worth mentioning to show that we still like to support our last game even though it’s over 5 years old now. Expect SENTRY to receive that kind of love even when it’s several years beyond full release!

[h3]From the Community![/h3]
This month Discord member Busy Bee (who also goes by LittleMissCalculated on DeviantArt) has mocked up their idea for a new Electric Flamethrower type weapon they’d love to see. They explained that while it wouldn’t do weak spot damage it would do increased damage to armoured enemies and require getting up close to be most effective:

Keep sharing anything cool with us!

If you’d like to provide any feedback you can do so through 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:

Thanks for your continued support!

New SENTRY Devlog!

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 :)

Dev Transmission (March 2025)

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:

Thanks for your continued support!