Section 13 News

Hello Peasants,

I’m ODS Orbit of Ocean Drive Studio fame! Nice for you to meet me again.

So Orbit fans. Not gonna lie. I kiiiiiiiiiinda feel targeted. ThorThor came up to me this morning and said “Hey, Orbit! You know what you’re good at? Shooting at me! Write a blog about how to NOT play like you.” and I said “No way, man! I’m the best Blackout Protocol player in this office. I’m not writing it!”

It’s the principle of it, you know? I can write a blog about whatever I want. No one’s going to force me what to do.

Anyway, I’m here to talk about how to not play like me! I swear it has nothing to do with my conversation earlier. Here are my top 3 tips on being a good teammate in Blackout Protocol. Hey, maybe you and your friend can finally get past the Parking Lot level! Those enemies in the Lobby area are getting reeaaaeallllyyyy bored!

[h3]Tip #1: Fire only when you have the line of sight of the enemy![/h3]
Classic ThorThor in her natural habitat.

Friendly fire: it’s deadly, it’s always on, and you’re going to lose a lot of friends along the way! This isn’t your great grandma’s roguelite game, junior! Bullets don’t magically pass through your teammates and into enemy skulls. You actually have to make the effort to NOT hit your allies. Don’t turn your teammates into Swiss cheese with that minigun. Save that anger for the actual enemies. Or go ahead and kill your teammates. What do I care.

[h3]Tip #2: DON’T HOG ALL THE AMMO[/h3]
If you’re a terrible shot…don’t pick this up, maybe?

When you pick up that ammo case, your teammates don’t magically get those bullets with you. You pick that up and it’s gone for everyone in your team. Don’t be that jerk that shoots 5 or 6 bullets then proceeds to pick up the ammo case because you think you’ll need it. If you’re that person who wastes ammo because you can’t hit the side of a barn, maybe reserve that ammo for that one teammate doing all the hard carrying. Which reminds me.

HEY, ODS Kangaroo! There’s a reason I’m punching QTs with my fist!

A simple “Hey, does anyone need this ammo case next to me?” has the potential to be a game winning play! I guess that’s a good segue to the next topic...

[h3]Tip #3: Communication! Communication! Communication![/h3]
This took 500,000 hours of coding, so use it.

Look, man. I know you won the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Most Socially Awkward Person in a Day Time Drama and internet nerds are scary, but in order to succeed in Blackout Protocol, you gotta talk to your teammates. We were even nice enough to add built-in voice chat to help you talk. Too shy to grace us with that angelic voice of yours? There are pings to mark points of interest and a modifiable communication wheel to give your team a heads up about something. You can even customize the wheel to mention you’re low on ammo! Now if only there was a wheel option to tell your teammate to leave your room…

Really, the TL:DR of this blog is to get on my level and just get good. I’m just kidding. You’re not that bad. Just do me a favor and don’t enter my room, please.


- ODS Orbit

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/

Hey Agents,

ODS Kangaroo here - you probably already know me as the person you see all over Steam forums and Discord - that’s because I’m the Community Manager at Ocean Drive Studio.

Now that you’ve heard about the characters of Blackout Protocol, why don’t we move on to the fun stuff… the weapons! You got ones that go pew pew, ones that go boom, ones that go tck, and ones that go bzzz. I’ll explain a little further in case that went over your head. 😉

Here’s the breakdown - there are 4 different categories that all weapons can fall under. You’ve got the firearms, which are your typical weapons. Then you’ve got the psionic weapons, which attack your enemy’s psyche first. Next are the bionic weapons and last but not least are the R&D weapons, which were made within the S2P Corporation.

Firearm Weapons are categorized in red within Blackout Protocol. These weapons include the following: Assault Rifle, Submachine Gun, Pump-Action Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, and Revolver. While these have power and that are weapons that you are used to playing with, they might not be the most fun or interesting to use.


Psionic Weapons are categorized with the color purple. They include the Arc Cannon, Photon Cannon, and Sawed-Off Shotgun. Why purple, you may ask? These weapons attack your enemies’ (or teammates’) panic gauge before attacking their health. That’s the purple bar that is below your health bar. You’ll learn more about this in a future blog, so stay tuned.


Bionic Weapons are categorized in green. These include the Plasmoid Launcher and the Flamethrower - just think of them as an extension of your arm. Spit out some nades that shock the enemies or flames that will burn them down. Your arm, your choice.


R&D Weapons are categorized with the color yellow. Currently, there are two weapons: the Minigun and the Tactical Crossbow. These were both made within the S2P Corporation, probably not for the mission within Section 13, but hey, it works! These weapons work great when used strategically within a team. Hope S2P creates some more of these!


Now remember that you won’t start off with all of these weapons. As you go through Section 13, you’ll start collecting blueprints, which when you take to the Weapons Printer in a Safe Room, you’ll be able to permanently unlock those weapons. Once unlocked, you’ll be able to use that weapon on your next run! Also, each weapon has their own mods, so make sure to use the Synaptic Enhancements you get from Nethercubes to unlock them for the current run!



Since we’re still in Early Access, our team is planning on releasing more weapons and Synaptic Enhancements in the future! Hope you’re excited to see what we have in store for you! I’ll catch you in Section 13 🙂

- ODS Kangaroo

Sup Agents,

I'm Brandon, localization editor and narrative designer at Ocean Drive. With Blackout Protocol just 4 days out from Early Access, I have been dragged Gollum-like from the clammy comforts of seclusion to come and chat with y’all.

So today I'm gonna introduce you to the core cast of Blackout Protocol: who they are, what they do, and which one's the coolest.

(It's Scalpel.)

[h2]Working-Class Heroes[/h2]

To understand who you'll be playing as in Blackout Protocol, it's important to set expectations. If you're looking to play a game where the characters are the biggest badasses in their world, with a full suite of overpowered abilities to tackle any challenge thrown at them? Look elsewhere.

Blackout Protocol is a game about a globe-spanning secret organization's lowest, most rank-and-file working stiffs. The ones with little to no field experience, who were unlucky enough to pick up the phone on a weekend, and get roped into cleaning up a mess.

(And by mess, I mean the enthralled avatars of a seething hive-mind whose dark nucleus lurks beneath the earth, with designs upon the heavens.)

But hey, who doesn't like an underdog?

[h2]BOY SCOUT[/h2]

Every team needs a stick-in-the-mud. Boy Scout, voiced by SungWon Cho, is ours.

A former UN bodyguard, Boy Scout joined the S2P Corporation a few years back, and promptly became a diehard company loyalist. Now he works for Internal Security, where he spends his days heroically redacting emails and confiscating unauthorized thumb drives.



But this stuffed shirt has secrets, too. Like the circumstances under which he joined the organization. Or the fact that when he gets really mad, things tend to explode.

All of which is to say: if you’re looking for the tank character, you found him. Boy Scout's special ability, OUTBURST, creates a 360° psychic AoE with knockback, which also ignores allies. Handy, in a game where friendly fire is a constant danger, and getting surrounded by enemies equals instant death.

[h2]RED[/h2]

Next up we have Red, voiced by Jennifer Losi. Fans of Lost Eidolons will recognize her as the voice of Klara, everybody's favorite stabby mercenary girlboss.

But unlike Klara, Red is the fresh-faced rookie. Formerly a barista with a little too much curiosity for her own good, Red's a recent hire at S2P, where she mostly works the metal detectors at the entrance. Where others might see a deadly mission to a monster-infested research base and think “hard pass”, Red is just stoked for a chance to prove herself — and amply over-prepared, after a trip to the local Trout Pro to buy one of everything.



But like any new hire, Red makes up for inexperience with sheer zeal. Her special, OVERTIME, turns her into the team's full-tilt gigachad DPS monster, by massively increasing her reload speed and rate-of-fire with any weapon. That’s majorly helpful in a game where poorly-timed reloads are the #1 cause of death, and enemies mostly come in two varieties: "OMG TOO MANY" and "WHY DOES IT HAVE SO MUCH HP?!!"

[h2]SCALPEL[/h2]
Scalpel, voice by Camilla Hawkins, is a science-minded middle manager with a chilly disposition.

A physicist by trade, Scalpel is the original inventor of the technology that underpins S2P's signature "Death Nullification System", which allows even the most inept pencil-pusher to Groundhog Day their way through deadly field missions. But she views the technology as a corruption of her work, hates her job, and isn’t all that impressed by her fellow agents, either.



Fittingly for someone so self-reliant, Scalpel's special ability, SEVERANCE, is a high-risk, high-damage melee finisher that also restores some health. With the lowest cooldown of any special in the game, it's perfect for dispatching lone irritants who get in her face, or melting minibosses before they wipe the whole team.

[h2]BEAKER[/h2]
Beaker, voice by Deva Marie Gregory, is your basic gal-next-door type... if you lived next door to a triple-PhD biochemist with a glint of madness in her eyes and a shed that glows at night.

Scalpel's protege and right hand, Beaker has no illusions about the kind of company she works for... but on the other hand, they give her access to the cool chemicals. The ones your mom warned you about. Chemicals who wear leather jackets and smoke.

As a result, her special, RECOVERY VIAL, is one of the most useful in the game: a burst of happy green gasses that restores a chunk of health to all nearby Agents.



As the only character capable of healing allies, Beaker is a force-multiplier most teams consider essential to a successful run, especially if they suck at the game. Like me.

We’ve received unconfirmed reports that some teams even like to go multi-Beaker — but as doing so violates both the fiction of the game and the principles of general relativity, neither Ocean Drive nor S2P can officially condone the practice.

[h2]BUT IT DOESN'T STOP THERE[/h2]
Throughout this Early Access period, the dev team will be paying close attention to character balance, specials, passives, etc. It’s impossible to say what tweaks we’ll make yet, but it’s a fair bet it won’t be “none”. Your feedback is essential to that process, so please don't hesitate to share it!

We'll also be dropping new characters throughout EA and beyond — some of which you've seen in promo art already, and some of which have been lurking in the shadows.

So yeah. Get hyped for that.

FOUR MORE DAYS, AGENTS!


- ODS Brandon

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/

Hello future agents!

I am Jungsoo Lee, CEO of Ocean Drive Games (publishing arm of Ocean Drive Studio). Today, I would like to discuss the price point we decided for Blackout Protocol, and especially why.

As a game development studio, we understand lots of players’ concerns around Early Access games. For us, the major reason why we are doing Early Access is to ensure we get the right feedback from the core audience for the genre to ensure we are heading in the right direction. And as revenue is not the primary reason for entering Early Access, we wanted Early Access price to reflect our core belief that we are in partnership with our players.

We believe everyone joining the Early Access version is contributing to the development of the game, and thus decided to offer a much lower price for the Early Access to compensate for the effort helping us develop the game.

The game will be priced at 12.99 USD (with Regional Pricing), and for the first week – we will be providing an additional 25% off as an introductory offer, which will make the game 9.75 USD for the first week of release.

We can only wish we had something like this vending machine, giving stuff out for free

We haven’t finalized the Official Launch price, but it will be around 19.99. Please take the lower price point during Early Access as a token of appreciation for the players joining Early Access to help us shape the game in the right direction.

We will be sharing our longer-term plan, and how we are thinking of preparing an official release with “Future Roadmap Announcement” right before the Early Access. We will also be communicating how we are taking feedback and what we are working on, on a regular basis to ensure the community is up-to-date with our plan.

As always, thank you so much for the support, and hope to see you in the game, and please join our social channels to tell us what you think.


Sincerely,
Jungsoo Lee

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/

Agents,

ODS GeeK here. For those who may not know, I serve as one of the elves in packaging goodies (or one of the gremlins breaking things behind the curtain) at Ocean Drive Studio. You’ll see my paw marks all across various places, including random GIFs on our Discord server.



Today, I’m here to touch upon some of the roguelite elements in Blackout Protocol. While I cannot say I am the most avid roguelike/roguelite player, I have played my share. Some of the things I expect from roguelites are: temporary power-ups and permanent power-ups, spiced up with some RNG elements (though chance usually works against me). Guess what? Blackout Protocol has it all!

First up is the Synaptic Enhancement, which would be the main source of temporary power-ups. Interacting with the shiny cube (it has a name, the Nethercube!) opens up a nifty UI where you get to choose 1 out of 3 random Synaptic Enhancements. Synaptic Enhancements will last through your current run.



Each Synaptic Enhancement comes with a grade. It is pretty straightforward–the higher grade is, the more powerful the enhancement is. Another bit of RNG element here, where getting a Platinum grade enhancement has a greater impact than a Bronze grade one.


Then there are weapons and tactical gear stashed in strategic locations, including the Safe Room. You can think of these nicely lit platforms as snack vending machines! And yes, you do have to pay for it in credits. There is no such thing as a free lunch at S2P.


As for permanent power-ups, they can be accessed in the Safe Room. The one you will rely on the most often is the DNS Defragmenter. If you collected Data Nugs (those glowing blue cubes), you can unlock permanent enhancements by spending them here. Since there are multiple tiers unlocked based on the number of Data Nugs you spend, make sure you spend them all. Even if you are only a part of the way of unlocking a perk, that will still help you.



Then, you have the Weapons Printer. Here, you will turn in the weapon blueprints you picked up while roaming around in Section 13. While unlocking the weapon will not give you immediate access to it, you’ll find it sitting nicely in your trunk (or frunk) the next time you’re swinging by Section 13 to continue on with your mission.



I’m sure our Agents picked up on the fact that the core gameplay loop is to get to the Safe Room to keep unlocking more enhancements. With the permanent power-ups, your mission in Section 13 is bound to be successful. It is just the matter of when.

We’re looking forward to bringing Blackout Protocol’s Early Access to you on July 19 PT (July 20 in some time zones). If you’re also excited, make sure you wishlist on Steam to get notified as soon as the game is available!


- ODS GeeK

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/