Knights and mercs! Another Sunday and another exciting update is hitting the streets of New Boston. With this update, we've given special attention to areas of the save system, retry turn options and game pause system that have come up time and again with players as areas we could improve. We've gone through all the player incoming in forums, F10s, and on our official Discord to pull together the most common and important suggestions on how to improve and wrapped them up in #87 and stuck a big cyber bow on top. We hope you like the results!
Tonight's update quick save (default F5), quick load (default F9) as well as a one key retry turn (default F8). Also, you can now hit ESC to pause the game at any point - during enemy turns, attack animations, whenever (no more waiting for enemy turns to finish). Also, if you do happen to get caught out and lose a level before you can hit ESC to retry the turn, the retry turn button is now available from the Defeat Screen to you can warp back in time and try again. We've also made some balance changes to Skyrise Hit missions to make their rewards larger, push them to appear a little later and make their Security Escalation rate a little more forgiving.
As always, a big thanks to everyone playing the game, posting feedback and most importantly - leaving a review ːsteamhappyː If you like the constant stream of updates, please take a moment to thank our small team with a review!
Our Save Game Policy and Updates
Since you'll always be seeing a lot of updates around here, we want to reiterate our saved game policy so everyone understands our commitment to your games. No saved game will ever be invalidated by an update. All new content and features will be added immediately to all saved games (with the reasonable exception of New Game options). You never have to restart if you don't want to. This is a studio commitment that we have made and kept for many years and games. We stand by it. So do not stress about the deluge of updates that is coming your way - heist on my good heisters.
ESC at any time to Pause
We have upgraded the ESC and game pause system to allow you to pause any time, including during enemy turns. This is basic convenience to let you quit, load save or take other paused action when one or 5 enemies are about to take their turn. To bring up the pause menu, just hit (ESC) or on a controller (B) during an enemy turn.
This can be especially useful at the tail end of Turns, where a few enemies might be clumped up and something you did not want happens and it was previously impossible to stop the action from rolling into the next turn.
In order to allow pausing during enemy turns, we had to bump the old "Skip Turn" from (ESC) to (TAB).
Remember, if you save or load during any point in a Turn, it saves and loads from the start of that Turn - not mid turn. Also, note that this does not work once turn processing and the Security AI and the red overlay appears - that is the point where we are saving the state for the turn and it cannot be interrupted.
Quick Save (F5) and Quick Load (F9)
With Update #87 we've added a Quick Save (F5) and Quick Load (F9) set of hotkeys. These are bound by default and will always save into the 10th Save Slot for your convenience. Now with a single keystroke you can save into the quick save slot and later reload to that spot without needing to go through the extra work of opening the pause menu, save menu and picking a lot.
Also, these hotkeys work during enemy turns. So, if you have a good checkpoint in your quick 10th slot, and you see that your team is spotted and the 8 nearby enemies are going to unload full auto on you, you can hit F9 to quick load without needing to ESC (which works now during enemy turns) to bring up the pause menu or wait to see the action you might not want to see.
Remember, if you save or load during any point in a Turn, it saves and loads from the start of that Turn - not mid turn. Also, note that this does not work once turn processing and the Security AI and the red overlay appears - that is the point where we are saving the state for the turn and it cannot be interrupted.
Retry Turn (F8) and from Retry Defeat
We've expanded the availability of Retry Turn to include the defeat screen if your difficulty allows it. Previously, you could lose a level and that might bar you from returning to the previous Turn or mission to retry the part that went wrong, unless you had a save slot prepared.
The Retry Turn button now simply appears on defeat and allows you to drop back into the final turn of the mission, when things went so dastardly wrong (or did they go wrong earlier than that?) and give it another go.
Skyrise Hit Balance
We've been collating and counting feedback on Skyrise Hit multi-stage mission for a bit and have finally made some adjustments that should help address player feedback.
First, Skyrise Hit now only appears at Power Level 6 or above (where it was previously only at PL 5+).
The XP reward for Skyrise Hits is now 150% above regular rewards (where it was previously only 50% above).
The Sec Tally required to cause an Escalation has been raised to 15 from 12, which can give your team a little more breathing room, especially in the first Stage.
We know not every player will agree with the changes, but we're excited they should help keep Skryise Hit at the right spot in the meta.
v2.6.33 - #87: Dockside Power Wash - 5/24/2026
- New hotkeys - F5 to quick save and F9 to quick load without opening pause menu (can be run even on enemy turn)
- New hotkey - F8 to reload turn without opening pause menu (can be run even on enemy turn)
- Now hit ESC during enemy turn to pause game and open the pause menu at any time (except during turn processing)
- Now allowed to Retry Turn from defeat screen to jump back into the level and try the last turn again
- Adjusted Skyrise Hit balance - now appearing at Team Power Level 6+ (instead of 5+)
- Adjusted Skyrise Hit balance - price tag now at +50% over regular multi-stage mission, now +150% XP over regular multi-stage
- Adjusted Skyrise Hit balance - Sec Tally required for Escalation bumped to 15