Hi everyone,
While the Prologue is being tested we’ve been circling back to the main game this month and making some big changes.
Before that though, just a quick update on our upcoming plans: originally we scheduled our next update to be the full release one, but some of the things we wanted to improve/revisit/add would ideally get community feedback first - which could then be incorporated into the v1.0 update. So we’re going to squeeze in MU5 next, before moving onto the full release update.
The headline for MU5 is solving the onboarding process – which has been our previous focus and you can read about in our recent Dev Transmissions. Before we press ahead with the final art passes and implementing the cinematic sequences that bookend it, we’ve been enlisting people who haven’t played the game to test the prologue and make sure both the flow and messaging is working. Thus far the feedback has been encouraging, so we’re making some changes based off this feedback and are conducting additional rounds of testing to validate our changes.
While all that’s been in-progress, this month we’ve been turning our attention to our big list of feedback we keep. Basically all feedback gets logged into these documents and throughout Early Access we’ve been working our way through them – for this month we’ve tackled three areas: Loadout Specialties, Difficulty Modes and Turrets.
Loadout Specialities
At the start of each mission you can influence the equipment you get assigned by choosing a Loadout Speciality:
A “Balanced” Speciality is the traditional choice you’re used to in SENTRY, but the following have been added:
- Assault is weighted to weapons versus deployables. You’ll start with more weapon slots, fewer deployable slots, a 5-slot weapon plus 2-slot weapon, no Gear and two deployables. You’ll also commence the run with a weapon-based Tech
- Bastion is the opposite of assault, being more focused on deployables. You’ll get 4 weapon slots but start the run with 4 deployables, plus a deployable-based Tech.
- Overwatch is a speciality focused on turrets. You’ll get 5 weapon slots but only start the run with a single 2-slot weapon. You’ll get a turret plus one other deployable and a dispenser, along with a piece of Tech that combines with turrets.
When you make your choice, you’ll then be shown the equipment you’ve been assigned from the pool you’ve previously banked, but now at least you have some say in how you want to shape your upcoming run.
Aside from the Balanced Speciality, each of the new ones have unlock requirements based around the equipment you’ve banked.
Difficulty Modes
For a bit of context, we split all of the community feedback into project phases (i.e. EA release to MU1, MU1 to MU2 etc.) This makes the feedback easier for us to parse, but one thing that stands out across all of them is we have a lot of people saying the game is too easy, and even more saying the game is too hard.
For some players that find the game too difficult, the new onboarding experience will go a long way to help teach them the mechanics in a low-pressure environment. For those that have learnt the mechanics and still find the game too hard, or those that find it too easy, one addition that will cater to both types of player is introducing difficulty modes.
We didn’t just want to introduce difficulty modes that make things a bit harder/easier depending on what you selected, we want each mode to have differing rule sets to complement the harder/easier balancing. Now that we’ve got a clear picture of the feature set, it was the ideal time to add this level of control. Along with making a campaign choice (campaigns will be one of our big improvements in the full release update) you’ll also be choosing a difficulty mode.
That means the Ship Launch menu has had a bit of a rejig:
Normal difficulty has the same rules that are in the game now.
The easier difficulty is lower pressure with more forgiving rules. Crew revivals won’t escalate in cost. Only basic hazards will appear, even on boss ships.
The harder difficulty has persistent consequences. Crew revivals are disabled, so you can only find crew in the navigator or via merits. You won’t be able to construct previously banked blueprints, so you’ll have to rely on the equipment you’re assigned at the start until you obtain more via Supply Beacons. Also, this mode revives a version of the controversial “hazard stacking” that briefly appeared in one update – now, when you lose a subsystem the hazard will stick to that level, and stack with any other hazard on battles until you’ve repaired that subsystem. Choosing between repairs and upgrades will be even tougher on this mode!
With regards the per-battle difficulty, your choice of mode will modify the “Threat Levels” accordingly, so each mode should still have a form of escalation across a mission, but be naturally harder at the top difficulty mode and easier on the bottom mode.
Turrets
Turrets – much like difficulty – is another area where the feedback often pulls in opposite directions. Some players find them too weak, whereas other players find them overpowered.
Learning good placement is a key strategy and something that is always going to be important in SENTRY. If you keep placing turrets in a bad position then they will underperform. On the flip-side, once you learn how to position turrets in ideal locations – they can solo even the hardest waves with no player intervention, which quickly becomes boring.
So a few changes are coming that mitigate these problems:
- The introduction of turret ammo. When this expires, the turret becomes disabled – and is ignored by the enemy (if the enemy is mid-combat with the ammo-less turret then they may attack for a short while until they’ve stopped being aggro’d). When the prep phase hits, all turrets automatically have their ammo replenished and become active again. This mechanic naturally puts a power limit on strong turret placement.
- Better feedback on turret health. You should be able to look at a turret and understand how damaged it is. When it’s getting critically low it’ll emit an alarm, which will let you know to stop standing next to it before it detonates.
- Preventing turrets being placed within a metre of another turret. This stops people using them as barricades, which can be overpowered versus the AI (unless the placement is poor, in which case a turret will be destroyed, and any adjacent turrets will subsequently explode in a chain reaction because they’re too close).
These changes then allow us to balance the base-level turrets to be stronger and more durable, helping fulfill that power fantasy that some players aren’t feeling while they’re learning the game.
From the Community!
This month we’re putting the fan-art spotlight on this Ultrakill/SENTRY mashup, courtesy of Discord community member Blackraven:
We love seeing this kind of thing, so please send any cool videos/fan art to us and we may feature it in a future Dev Transmission.
Providing feedback is really important in helping us shape the game. Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:
We’re very keen to read your feedback on these changes when the new Beta branch goes live – and they’ll be more information on that in the next Dev Transmission.
Thanks for the support!
PS - From the 1st June SENTRY is part of the "Women-Led Games" event:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/womenledgamessummer2026
This is because our artist Alex has created all of the art in SENTRY on her own, which is an incredible achievement. Alex has been an integral part of Fireblade for 10 years and if you check out our previous game Abandon Ship you can see her versatility in art style, too. Basically if you can see it, Alex made it!
