Hello, I'm Dongsoo Oh, Creative Director of Blackout Protocol.
With the upcoming 0.14 update, our detour from the initial roadmap to focus on core features is now complete. Although we’ll continue to make adjustments, we believe it's time to build on the foundation we’ve established and resume adding new content.
With that, let's briefly take a look at what’s included in this update.
#1: New Save and Networking Features
To enhance the overall player experience, we’ve added multiple save slots, and the ability to join or rejoin Squad Mode games mid-session.
Previously, all progress and unlocks were saved automatically, and the only way to start fresh was to delete your entire save data. In today’s update, we’re adding three save slots, allowing players to enjoy the game as they wish.
The new save features can be accessed from the top left on the title screen.
In addition, to make the multiplayer experience a little more reliable, we’ve implemented the ability to join ongoing games. For now, you’ll be able to join a game already in progress so long as the players in it haven’t yet reached the first saferoom (though we may adjust that later, based on feedback).
What this means for you is that, when you’re playing multiplayer, instead of having to wait around outside doing nothing, now you can jump right in and just start playing.
Similarly, if a player leaves a game in Squad Mode for various reasons (e.g. an accidental disconnect), they will now be shown an option to rejoin that specific session, as seen below. Upon re-entering, the game will retain all progress, Synaptic Enhancements, weapons, etc. The rejoin feature has no restrictions whatsoever, allowing players to resume a session at any stage anywhere in the game.
These features have been a high priority for a long time, as they contribute significantly to quality of life. But actually implementing them entailed some tricky technical challenges that took us some time to sort out. We hope you enjoy them.
#2: In-Game Glossary
This update, we’re also adding a glossary of key terms to help players better understand how things like weapon perks, Synaptic Enhancements, and Agent Upgrades interact.
In roguelite games like ours, a precise understanding of underlying mechanics is essential to enjoyment. At the moment, some systems in Blackout Protocol are a bit opaque. We’ve attempted to address that in various ways, and will continue to do so. Today, we’re introducing one of those ways: an interactive guide to in-game terminology, that will allow those super-engaged min/max type players to delve into the nitty-gritty, to their heart’s content.
In addition to the glossary, we also worked on a more in-depth official guide under Steam community’s Guides section. You can look for the nice "Official Guide" thumbnail to locate them. We hope they are useful for answering common questions and onboarding new players.
#3: Melee Weapons, Tweaks, and More
In addition to the core development work mentioned above, we’ve already resumed the development of new content, some of which is dropping in this update.
First, we’ve overhauled the Flamethrower and Arc Cannon, two AoE weapons that are great against big crowds of enemies, but become dangerous against smaller groups, limiting their versatility. To that end, we’ve buffed the flamethrower’s damage, and fixed various bugs to burn damage, both of which should make it more useful against individual enemies, particularly those with high defense. We’ve also fixed various bugs with the arc cannon that should make its damage output a bit more reliable and less chaotically swingy.
We’ve also completely overhauled the perks for both weapons, getting rid of a bunch of kludgy old ones and replacing them with a progression that feels a lot more impactful and noticeable. We’ll be making similar changes to perks for other weapons in the future, which we hope will increase how much players engage with the perk system during play.
(It’s worth noting that these weapons will now do slightly more friendly fire damage, as a result of removing some perks related to that. But we’re planning a broader revisit of the friendly fire damage ratio for all weapons in the near future, so that’s a temporary situation.)
Finally, and much more excitingly:
We’ve added melee weapons to the game!
Melee weapons have been a major goal for us since the very start of Early Access, and we’re excited to finally be able to share them. Although some of our recent adjustments to the movement system have changed the role of melee weapons from how we initially conceived it, we’re confident they still fill a unique and much-needed niche in the game: giving players more options to conserve ammunition and escape situations where they find themselves cornered.
But this is just the beginning for melee weapons. We plan to expand their role and versatility in future updates, and we welcome your feedback in that regard.
#4: Other Stuff
Finally, we’ve added some new player-card badges. These can be obtained by clearing the game under a variety of specific conditions, and can be equipped from the settings menu.
Last of all, we’ve made a bunch of changes to the optional challenges encountered in Restricted Areas, including tweaks to enemy spawn layouts and adjusted rewards.
It's already been almost six months since Blackout Protocol started Early Access. In that time, we’ve been all-hands-on-deck to provide a steady cadence of improvements to players as quickly as possible.
As we approach the end of the year, the development team will be updating our previous roadmap to better align with the game’s current state and future outlook. Players can look forward to all that stuff sometime early next year.
Our entire team wishes you a joyous holiday season and a restful year’s end.
Thank you,
Dongsoo Oh
Creative Director