[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/a29bf005f5db9e0d5de1f9416f2ebda20508886f.png[/img] Hi everyone, Happy New Year! Although confusingly this post is about the work we did in December because I didn’t have time to write it up before Christmas hit… Anyway, here are the headline areas we worked on: [h3]New Deployables![/h3] We’ve added some new deployables that provide additional gameplay variety and act as counters to certain enemy types. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/4eb7a59756d51c07c3eff743f37ec0cfc473381b.jpg[/img] [h3]New Levels![/h3] We’ve been putting two new levels through their paces with our playtesters on Discord – The Pit and Mainframe. In the past we’ve revisited old levels and reworked/improved those, so it’s been good to create two completely new levels with all of the lessons learned from watching people play. [h3]Overview & Campaign![/h3] With a lot of time in previous months spent improving the Navigator portion of the campaign, we’ve turned our attention to the Ship Overview (the part where enemies move around your vessel). What we’ve found is that a lot of messaging and feedback is required regarding how the two parts blend together, which we’ll continue to focus on in January. [h3]New Enemy Weapons![/h3] Our standard soldier enemy is one that has a lot of versatility in combat, so we wanted to expand this by creating additional weapons that they can carry. The image in the top-right is their existing weapon; a three-burst mid-range rifle you should be familiar with. In addition to that weapon, they can now be equipped with a pistol, a shotgun-equivalent or a longer range rifle and their behaviours are adjusted to suit the weapon they carry (i.e. if it’s shorter-range they’ll look to close the distance more). This also allows us to balance enemy forces to a greater degree – such as weighting more pistol-based enemies at the start, and mix up additional weapons as the wave difficulty increases. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/da322f8fab337615d92bc3a39d8f913b781eae3c.jpg[/img] In January we’ll look to improve this feature by giving them custom animations and visual effects to help differentiate them in combat, which will help you prioritise who you should target first! We’ve got thoughts on a couple of our other bipedal weapon carrying enemies that could be prime candidates for this kind of treatment, but we’ll cover that in a future post. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/3c5c57ef9b7808d5336d601fa75e9410d29fca25.png[/img] We love it when you speak to us! We try to respond to every post – but if we don’t please be assured we always read them and take note of feedback and comments! You can reach us on these platforms: [list] [*][url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1252680/discussions/1/]Steam forums[/url] [*][url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6FGX1jCxMUqdlB_d6KsztQ]YouTube[/url] [*][url=https://twitter.com/FirebladeSoft]Twitter[/url] [*][url=https://www.facebook.com/FirebladeSoftware]Facebook[/url] [*][url=https://www.tiktok.com/@firebladesoftware]TikTok[/url] [*][url=https://www.instagram.com/firebladesoftware/]Instagram[/url] [*][url=https://discord.com/invite/TsHGWHquEH]Discord[/url] [*][url=https://sentrygame.com/newsletter]Newsletter signup[/url] [/list] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/3c5c57ef9b7808d5336d601fa75e9410d29fca25.png[/img] We’ve got so many ideas for extra deployables, weapons, enemies etc. but as we approach release we’re gradually shifting into polishing and improving what is already in-game. This is so that we can maintain a consistently high quality – after all, Early Access major updates are a perfect time to introduce more cool content :) Thanks for the support and see you next time… [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38973288/d72b3dc65d188dfeb26c93a6e943e6e4a21274d0.png[/img]