Dread Protocol · published · build 24722646
This is the biggest update Dread Protocol has had yet.
It touches almost every part of the game: a full first-person mode, a brand-new sword combat system, a complete rework of the cybernetic system (the boons), new weapon attachments and gun juice, deployment briefings to give you more context when boarding a station, a reworked store, real difficulty scaling, and a long list of fixes and quality-of-life improvements - many of them straight from your reports and reviews. Thank you for those. Keep them coming.
The original plan was to split this update into three or four smaller ones: swords, first person, cybernetics, and so on. But the more I worked on each, the more I realised how well they complemented and fed into each other. So here I am with a hulking big update for the game
So grab a drink! There's a table of contents for a reason.
First-Person Mode
Sword Combat
Cybernetics Overhaul: 18 New Augments
Deployment Conditions
Three New Floor Status Effects
Difficulty Scaling
Weapon Gadgets: The Fourth Attachment Slot
New Equipment: Decoy
Player Loadouts
Aiming
Gun Feel Improvements
Getting Spaced
Store Quality of Life
Enemies, Bosses & Pathfinding
Overlapping Door Fix
UI & Inventory
Everything Else
Dread Protocol is now fully playable in first person. Hold the Swap View button any time to switch between third and first person whenever you feel like it.
It's doubly useful as you can now use the scopes on each weapon.
I personally still like to use third person when I’m using a rocket launcher or want to peek around corners.
Real scope overlays. Aiming through a scope in first person brings up a proper scope view. Every scope model has its own overlay: circular, vertical, horizontal, square, hexagonal and octagonal lens shapes, each with their own reticle styles and accent colours that match the weapon's materials.
First person is something I'll keep tuning, so tell me how I can improve it. It also pairs rather well with a sword in your hands, which brings me neatly on to the next bit.
Since the launch of Early Access, swords have been something I’ve always wanted in the game. In fact, they existed in the demo once upon a time, but the animations were so bad I had to remove them.
Well I am happy to report that they’re finally back in the game and probably my favourite thing about Dread Protocol.
Quick tap attack for light attacks and combos, hold down attack for a heavy attack and use right click to block incoming shots.
There are currently 3 different swords you can find from gun crates: a Katana, a Heavy Sword and a Light Sword. Each is mechanically its own thing, not a reskin, and the Light Sword is an energy blade that ignites and extends when you draw it.
The Samurai class can finally live up to its name, and now starts with a samurai sword.
Third on the list, but this is the change that has had the biggest impact on how the game actually plays. The cybernetics pool has been completely reworked: 18 new cybernetics are in. Instead of just adding to the existing pool, I made a conscious decision to remove the most boring boons in the game. So 18 have gone, the ones that were just blind stat boosts and didn't feel noticeable in-game.
The new boons have a focus on rewarding aggression, keeping you moving and killing rather than hiding behind a crate: chain kills to refill your shield (ADRENAL DIVIDEND), have every 3rd kill in a chain top up your magazine (HOT SWAP), or turn every kill into a bomb for whoever's standing nearby (FISSION ROUNDS).
[ Grav Boosters in action ]
I’ve also made sure to include a series of boons that support a sword focus build: RETURN TO SENDER and PERFECT GUARD reward well-timed parries, SEISMIC EDGE turns your heavy swings into shockwaves, MONOMOLECULAR EDGE lets your blade cut straight through armour, and QUICKDRAW SHEATHE keeps you fast between melee kills.
Cybernetic
Stat
Effect
Fission Rounds
Strength
Enemies you kill violently detonate, damaging everything nearby.
Hydraulic Ram
Strength
Melee kills launch the body; anyone nearby is knocked off their feet.
Combo Nova
Strength
Every 5th kill in a chain erupts a concussive nova around you.
Overkill Transfer
Strength
Excess damage from a killing blow arcs into the nearest enemy.
Return to Sender
Strength
Parried shots fly back at whoever fired them, carrying your blade's damage.
Seismic Edge
Strength
Heavy sword swings erupt a shockwave that floors nearby enemies.
Concussive Rounds
Strength
Headshots that don't kill briefly stun the target.
Grav Boosters
Resolve
Double jump, then dash in mid-air.
Adrenal Dividend
Resolve
Each chained kill restores shield. A 5-kill chain refills it completely.
Phase Skin
Resolve
You are untouchable while sliding.
Perfect Guard
Resolve
A parry timed at the last possible moment refills part of your shield.
Slide-Loader
Resolve
Starting a slide instantly reloads your weapon.
M.U.T.T.
Techno
A combat drone follows you and fires on what you're fighting.
Hot Swap
Techno
Every 3rd kill in a chain instantly refills part of your magazine.
Monomolecular Edge
Techno
Your melee attacks ignore armour completely.
Prey Instinct
Tact
Enemies who haven't spotted you take double damage.
Quickdraw Sheathe
Tact
Melee kills grant a burst of movement speed.
Defense Drone
Tact
A guardian drone follows you and shoots incoming projectiles out of the sky.
[ M.U.T.T. and the Defense Drone in action]
Gone from the pool: HE Belt, Holo-Targeting Interface, Enhanced Boss Override, Stomach Nanolining, Ammo Infusion Module, Carbon Nano Kevlar Skin Graft, Tip Charged Projectiles, Stun Belt, Modulated Attenuation Amplifier, Sonic Bracers, Warp Camo, Glare Nullifiers, Extendo, Embedded Nano Printers, Breach Tips, Knife Belt, Semtex Belt and Boot Suppressor. Retired boons are handled gracefully: existing saves reconcile automatically, and nothing you own disappears out from under you.
The star map has always told you what you're flying into, but not everyone reads every encounter carefully, and even when you do it's easy to forget the details by the time you actually board. So you'd land on a station with no idea why the lights were out, why a boarding party had just come through a wall, or why you'd spent ten minutes hunting for fuel on a station the map had already marked as having none.
That's fixed. When you board, a Deployment Conditions briefing appears under the objective, showing exactly what you're walking into: hostile activity, minefields, boarding parties, pinned-down allies, and the floor's status effects, including ones you never scanned on the star map. You can also pull the floor's status up any time from the map screen.
Unique encounters waiting on the station are flagged up front instead of ambushing you with no context.
Floor status effects are readable at a glance, at any point in the run, from the map screen.
Deployment conditions and floor status effects now correctly persist when you continue a saved run. Previously, floor modifiers like Hardy or Station Rust silently stopped applying after loading a save.
I added 3 more floor status effects to add even more variation to a run.
WANTED: A miniboss is guaranteed to be waiting at the Warp Core.
SHOCK TROOPS: Enemies push aggressively instead of holding position.
REBEL CELL: A rebel joins you at the airlock.
Enemies always got tougher as you pushed deeper, but so did you. Cybernetics, better weapons and levelled-up stats stacked faster than the enemies did, so the curve flattened out and the back half of a run got easier than the front.
Now enemy strength ramps station by station across a run: health, shields, damage, and squad sizes all scale as you go, so deep stations keep their teeth without the early ones getting spikier. Steam Deck gets a sensible cap on simultaneous enemy counts to protect performance.
If the feedback is that this new difficulty scaling is either too easy or too hard I can easily adjust it from a config in the project. So let me know how it feels.
A big part of players' frustration with weapon attachments was seeing all of them listed, but having no idea how they affected the gun they were holding.
To fix this I added tooltips for each attachment, explaining exactly what it does. On controller, these tooltips auto-scroll on the menu.
Generated weapons can now roll bonus gadget attachments on top of the classic scope/silencer/extended mag. These are physical gear mounted on the gun itself:
Ammo counter: a live readout screen on the weapon showing your actual remaining bullets.
Heartbeat sensor: its screen pulses when hostiles are near.
Kill tally: counts your kills, on the gun, where kills should be counted.
Grips: steadier handling.
Tactical light: a real, toggleable weapon light.
Underbarrel grenade launcher: an actual second fire mode on your gun.
The tactical light and underbarrel launcher are alt-fire gadgets: fire them with Middle Mouse on keyboard, or hold LT + press RB on controller. Any weapon carrying one shows the binding hint right on its attachment card.
Deploy it and enemies take the bait, pulling fire and attention off you while you reposition, or line up something unkind.
Every character now starts with their own bespoke set of equipment rather than drawing from a shared default. The idea is that each class should feel distinct from the moment you drop in.
Class
Starting Kit
Rebel
2× Reinforcement Beacon, Med Kit, Total Recall
Gun Runner
Reinforcement Beacon, Semtex Crate, Stim Pack
Hacker
Grav Charge, Stun Crate, Signal Uplink, Small Med Kit
Soldier
2× Reinforcement Beacon, HE Crate
Specialist
Reinforcement Beacon, Bubble Shield, Med Kit
Samurai
2× Stim Pack, Sonic Horn
Alien
Corrupted Vial, Grav Charge, Burger
Tech
Auto Turret, Demo Ball, Small Med Kit
Spy
Scanner, Stun Crate, Decoy, Small Med Kit
Bounty Hunter
Warp Locator, Orbital Strike, Burger
Let me know if I should take this one step further and give each character predetermined starting cybernetics. Right now it's random. But giving each character cybernetics that complement their build could be neat. Imagine the Samurai starts with Return to Sender and can deflect bullets back at enemies from the get-go, or the Hacker starts with a Defense Drone.
Fixed aiming skew while aiming down sights. The character's body and weapon orientation were being calculated against the wrong screen position. "Screen centre" could resolve to the bottom-left corner of the screen. Your gun could visibly point off-crosshair, and in the worst case your character would turn toward a fixed point in the world instead of where you were aiming. Aim now always resolves against the true centre of the screen, at every resolution.
Fixed point-blank aim. The aim ray used to start about two metres in front of the camera, so an enemy standing right in your face could be skipped entirely and shots would fly past them. Close-range targets are now resolved properly.
A pass over the whole arsenal to make the guns feel more alive in your hands. All of this is new:
Heat glow. Sustained fire cooks the weapon (barrels, shrouds, vents, whole receivers, whatever parts that gun actually has), ramping up to an angry orange. The curve is weighted, so a single shot barely registers while dumping a mag visibly cooks it. Only time cools it: reloading does not buy you a cold gun. 27 weapons carry it.
Pump shotguns rack between shots. A beat after the blast the pump pulls back, hangs open, and slams home. On the last shell it hangs open and stays open, so the gun reads dry before the HUD does, and the reload slams it shut.
Break-action shotguns hinge open on the reload and snap shut the moment the fresh shells go in.
Revolvers got the full treatment. The cylinder ratchets one chamber per shot and the hammer falls with it, then eases back to cocked. Run it dry and the hammer stays down (the revolver's version of slide lock-back) until the reload picks it back up. Reloading swings the crane out, free-spins the cylinder, and snaps it shut aligned to a chamber. Pull the trigger on an empty gun and you get the proper double-action pull-through: hammer back, hammer drop, cylinder advance.
[Not sure if this gif is doing this justice, but the cylinder has a reload animation]
Slides and bolts blow back on every shot and lock to the rear when the magazine hits zero.
Visible shells on the weapon body track your actual remaining rounds: the shotgun's side-mounted shells empty one by one as you fire.
Casings eject properly: arced, tumbling, and thrown clear of the gun instead of being dragged along with it.
Rotary weapons spool up. Firing winds the flywheel, holding the trigger pushes it toward top speed, and releasing lets it coast down on friction. The longer the burst, the longer the wind-down. Holster it mid-burst and it keeps coasting on your hip.
Battery-powered tools show their charge on the weapon itself, quantized into bars, blinking on the last one.
On-gun ammo counters run their LEDs green to amber to blinking red, then solid red when you're dry.
I've improved how enemies are sucked into space. The new effect is a lot more aggressive in how it vents them. Whilst I enjoyed the slow pull of the previous effect, it often resulted in dead bodies remaining in the station. This new version is a lot more likely to actually send them into space.
The station store got a pass:
Gift of the Gab discounts now apply instantly: displayed prices and charged prices both update the moment you take the boon, and the discount is consistent everywhere (store and dispensers used to disagree).
Fixed tiles displaying a discounted price but charging the full one. You now pay what it says.
Fixed a bug where being broke could get you free ammo and grenades. Sorry.
Quick purchase: double-click a tile with the mouse, or confirm-again on the selected tile with a controller, to buy instantly.
Blocked purchases now tell you why ("Backpack full", "Not Enough Credits") instead of silently doing nothing.
Closed a same-frame double-purchase exploit.
Worm God boss: fixed allies pathing out of the arena mid-fight and abandoning you. Your rebels now stay in the fight.
Skugz boss level: fixed enemies getting stuck inside walls.
Boss defeated chime. A dedicated audio cue now fires when a boss goes down, so there's no ambiguity about whether the fight is over.
The Worm God has a death noise, making it far clearer when it's actually dead.
Fixed a rare crash when boarding certain Gruber Barracks encounters.
Station layouts could generate multiple doors overlapping one another. This was terrible for immersion, as you would need to open two or three doors before breaching a single room, and the stacked doors would Z-fight against each other. Happy to report that this has been resolved. I wanted to give this fix its own section as it drastically improves the overall feel of the dungeon generation and is a big step towards polishing the game to a high enough standard for full release.
Attachment labels are tinted by rarity, and empty slots show a proper greyed-out icon instead of a blank square.
Weapon pickup cards show gadget attachments too, with icons and live value overlays, so you know what you're picking up before you commit.
Swords display correctly in the weapon preview, with per-weapon positioning.
The tutorial's Old Rusty now shows full stats instead of blanks and a DPS reading of 0.
Empty inventory panels now hide fully instead of showing half-finished UI.
Store toasts and notifications now render above the store screen instead of underneath it.
Invert-axis settings labels no longer say "mouse" when they also cover gamepad sticks.
Inventory item descriptions follow controller focus: moving the selection previews the item, and confirm uses it.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text that could render blank on Steam Deck now displays correctly.
Fixed ADS aiming skew: body and weapon orientation resolved against a wrong screen position.
Fixed point-blank enemies being skipped by the aim ray.
Fixed floor status effects silently dropping when continuing a saved run.
Fixed a load-time error that could kill the tannoy and minimap setup after continuing a run.
Fixed a rare crash boarding certain Gruber Barracks encounters.
Fixed allies pathing out of the Worm God arena.
Fixed enemies stuck inside walls on the Skugz boss level.
Fixed side-by-side duplicate doors and overlapping hangar/corridor doors in station generation.
Fixed store tiles charging a different price than displayed.
Fixed free store purchases while broke.
Fixed a same-frame double-purchase exploit in the store.
Fixed Gift of the Gab discounts not applying until a re-visit.
Fixed Old Rusty showing no stats and 0 DPS in the tutorial loadout.
Fixed store toasts rendering underneath the store screen.
Fixed blank Chinese/Japanese/Korean text on Steam Deck.
Fixed raw text tokens appearing in the Italian credits toast and the backpack-full toast.
That's the Combat Update. It's been months of work, and a lot of it came directly from your feedback, reviews, and bug reports. A lot of the changes for this update came directly from this review:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/le_sealed/recommended/2629280
The cybernetics overhaul, the new attachments and how their stats were communicated to the player, the deployment conditions being communicated more effectively to the player when they board, the difficulty curve. I could go on. If you run into anything weird, the fastest way to get it fixed is to let me know on the Steam forums or via the Discord. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the update. James P.s. I've been working on a lot more tooling to create new encounters and station events.