Hi everyone,
We’ve added a new enemy this month; the Bile Pod.
These aren’t traditional enemies that enter via breach points. Instead, these are spawned into levels as a hazard.
They are positioned on the floor and ceilings and are fixed in place. If you get too close to them they enter an alert state – get even closer and they’ll detonate, causing damage within a radius.
You can attack them, but they’ll only enter a dormant state for a period of time before reviving. Here’s some concept art of their initial development showing the inactive, alert and attacking states:
They also prevent deployables being placed on them, so when these are active in a level you’ll not only have to be mindful of running around freely, but also where you position your traps.
They also make a good first enemy for our new prologue, which has been taking up most of our time this month. As this is a linear sequence where we’re teaching new players the basic mechanics and the world of SENTRY, moving through an area dotted with these stationary enemies provides a suitable first shooting challenge that we can escalate from there.
Speaking of this prologue, we’ve been making adjustments to ensure it’s both a fun introduction to the game as well as teaching everything in a compelling manner. As SENTRY is such a systems-driven game, it’s been a nice step-change for us to work on something linear.
Here’s a work-in-progress image showing when you get to equip the SENTRY suit for the first time:
And here’s some concept art showing some other points during the prologue. First up is where you first attain a weapon:
Followed by where you first get your Fabricator, along with loading it with a memory card that contains the deployable blueprints for that level:
In some ways, you can almost imagine this is some of the previously unseen preparations a SENTRY would do before entering each combat.
From the Community!
This month we’re showcasing some more of the comic that Discord User Busy Bee makes where occasionally some elements from SENTRY make an appearance:
We can’t get enough of 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.
We also had another video from Splattercat this month. He’s one of those YouTubers that people trust for game recommendations so if you got the game off the back of his video welcome to the community :)
Watch on YouTube
Knowing how busy Splattercat is and how he’s constantly inundated by indie developers asking him to play their game, it’s fantastic knowing that he likes SENTRY enough to cover us multiple times. We messaged him for Next Fest and the Early Access release and he kindly covered us on both occasions, but he’s covered us twice more now of his own volition – and we’re glad that the changes we’ve made during that time have only made him enjoy the game more than he already did!
Providing feedback is really important in helping us shape the game. Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:
Thanks for the support!
