SENTRY – Devlog 1

Hi, I’m Sean Noonan, lead designer on SENTRY. In this first devlog I’m going to share what we’ve been up to this past month.

First up, we’ve got a new level in the form of Engineering. This is actually one of the first levels that we prototyped for the game. It originally served as the basis for our initial art explorations, which helped define our visual style, as well as allowing us to investigate basic level design metrics and scale.

Engineering is one of the simpler levels found in Roughneck-class vessels, and is likely to be one of the first sub systems attacked by enemies, and therefore one of the first that players must defend. It features 3 enemy entry points with paths that converge into a single choke point. This is a great place to focus your defences, try out different trap configurations, and use different weapons in different ways. Basically, shooting fish in a barrel. There’s also a sneaky vantage point overlooking the choke. This can be accessed by a ladder in the neighbouring chamber for those that like to fight at a distance. Or at least see how their traps are doing from afar. The choke point then forks into the exit room, where you’ll have limited time and space to slow the advance of the enemy escape.

And speaking of enemies, we’ve got a new enemy to share. Meet the Bile Hound. This little creature is a corrupted form of the Mutt, with a very different approach to combat. To offer a comparison, the Mutt is a rusher – that’s an enemy archetype that relentlessly charges and lunges at the player. This resulting in massive damage if it manages to catch the player in its powerful jaws. In contrast, the Bile Hound occupies a sniper-like space in the enemy roster. The bile hound attempts to maintain a constant distance on its prey, spitting a poison ball of phlegm whenever it gets a clear shot.

Now this is still rather work in progress, and we’re still developing our poison effects, so that’s something we’ll showcase in a future update. And before I tease what else we’re working on next, I’d like to take a second to thank everyone that’s taken the time to help us by wishlisting the game. We’re currently sitting at around 50,000 wishlists, which roughly places us as the 370th most wishlisted game on Steam. So thank you to everyone that has helped us on this journey so far. We really appreciate the excitement and enthusiasm for SENTRY, and we are eager to get it into players hands as soon as it’s ready.

And as for what’s next? We’re working on a couple of different areas of the game, but one thing we can tease is the next entry in the weapon roster; which will be the Submachine Gun!

Until next time, thanks for watching.