DEVLOG #12

Thirty waves. Then the real war.

The Steam demo now runs from wave 1 to the Inferno at wave 30. That is three bosses, two Barons, eleven enemy debuts and the Dark Commander: about twenty-five minutes of fighting. Clear it and the screen tells you what is still out there: 70 waves, seven bosses, four more operators.

• Same systems as the full game: Field Command, the Wave Director, the new HUD and the new XP curve.
• Soldier and Marine are playable. The other four operators stay classified.
• Held back for launch: half of each operator's own upgrade cards, all legendaries, every mythic evolution, mythic weapon evolutions and Second Chance in the casings shop.
• Finishing the demo now says so. The score screen used to say KILLED IN ACTION when you had just held the sector. Now it says SECTOR HELD.

Waves with a name, a job and a plan

In the old waves, every enemy type you had ever met showed up in every wave. By wave 75 that was 182 enemies of 23 types at once: impressive on paper, the same fight every time in practice. A new enemy appeared as three units in a crowd of thirty and you never saw what it did.

The Wave Director replaces that soup. Every wave gets a role and a name that tells the truth about what is coming.

• Debut waves. Every new enemy gets its own entrance. An alarm, a NEW HOSTILE card with one line of intel, a single point man walking in alone under a red marker, and then the rest of them, in pulses from changing directions. Wave 16, BERSERK PROTOCOL: twenty Berzerkers.
• Squads instead of soup. A normal wave is a headline squad plus support: a shield wall with riflemen behind it, medics behind armour, snipers covered by runners. Three to seven types, not twenty-three.
• Ambushes. FLANK BREACH hits one side halfway through a wave. SURROUNDED drops a ring around you. STAMPEDE sweeps a line across the arena. QUIET SECTOR opens with four bodies and a calm banner, and then everything at once.
• A rhythm. Regroup after a boss, debuts and squads, a peak wave before the next boss. From wave 81, THEY REMEMBER: earlier debuts come back bigger and combined. Wave 98 is TOTAL WAR.
• Every run differs. Debuts, Barons, peaks and bosses are fixed so you can learn them. Squads and extra ambushes are rolled per run.
• The redeploy bar warns you: NEXT: WAVE 16 · ⚠ UNKNOWN CONTACT.

A new way to build your operator

The old upgrade screen stopped the war every time you levelled up. Field Command puts you in charge of when and how your operator grows.

• Banked picks. Levelling up no longer freezes the fight. Open your picks with Tab (or View on a controller) whenever you choose, or let them open when a wave is cleared.
• A loadout with slots. 6 gear slots, 3 support slots, every upgrade up to level 5. No limit on weapons: ammo is the limit.
• Your call. 2 rerolls per run. Skip a card for full ammo and 30% health. Banish a card you never want to see again.
• Every offer includes one of your operator's own cards when one is available: runs should feel like the operator you chose.
• Mythic evolutions. Max an operator card and its mythic takes over the same slot. Weapon evolutions always go to the weapon in your hands.
• Everything stacks. Mines, traps, drones and squads each keep their own timer and maximum. A second pick never makes the first one worse.
• Know your build. A LOADOUT tab in the pause menu and a Field Report after every run with the damage per source.

Every weapon redrawn

• 11 weapons and 44 evolutions with new art, and new art for every upgrade card.
• Every weapon its own effect: a laser that runs white-hot, an Ice Beam of real ice, sniper vapour trails, railgun arcs, real smoke and burning ground.

They hit back, and they talk once

• Revenant (wave 40): the minigun is aimed at you now, in bursts that grow every phase, and he brings soul orbs. While his Soul Anchors stand, your rounds pass straight through him: break the anchors first.
• Waves 60 to 100: more firepower and signature attacks: Leviathan's molten wake, the Monarch's satellites, a Phantom that fires from the dark.
• Boss voices never repeat. Eight bosses replayed their opening line at phase three. Every line now plays once per fight: Inferno gets a new phase-three line, and the Phantom saves its last words for its final phase.
• Every boss dies loud. A boss finished by a rocket, fire, poison or a mine used to go down without a word.

The gunship is back to full strength

After a rebuild last week the helicopter fired one stream at one target: it looked better and felt like nothing. It now fights with three guns: the chin cannon and both wing-tip miniguns, each on its own target, each round leaving its own barrel. Its damage now grows with the wave.

• Drones spin their rotors. The Sergeant's Suicide Drone is an actual drone with an armed light.
• Weather after wave 50, three or four times per run: thunderstorm, firestorm, sandstorm or blizzard. Never during a boss fight.
• New ground: Dense Forest, Scorched Earth and Industrial.

A new mix

• Every sound levelled, no more distortion, Master and Voice sliders, boss voices cut through the fight.
• Menu music from the first second. Laser and flamethrower sound on the trigger.

From the playtest notes