DEVLOG #17

One sun, one run

Every run is now one day on the front line.

• The sun moves with the waves: dawn at wave 1, a bright midday that still has a direction, the golden hour around wave 60 and a red sunset for the last waves.
• Real shadows: every operator, hostile, boss and crate throws a shadow in its own shape. Standing figures fall over from their feet, the way a real shadow does.
• Relief on cover: fixed cover and crates catch the light on the sun side and fall dark on the other. Units in the shadow of big cover turn darker too.
• The Harbinger's church: at wave 60 the sun stands behind the ruined church, and the light through its gothic window lands on the ground in front of you.
• Every map its own light: the jungle and the forest move under a canopy of leaves in the wind, the wasteland stays dusty amber, scorched earth glows red. Weather covers the sun: storm, firestorm, sandstorm and blizzard, with lightning that throws one hard shadow.
• Your choice: a new LIGHTING setting under Display with Ultra, Cinematic (the default), Normal and Off. Ultra is made for strong machines, Normal stays light on a laptop or a Steam Deck.

The feed goes dark

The game camera is Command's overhead feed. The Network has found a way to crack it.

• Three times a run, from wave 33: the feed glitches and falls away. Command switches to your low-light sensor, and the battlefield goes black. A front lasts two waves, three from wave 70.
• Only light shows you the enemy: the light on your weapon, explosions and fire. Hostiles show their eyes, the Network's cold blue, and nothing else until your light finds them.
• SENSOR SWEEP: every twenty seconds a pulse runs over the field and marks what is out there for a moment.
• NIGHT HUNT: in the dark the Network pushes harder, its fastest units faster still. You are paid for it: XP and score ×1.5 for as long as the front lasts.

It learns how you fight

• It reads your last three runs: when one kind of damage did half the work, the Network starts hardening against it. Fire, blast, and the other styles.
• From wave 21: one hostile in six comes adapted, one in four later on. A small hex mark shows which ones. Never a boss, never a Baron, never a debut.
• Mix it up: change how you fight, and over a few runs it forgets what it learned.
• APEX is immune: the Navy SEAL produces no pattern the Network can calibrate to.
• Optional: NETWORK ADAPTATION can be switched off in Settings.

Ten ways to make it worse

Every Command boss you defeat unlocks a directive. Open THE NETWORK ANSWERS with Y (R on a keyboard), next to DEPLOY. Each one makes the run harder in its boss's way and pays more casings and score. After the first round of play they were too easy, so all ten got heavier:

• ARMOURED COLUMN (Titan): every hostile carries armour equal to its HP.
• NO QUARTER (Warlord): kills never drop health, health crates heal a quarter.
• SCORCHED EARTH (Inferno): enemy fire burns three times as long and hits 50% harder.
• RELENTLESS (Revenant): every hostile moves 50% faster.
• SIEGE LINE (Dreadnought): a barrage every 10 waves, shells hit 50% harder.
• THE PROOF (Harbinger): Command bosses +150% HP and a double entry shield.
• DARK ZONE (Phantom): twice the Zone Events, and every blackout lasts a wave longer, without sensor sweep or reboot.
• DEEP NETWORK (Leviathan): adaptation on one in two hostiles from wave 11, and they shrug off 70%.
• CONVERGENCE (Monarch): Barons +100% HP, each with two elite escorts.
• ELEVEN MINUTES (Overlord): Field Command offers two cards, and no rerolls.
• All ten on: casings ×4 and score ×4. Your highest threat level is kept in the Service Record. The leaderboard is waiting.

Take it from them

• 22 classified files: subject dossiers and pages from General Voss's journal. Rare: after a file, at least two runs pass before the next chance.
• OBSIDIAN CARRIER: a subject file arrives with a carrier who runs for the edge of the map. Kill it before it leaves, or the file is gone for this run.
• Journal pages fall from the boss of their wave.
• The Intel Dossier got two new tabs: FILES, where you read everything you recovered, and FIELD, with every event of a run as its own card.

Hall of Mirrors

The wave 70 commander has new art and a new trick. He stays visible for a while, then shatters into three to six images, more with every phase, that circle you, swap places and fire as one. Only one is real: he breathes frost and casts a shadow, the fakes don't. Shoot a fake and it bursts into ice. Hit the real one and every mirror shatters while he staggers and takes 30% more damage. Too slow, and the images close in and burst into ice novas: dash through.

The kill that keeps hunting

The Navy SEAL's Headhunter used to add crit numbers you never saw. Now you see it every time it works.

• A crit kill sends a homing round out of the body to the nearest hostile. If that round kills, it jumps on. One jump at the start, three at level 5, with a sniper one more.
• Every weapon its own chain: a gold round with a glowing tail from the guns, a burning shard from rockets and grenades, a jagged bolt when the laser beam breaks, a fireball that sets the next target alight, an ice shard that freezes it. The Vortex has no single kill shot, so its implosion throws void splinters outward instead.
• Never the same target twice in one chain, and bosses can be hit but never start one.

Suppressed

Suppressed Weapons is no longer a number on a card either.

• Your own weapons sound suppressed: a new set of sounds for the pistol, shotgun, machine gun, minigun and sniper. The sniper even has its own report for each evolution, and Triple Burst plays a real three-round burst. Flamethrower, laser, Ice Beam and Vortex go low and muffled. Each level after the first makes it quieter. The enemy keeps its own loud guns.
• A suppressor on the barrel: no muzzle flame, a small grey puff of gas instead, and faint subsonic tracers. In a Network Blackout your shots give no flash at all.
• Unseen: hostiles further than a few metres lose your position. Their aimed shots go wide, up to 10 degrees at level 5, and a grey question mark shows who just lost you.
• Built for the chain: quiet shots, crits, and a Headshot Chain running through the pack.

Felt in every run

• The Ghost always dies now: a stun during its untouchable phase could keep it untouchable for as long as you kept hitting it.
• SEAL shotgun: with Slug Round and Double Tap the fourth trigger sometimes fired two loose rounds. Now it is always a full spread with the slug in the middle.
• Fixed cover: if it rose under you, you could get stuck inside it. Not anymore.
• Airstrike and Enemy Barrage hurt for real: standing in a red lane costs 150 shield or health per pass, and every shell that lands on you costs 150. Move.
• Crit chance stops at 100%: every point above it becomes crit damage, so no upgrade is ever wasted.
• One text everywhere: the Intel Dossier now shows the same text and level cap as the upgrade cards in a run, for every upgrade. The top upgrade of every operator is called EXTRA LIFE on every screen.
• Network eyes in the dark: blood and debris no longer light up in a blackout; the eyes sit on every face, measured per enemy type.