DEVLOG #9 · 14 OCT 2026 · MARCO HOL · BLITZ COMMAND
STEAM
SYSTEMS AUDIT
OPERATOR UPGRADES
ALL OPERATORS
BUG FIX
BURN STATUS
ARMAGEDDON
PERFORMANCE
VISUALS
HIGH QUALITY MODE
CONTROLLERS
STEAM DECK
SAVE DATA
BOSSES
ACHIEVEMENTS
BOSS ARMOR
ENDINGS
Before a game goes on Steam, it gets stripped down and inspected. That is what this dispatch is about. Not new content first — truth first. Every permanent upgrade in the Operator menu was traced from the moment you buy it to the moment it is supposed to change the fight. What we found was not pretty. What we fixed is the largest single update this game has had.
DEPLOYMENT STATUS
STEAM IS IN THE PIPELINE.
The store page is built and submitted to Valve for review. The demo is submitted alongside it. Windows, macOS and Linux builds are uploaded and tested through the Steam client. Once Valve clears the review, the page goes live as Coming Soon — and from that moment you can wishlist Blitz: Last Stand directly on Steam.
It will not be long now. The paperwork is done, the builds are in, and the game you are about to read about is the one going to Steam. Every fix in this dispatch ships with the Steam build.
OPERATOR SYSTEMS
100+ UPGRADES. NOW THEY ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.
You earn casings. You spend them in the Operator menu. The upgrade lights up, the level goes up, and you deploy expecting a stronger operator. For a large part of that menu, nothing happened. The upgrade was recorded — and never read by the game again.
The audit traced every upgrade for all six operators. Not just a search for the name — a check that the value is actually used where the fight happens: the shot, the explosion, the mortar shell, the hit, the start of a wave. Where it wasn't, it is now.
| Operator | Upgrades repaired | Examples |
|---|
| Soldier | 18 | Mortar Training, Fire for Effect, Fire Superiority, Heavy Support, Sustained Assault, Minigun Mastery |
| Marine | 14 | Warhead Upgrade, Cluster Round, Lock-On System, Siege Charge, Siege Mentality |
| Navy SEAL | 17 | Slug Round, Double Tap, Breacher Round, Kill Instinct, Total Dominance |
| Commando | 14 | Suppressor, Blur Edge, Veil of War, Cold Bore Shot, Wraith Protocol |
| Jungle Guerrilla | 20 | Mine Craft, Scorched Earth, Wildfire Protocol, Predator Strike |
| Sergeant | 20 | IED Mastery, Chain Reaction, Ultimate Sacrifice, God of War |
Your progress is safe. Nothing was reset. Every upgrade you already bought starts working the next time you deploy — no re-purchase, no refund needed.
A handful of descriptions promised mechanics this game does not have — reload phases, magazines, detection radii. Those upgrades now do something that fits the game, and their text says exactly what that is. The Navy SEAL passive now reads what it always did: two dash charges and a 40% shorter dash cooldown. The Commando's Shadow passive finally has teeth: enemies must close 30% more distance before they can attack you.
CORE COMBAT
FIXES THAT REACH EVERY OPERATOR.
Tracing the upgrades exposed problems underneath them — systems that looked right on screen and did nothing in the numbers.
SLOWS NEVER SLOWED
The slow was applied after the enemy had already moved, then reset at the start of the next frame. Ice Cannon, Smoke Screen and every slow effect looked active and changed nothing. Slows now apply before movement. Regular enemies and mini-bosses are affected; full bosses remain immune. The Soldier's Suppressive Fire passive — machine gun hits slow 20% — is now real.
THE IED DID NO DAMAGE WHEN YOU DETONATED IT
An IED that triggered on its own worked. An IED you detonated manually — the Sergeant's core move — knocked enemies back and dealt zero damage. The same path served the Guerrilla's Apocalypse and second-chance detonations. All of them now resolve damage and kill credit. Measured in-game: a manual IED went from 0 to its full damage.
YOUR OWN FIRE BURNED YOU
Napalm, the burn trail, the thermobaric fire zone and the Apocalypse lava field were spawned into the same fire list as enemy fire — which only damages players. Player fire now burns enemies and never the operator who lit it, capped at eight patches per player.
ABILITIES THAT NEVER FIRED
Projectiles lost part of their information the moment they were fired. Death Mark and EMP Arsenal never triggered because of it. Death Mark is now live (and applied once, not twice). EMP stuns last 3 seconds as described, bosses 1 second — no more permanent stun-lock. Artillery Commander's bonus against bosses now applies. Arsenal Drop refills instead of overwriting a weapon and wiping its evolutions.
NEW SYSTEMS
BURN STATUS. ARMAGEDDON ONLINE.
Five Guerrilla upgrades were built around enemies that burn. The game had no burn. It does now: with any burn upgrade equipped, flamethrower hits set enemies on fire. Scorched Earth makes burning enemies leave fire behind them, Inferno knocks them back, and Wildfire Protocol spreads the burn to the two nearest enemies when a burning target dies.
The Sergeant's level 80 upgrade, Armageddon, promised a screen-wide strike once per wave. It never existed. Now your first IED detonation of each wave calls it in: a 0.6-second warning, then 400 damage to every enemy on screen — bosses take 200.
Also corrected: the Wraith's Quantum Pulse referenced a screen effect that did not exist, which broke the frame every time it hit you. And Twin Turrets no longer lowers your turret limit — Auto-Turret holds one turret, Twin Turrets two.
PERFORMANCE
LATE WAVES, LIGHTER LOAD.
Every heavy effect was measured in the real desktop game, full screen on a 5K display, with 120 enemies and constant explosions. The biggest cost was never the explosions — it was what every enemy drew around itself, every single frame. One example: the Commander's dashed aura circle. A screen full of Commanders pushed a single frame to 74 milliseconds — about 13 frames per second. That ring, the colour rings at every enemy's feet, the Pyro's flame tongues, flames, rain and particles are now drawn once and reused. They look the same. They cost a fraction.
| System | Was | Now |
|---|
| Enemy glow | Recalculated every frame for every enemy | Pre-rendered once; bosses keep their live glow |
| Frame time, screen full of Commanders | 74 ms | 20 ms |
| Performance mode, 120 enemies (5K display) | 46–49 fps | 62–64 fps |
| Performance mode, 40 enemies (5K display) | 67–71 fps | 80–87 fps |
| High quality, 120 enemies | ~9 fps | 40–53 fps, even on a 5K display |
| Repeating error | Logged 60× per second, game half-running | Logged once; persistent fault returns you to the menu |
| Floating damage numbers | Unlimited | 80 on screen |
VISUAL SYSTEMS
THE BATTLEFIELD REMEMBERS.
The ground in Blitz has always been photographic. The fight on top of it wasn't. Explosions were flat coloured dots, bullets were specks, and when a wave ended the ground was spotless — as if nothing had happened. That changes now.
MARKS THAT STAY
Every kill leaves blood on the ground. Every explosion leaves a soot-black blast mark with an ash rim. Brass casings pile up beside your machine gun. Mechanical enemies leave scorch instead of blood. Marks fade slowly over the wave, and a new battlefield starts clean.
SNOW THAT SETTLES
On Arctic Tundra, Blizzard Zone and Snow Fields, snow now builds up on the ground as the wave goes on. Operators and enemies leave tracks through it, explosions melt holes into it, and the snowfall slowly covers everything again. The snow maps were also brightened so they finally read as snow.
EXPLOSIONS WITH WEIGHT
Every explosion is now a fireball that lights up the ground around it, followed by smoke that hangs in the air and drifts away. Rockets trail smoke. Player rounds fly as tracers — a streak in the weapon's colour with a white-hot head. Enemy fire keeps its original look so you can always read it instantly.
BURNING GROUND
Fire zones are now charred ground with a glowing core instead of flat orange circles. The danger zone is exactly the same size as before — it just looks like fire now.
Smooth first. None of this was allowed to cost frame rate. Measured with 120 enemies on screen and constant explosions, the average frame is now about 9% faster than before the update. Marks are painted in batches, snow is rendered at half resolution, and performance mode scales the heaviest effects back.
HIGH QUALITY MODE
TURN PERFORMANCE MODE OFF. SEE THE WAR.
If you play on a strong machine, Blitz now looks the way it was always meant to. With performance mode off, the battlefield gets a full lighting pass. The old high quality setting was mostly extra glow — and that glow was so expensive it dropped a fast iMac to around 9 frames per second in a crowded wave. It has been rebuilt from scratch.
REAL LIGHT
Every map has its own light: harsh desert sun, cold arctic blue, the dim bunker. Explosions, muzzle flashes, burning ground, rockets and enemy fire now light up the ground around them. Your operator carries a soft light of their own, so you never lose yourself in the dark. The darkness falls on the ground, never on the units — enemies stay fully visible and stand out sharper than before.
SHADOWS AND BLOOM
Every soldier, enemy, crate and wall casts a soft shadow in the direction of the map's sun. Drones cast theirs further away, so you can see they are airborne. Hot things glow: fireballs, rockets, tracers, flames. Each map gets its own film-style colour grade.
EXPLOSIONS 2.0
An explosion is now a sequence: a white-hot flash, a heat ring racing outward, debris tumbling across the ground and embers cooling from yellow to deep red. Sparks streak along their path. Muzzle flashes are real flame cones that change every shot.
A LIVING BATTLEFIELD
Cloud shadows drift across the outdoor maps. Haze rolls over the ground — a sandstorm on Sand Dunes, a whiteout on the Blizzard Zone. The jungle gets rain splashing on the ground and lightning that lights up the whole fight. Ashlands flashes with fire. Work lamps flicker in the Bunker and the Industrial zone.
IT PICKS ITSELF
You don't have to choose. During your first fifteen seconds of play, the game measures your machine and picks the right mode on its own. If a wave gets too heavy, it first lowers the render resolution for a moment, then scales effects back, and restores everything once the fight calms down. Choose a mode yourself in the settings and the game never overrules you. On Steam Deck, performance mode stays on.
Performance mode got better too. It now also gets soft shadows, the new explosions and the new muzzle flash — for about a millisecond per frame at most — and it still runs much faster than it did before this update.
STEAM READINESS
BUILT FOR EVERY SCREEN. NO STUCK KEYS.
A Steam release means players on every kind of machine: laptops, 1440p monitors, ultrawides, the Steam Deck. Before shipping, the game was run and checked at six screen formats — 1280×800 (Steam Deck), 1366×768, 1920×1080, 2560×1080, 3840×1080 and 4:3. The HUD and upgrade screens fit on all of them, with zero errors.
RESIZE MID-FIGHT
Switching to fullscreen or resizing the window during a run now keeps everything consistent: battlefield marks and snow follow the new size, and enemies or pickups that ended up outside the new edges are pulled back into the arena.
NO MORE STICKY CONTROLS
On macOS, holding a movement key while pressing a Cmd shortcut could leave your operator walking on their own. Fixed. Controls also reset cleanly when the window is hidden, and a controller button you held while alt-tabbing no longer fires as a fresh press when you come back.
THE RIGHT BUTTON ON SCREEN
The HUD always showed [E] for your special ability — even with a controller in your hands, or after you rebound the key. It now shows △ on PlayStation, Y on Xbox and Steam Deck, or the key you chose, and switches the moment you change device. The Steam Deck is now recognised as its own controller, and milestone messages can be closed with ✕ or A.
SILENCE WHEN YOU STEP AWAY
Minimise the game and the music now stops with it, and picks up where it left off when you come back.
SCORES THAT ARRIVE
A dropped connection used to lose your leaderboard score silently. Scores that fail to send are now kept and delivered the next time the game is online, and the scoreboard tells you when it cannot be reached instead of loading forever.
SAVE DATA
YOUR PROGRESS IS SAFE.
Casings, purchased upgrades, medals and unlocked operators are hours of play. Until now, a single damaged save could quietly reset all of it. That can no longer happen.
BACKUPS AND RECOVERY
Every save now keeps its last good copy. If a save is ever damaged, the game restores the backup instead of starting you over — and the damaged version is kept aside, never overwritten. Blocked browser storage no longer causes errors either: the game simply keeps running.
READY FOR STEAM CLOUD
The desktop version now also writes your progress to save files, safely and atomically, so a crash mid-save can never leave a half-written file. That is exactly what Steam Cloud needs to carry your progress between machines. Existing progress moves over automatically the first time you launch the new version — nothing to do, nothing lost.
Also fixed: the Dreadnought's arm-cannon salvo finally plays its own sound. The audio file was in the game all along — it just never got loaded.
COMMAND THREATS
THE BOSSES GREW UP.
A bot played the game from wave 1 to 100 over and over, picking random upgrades, and timed every boss fight. The verdict was blunt: the final boss went down faster than the one before it, the Warlord was weaker than the Titan, and most bosses died before they had shown what they could do. Boss HP was also defined in two places that disagreed with each other. Now there is one source, and the curve climbs the way a last stand should.
| Boss | Wave | Old HP | New HP |
|---|
| Titan | 10 | 1,800 | 2,200 |
| Warlord | 20 | 2,200 | 4,000 |
| Inferno | 30 | 3,200 | 11,000 |
| Revenant | 40 | 4,500 | 4,800 + revival |
| Dreadnought | 50 | 5,200 | 18,000 |
| Harbinger | 60 | 6,500 | 24,000 |
| Phantom | 70 | 8,000 | 30,000 |
| Leviathan | 80 | 10,000 | 32,000 |
| Monarch | 90 | 12,000 | 36,000 |
| Overlord | 100 | 14,000 | 70,000 |
With a typical build, fights now run from around twenty seconds against the Titan to around a minute and a half against the Overlord. The Phantom also got faster and fires more often — it was the boss most players walked straight past.
Adaptive armor. Some builds deal so much damage that a boss is gone in seconds. Every boss now carries adaptive plating: hit it hard enough and the armor starts to spark, and damage above that line counts for less. Normal builds barely notice. The strongest builds still win faster — just not in seconds.
AN ENTRANCE
Every boss now arrives with its own title card: cinematic bars, the screen dims, its name and callsign in its own colour. The ground shakes and a shockwave rolls out from where it lands.
A DEATH WORTH THE FIGHT
Bosses no longer just pop. Time slows down, a chain of explosions tears across the body, a white flash, a huge shockwave — and a crater stays behind on the battlefield. The Overlord's death lasts more than twice as long.
BIGGER, AND READABLE
Bosses are drawn 30% larger, the Overlord 50% — finally bigger than the Monarch before it. Hitboxes did not change. Every boss now carries a soft outline and aura in its own colour, so dark bosses like the Revenant and Dreadnought no longer disappear into dark maps. The Warlord traded its brown for crimson.
THE PHANTOM HAUNTS
The Phantom now leaves ghostly afterimages, flickers half-transparent and glitches. Its ice spikes erupt as upright crystals with a dark edge and an ice-blue danger ring — you can see where they will be before they hit.
STEAMWORKS
PLUGGED INTO STEAM.
The Steam build now talks to Steam itself. Outside Steam — the web demo, the standalone desktop app — nothing changes: the game simply runs as it always did.
91 MEDALS, 91 ACHIEVEMENTS
Every medal in the Hall of Honor becomes a Steam achievement, secret medals included as hidden achievements. Medals you already earned are sent to Steam the first time you launch — and medals earned in the demo count as soon as you start the full game.
OVERLAY AND NAME ENTRY
The Steam overlay works in-game. Your Steam name is filled in for the leaderboard, and on a controller or Steam Deck, confirming the name field opens Steam's on-screen keyboard.
CONTROLS SCREEN SPEAKS YOUR PAD
The controls screen now shows the buttons of the controller you actually have plugged in: A/B/X/Y and RT/LT on Xbox and Steam Deck, ✕○□△ and R2/L2 on PlayStation — or both when no controller is connected.
SHARPER PICKUPS
Pickup icons are drawn large and scaled down on screen. They used to come out with jagged edges; they are now smooth at every size.
OPERATION LOCKDOWN
A REAL ENDING.
The demo used to pull you out ten seconds into the Dreadnought fight. Not anymore. Beat the Dreadnought at wave 50 and the war gives you your moment: a transmission from Blitz HQ, a red stamp that reads SECTOR HELD, your stats counting up and your place on the world leaderboard.
FINISHING THE DEMO NOW COUNTS
Your score goes on the global leaderboard and your end-of-run medals are awarded. Before this update, demo finishers never made the board — the best runs were the ones missing.
INTEL INTERCEPTED
The demo end screen shows the five commanders still waiting between wave 51 and wave 100. Classified. One perimeter. No extraction.
WAVE 100: THE LAST STAND HOLDS
The old confetti is gone. When the Overlord falls the screen goes white, then silent. Your operator stands in golden light, Command speaks one last time, and the credits roll. Six operators, six legends to earn.
Also fixed: pressing Enter to submit your name no longer skips your medal debrief, and a rare case where a cleared wave went unnoticed — no wave-clear sound, no milestone casings — is gone.
COMMAND ASSESSMENT
This was the dispatch nobody asks for and every player benefits from. Over a hundred upgrades now earn the casings you paid for. Slows slow. The IED detonates. Your fire burns the enemy. The battlefield finally looks like one — and on a strong machine, it now looks like a war film. The bosses finally fight like the last line between you and the end. Every change was tested before it was committed — and every operator came out of it stronger and more honest.
Next up: Steam. Follow development on Discord. The demo runs at blitzlaststand.com/demo.
— Marco Hol · M Designs · Blitz Command · 14 Oct 2026 · updated 15 Oct