After the last development blog about the map design and production process, I thought it would be nice to cover something that’s a little more interesting to players and talk about one of our new core gameplay mechanics.

The Sentinel series has always had some key unique features to make it stand out from the crowd. One of the main ones has always been to have defensive barriers and buildings which can be damaged and destroyed. And where there is damage there is the need for repair, which has made our trusty repair drones a central part of the core gameplay.

In Sentinel 4: Dark Star we’re extending this mechanic by doing something pretty special:  Now the enemies can fight back and damage your turrets!

Some enemies can do this with a ranged attack from the path, or some flying enemies can go after them directly. To me it feels like a logical extension of the barrier system and makes everything seem much more consistent. I always thought it felt a little strange that the Behemoth from Sentinel 3 would fly over all your turrets in order to get to something it could damage. Now it can be a truly formidable opponent as it rains down the pain!

Broken Turrets

So now it’s possible for your turrets to be completely destroyed, forcing you to rebuild them. In addition, when a turret is low on health, it will break and cease to work. Repair drones now have a new and vital task: to keep your turrets healthy and working! Don’t worry, we’ve added some extra drone controls and allowed for more drones to ensure you can keep everything fixed. Having all this extra stuff to repair also opens up lots of possibilities for protection and repair abilities. We’ve got some commander abilities, orbital weapons and even turrets that can help with protecting and repairing your defensive turrets in times of need.

Level up!

Even though the player is inherently rewarded by preventing their turrets being destroyed, I felt like there should be a better, more positive reward for players investing heavily in repairing and keeping their defences alive. So now as the turrets shoot and destroy enemies, they gain points (Experience Points if you want to call them that) and will automatically ‘Level Up’ and gain a boost to their damage and potentially their other stats. This allows the player to really feel as though a turret is something to be protected and nurtured, and turrets which are put into the fray and looked after will become a true asset to the player’s defences!

These new systems really open up the gameplay and make it feel fresh and different. I hope you enjoyed reading and I’ll try and find some time to write about more of the new Sentinel 4: Dark Star features soon!

cheers,

Paul