The Sanctuary: Shattered Sun team is back with their latest official update, and it’s packed with exciting news, progress reports, and insights into what’s next for this ambitious RTS project. If you’ve been following along, you know the journey so far has been nothing short of incredible—and this update is no exception.
From new features and gameplay refinements to a sneak peek at what’s on the horizon, this is a must-read for fans eager to stay in the loop. Dive into the full October update below.
Hey everyone,
Let’s make a start on getting you guys up to date with the state of Sanctuary Shattered Sun.
Sanctuary Pre-Alpha Demo
Crucially, people are already playing Sanctuary. Back in May the team launched a pre-alpha version of the game for Teir 5 Patreon supporters. This process has proved invaluable to the development process with over one hundred and fifty people jumping in to play games of Sanctuary Shattered Sun. There’s still an opportunity for you to get involved in this by heading over to the Patreon page and signing up for access.
Early adopters have been important in providing feedback on the game, identifying bugs and issues which the team have been quick to fix.
Since the pre-alpha release, we’ve rolled out a significant update for those supporters with access. The update introduced three new survival maps, bringing the total to four. We also added some important gameplay features, including UI scaling, and the ability to give orders to holograms, which comes in handy for assisting unbuilt factories or upgrading extractors before they’re constructed. You’ll also notice new strategic icons that show the paused, upgrading, or idle state of your structures, along with the ability to pause building production, making extractor chain upgrades much easier to manage. Additionally, the Guard and Chosen faction units have undergone significant reworks.
The launcher UI and introduced new settings for graphics, UI, and audio, allowing for better customization. Gameplay has been fine-tuned as well, with improvements made to hotkeys, formations, beam effects, selection, and orders.
In a purely aesthetic update, waves were added to the water on maps.
The Sanctuary Campaign
We’ve made some progress on the campaign mission that will be featured in the Sanctuary Shattered Sun demo. One key feature we’ve been working on is a dynamic dialogue system. Not only will characters provide essential information during your mission, but you’ll also have the ability to respond through interactive dialogue options. These choices will influence how other factions perceive you, affecting your reputation and the game’s overall progression.
We want to make your decisions matter, with meaningful choices and consequences. Helping a character early on, for example, might result in them assisting you later in the campaign. We’ve also made significant progress on the objectives UI, ensuring it clearly outlines your primary and secondary goals. You’ll be able to hover over icons for more information, track progress with percentages or timers, and zoom directly to objectives by clicking on their markers, helping you plan your approach more effectively.
The demo mission will introduce you to the lore of Sanctuary and showcase key game mechanics like Shatter and Freeze, giving you a taste of the challenges to come.
PAX East and Chris Taylor!
Earlier this year the Sanctuary Development team jetted off to PAX East where they showcased the Sanctuary: Shattered Sun demo for excited fans in Boston, Massachusetts. Lucky gamers got a chance to get their hands on the demo and the feedback was overwhelming with queues of people aching to get a taste of the future of RTS gaming.
As a special treat the team got the opportunity to sit down with legendary game developer Chris Taylor. The team discussed Chris’ time at Gas Powered Games and the development process behind Supreme Commander. They got to pick the brains of one of the brightest minds in real-time strategy for ideas for the future of Sanctuary: Shattered Sun. They left clutching mementoes – and a little bit star-struck.
The Future
Development of Sanctuary continues, and we can only apologise for the lack of updates on the progression of the game. Next year expect the launch of the Kickstarter campaign and an Early Access release of Sanctuary: Shattered Sun!
See you next time, Commanders.
