The nailgun-wielding FEAR-meets-GZDoom FPS Selaco is now Steam Deck Verified, allowing you to impress or terrify train passengers with your pixel-splattering prowess. That's not all: developers Altered Orbit Studios have outlined the features planned for the next round of updates. These include backpacks that thoughtfully upgrade your weapons, new story material, a tweak to enemy AI in the latter part of the game, and a “Randomizer” system that mixes up spawns and pickups while offering weapon rarities for plenty of replay value.
“It took a lot of hard work to get Steam Deck to behave according to Valve's quality expectations for GZDoom, but we finally did it,” the developers wrote on a Steam blog . The post adds that Selaco won't be receiving an official early access roadmap, as Altered Orbit sees such things as detrimental. “Roadmaps tend to have a negative impact on development/work. It takes time to experiment with new ideas, and roadmaps are programmatic and don't allow for such things. When something is in the works, we'll let you know through these posts!”
Still, there’s plenty to share about future additions right now. The next major Selaco update will include a backpack reload feature that will secretly reload weapons you haven’t equipped in a while, if you have spare ammo. This is an optional amenity for players who tend to absentmindedly wave an empty hand cannon at the worst possible moment – you can turn it off in the settings.
The update will also rebalance weapons, with auto weapons in particular getting a polish. “There's an oversight in the current version on Steam where there's a high chance of repeatedly dropping low damage numbers, which makes some auto weapons feel weaker than they should,” the developers say. They'll also be removing and replacing the system that made it less easy to stagger enemies on higher difficulty levels, as this simply made some weapons less useful. Beyond that, expect new visual and audio effects and map interactions, performance boosts, and quality of life tweaks like “a DMR that respects your hold/passage setting.”
Further afield, Altered Orbit is planning a “major voice cast pass to flesh out Dawn as a character, the world of Selaco, and the overall plot” for the end of the year. “Better Patrol modes, an objective system, [and a] “Cover system.” They're also considering allowing players to adjust difficulty mid-campaign, and the ability to customize mutators (these are campaign modifiers like making enemies have faster bullet speed).
Safe rooms will eventually become “more interesting and useful” with free one-time health drops and an armor shop. And then there's the Randomizer, scheduled to come out with a major voice transition at the end of 2024, which “randomizes enemy spawns, introduces a Rarity System where some weapons and enemies are stronger than normal, repositions ammo pickups, and offers tons of customization to tweak the game to your liking.”
Enemy AI improvements and various other features should be coming as part of the game's “well underway” Chapter 2. I haven't played Selaco yet, but it certainly looks like an early access project making progress. In our Selaco review from launch day in June, resident RPS shooter Ed Thorn hailed it as “a great balance between the tactical and the frenetic, with intricate maps and immersive simulation hijinks that will both delight and potentially frustrate.”