- Devlog #7: Fighting Fire with Fire - 18 July 2026
Fighting Fire with Fire It has been a busy few weeks since Devlog #6, so this one is a proper catch-up. Night 4 has stopped being the end of the road, the whole game has learned to play on a controller, and the difficulty finally climbs the way I always wanted it to. All of it is live in the Steam Playtest right now at v0.85.0. One thing up front, and I mean it: the headline stuff here is brand new and I have not had nearly enough eyes on it. So this is a call for balance help as much as a devlog. If you play Night 5, or you turn a wall into a gate, I would genuinely love to know how it felt. More on that at the bottom. Night 5: Fighting Fire with Fire For the longest time Night 4 was the finale. You would see off the Foreman Pudding, get your Thanks for Playing, and that was your run. Not any more. Night 5 is in, and it does what the title says: it fights fire with fire. The headline i…
- Closing time, and the doors are open to everyone - 27 June 2026
The Clearance Defence Playtest is open to everyone this weekend. No waitlist, no waiting to be let in. If you fancy holding a supermarket against a tide of garden gnomes after dark, you can walk straight in. Here's the situation. It's closing time, the lights are down, and the Summer stock wants the clearance aisle. You've got four full nights: build your maze of make-do towers out of whatever's on the shelves, keep the ammo moving from your forward bases up to the front line, and walk your civilians out to the safe zone before the gnomes get to them. Hold all four and Endless mode opens up, for when you want to find out exactly how long you can keep the place standing. A good weekend to walk in I've had my head down the last few days getting it into shape, and it's the best it has been. The towers have proper sound to them now, the engineers throw sparks while they work, and the place…
- Devlog #6 — Morale, Fire and a Fourth Night - 16 June 2026
A fourth night The campaign has grown by a night. Night 4 plays start to finish now — dialogue and voice acting in, its beats playing through properly. We kept its roster deliberately tight: one fresh foe, so we can tune how it plays against everything you've built up by the time you reach it, rather than balancing five things badly at once. The boss it ends on no longer marches in alone. It travels with an escort — a cluster of hangers-on whose health is pooled into shared bands that pulse for as long as the boss is still standing. It's meant to be a proper "deal with the big one" puzzle rather than another health bar to chew through. Fire that spreads New troublemakers have joined the ranks: fire gnomes that lob incendiaries — and the fires they start now spread, creeping across the floor mid-burn and carrying their flames with them rather than staying put in one spot. They're canny a…
- Three Nights Down — v0.60 closes the loop on Playtest - 18 May 2026
A run from start to finish v0.60.0 closes the loop. You can play the demo through to the end now — three nights, all the way through — and the game has somewhere to land you when you win. When the final wave of Night 3 breaks, a Thanks for Playing scene plays. It's quiet, it matches the main-menu styling, and it has a Discord link on it because the most useful thing a finished player can do is tell us what they thought. Build FOB is now the first objective on every night, not just Night 1. The wave countdown sits and waits while you place it, and the rest of your build palette unlocks the moment your engineers have somewhere to come home to. We also added cross-night carry. Your workers, your unassigned civilians, your sealed stock — they all survive into the next night now. The morning panel tells you whether anyone didn't make it back to shelter overnight (2–10% attrition, rolled on t…
- Devlog #4: A Handle on the Lever — v0.45.0 - 4 May 2026
Towers can run dry now. Every other change in v0.45.0 is a tool we've handed you for dealing with it. The headline change: towers run out of ammunition. Every shot decrements the magazine, and a tower stops firing when it's empty. The first time your projectile tower goes quiet halfway through a wave is the moment everything else in this update starts to make sense. What you've got to deal with it: • Send ammunition straight from the Safe Zone to a specific tower • Push supplies to a forward operating base to stage a buffer near the line • Request Resupply from any tower's context panel — three clicks, mid-wave • A new low-magazine indicator above each tower (amber under half, red and pulsing at zero) so you can read the situation across the store • Per-type storage budget at the Safe Zone — hoard one ammo type by spending capacity from another, the trade-off is yours • A rebuilt Safe Z…
- Devlog #3: After Closing Time - 27 April 2026
Every night, after the last customer leaves and the lights go down, a war begins. The Easter goods — reduced to clear, still on the shelf — defend their aisles against the Summer stock pushing in from the back. Garden gnomes in makeshift cardboard armour. Waves of them, every night, before morning saves everyone. The store staff don't know. That's the point. Night 2 is now playable from Commander Eggustus's pre-wave briefing through to the Morning Truce. Here's what went into it, and what's coming next. How the Nights Work — and What Night 2 Adds Each night follows the same shape. Waves, then morning. When the last wave breaks, the Morning Truce begins: the store staff arrive for their shift, and you have a window to clean up — restock shelves, clear wreckage, hide the evidence of whatever happened after hours. The Auditor watches. Every morning visit feeds a Suspicion rating that now t…
- Devlog #2: Morale, Rebalancing, and the Playtest Is Open - 20 April 2026
A lot has changed since the last devlog. Here's what happened. Morale Easter Defence Force units now have feelings. Specifically, they have morale — and it affects how hard they hit. Morale rises when waves go well and drops when things fall apart. Lose a tower and the troops notice. Finish a wave without casualties and they're emboldened. The current morale level is shown in the top bar, and hovering over it shows exactly what's been affecting it — "Wave completed (no losses): +5%", "Structure destroyed: -3%". This isn't cosmetic. At high morale, your units deal more damage. At low morale, they deal less. A bad run of waves creates a downward spiral — you lose towers, morale drops, damage drops, you lose more towers. A good run compounds the other way. It adds a layer of consequence that wasn't there before. Losing a single tower in wave 3 can cost you the game by wave 7. Night 1 and 2…
- Devlog #1: Night 2 Takes Shape and Steam Builds Go Live - 15 April 2026
This is the first weekly devlog for Clearance Defence. The plan is simple: every week, write up what actually happened in development. No polish, no spin. Just what got built, what broke, and what we learned. This week was a big one. Versions v0.18.0 through v0.23.0, and a lot of pieces falling into place. Night 2 takes shape The biggest milestone this week: Night 2 is playable from start to finish. There's still balancing to do and art to finalise, but the full flow is in and working. The week started with the enemy AI overhaul landing — squad behaviour, navigation improvements, and movement polish — followed by Night 1 being formally signed off with all 12 phases complete. That cleared the path for Night 2 to come together. The new features that make Night 2 feel like a proper level: Pre-level briefing system — Commander Eggustus now briefs you before each night. Voice-over, objective…
