LYNXED Blog / devlog
Designing light and noise: why your suit lamp is a risk
Your suit lamp in XENO // BREACH lets you see about 205 pixels down the way you're facing. It also lets a resting hive creature notice you from 150 pixels instead of 60. Every sound you make is a circle, and anything inside it comes looking. Those two rules came over from BLOOMFALL, and they're the reason the game plays like horror and not only like a shooter. This post covers how they work, the creatures built on them, and what they mean when you play.
Rule one: light works both ways
With the lamp on, you see a cone about 205 pixels long and roughly 60 degrees wide in front of you, plus an 82-pixel circle around you. With it off, you see a 46-pixel circle and nothing more. A tile is 16 pixels, so that's the difference between seeing 13 tiles ahead and seeing about three.
Now look at it from the hive's side. A creature that hasn't noticed you yet spots you at:
| Your situation | Spotted from |
|---|---|
| Lamp on | 150 px |
| Lamp off | 60 px |
| You're behind it | Half of the above |
| Right on top of it | 16 px, always |
It also needs a clear line of sight. Stealth Smoke blocks it.
The numbers are set on purpose. Lamp off, the hive sees a little farther than you: 60 against your 46. Turning the lamp on makes you better at seeing them, 205 against 150, but only inside your cone. They can see you from every side. The lamp isn't an upgrade. It's a trade: you see more of the deck, and more of the deck sees you.
On desktop, F switches the lamp. On phones it stays on in the current build.
Rule two: every sound is a circle
When you make a sound, the game draws a circle of a set radius around where it happened. Every creature inside it that isn't knocked down learns where the sound came from, stays alert for 14 seconds, and starts hunting. Walls don't stop it. Sound carries through the ship, though creatures that can't see where it came from only join in while the pack hunting you is still small.
| Source | Radius (px) |
|---|---|
| Mag-Rail Bow | 12 |
| Plasma Javelins | 15 |
| Shard Slinger | 18 |
| Your footsteps (every 0.4 s while moving) | 46 |
| Thruster dash | 50 |
| Kicking a door open | 70 |
| Photon Laser Beam hum (every 0.5 s) | 70 |
| Laser Tripwire going off | 180 |
| Plasma grenade | 200 |
| Sonic Decoy, where it lands | 230 |
| Sidearm | 240 |
| PDW | 270 |
| Breach shotgun | 320 |
| Kestrel AR-9 rifle | 330 |
| Gauss Railgun, Hellfire Rocket Tube | 380 |
A rifle shot reaches about 20 tiles. A Mag-Rail Bow shot barely leaves your tile. Melee only makes noise when it hits something, and most of it stays small: 30 for the Power Gauntlets, 50 for the Thermal Breach Axe. The Chainblade is the loud exception at 150.
The Photon Laser Beam is a special case. It makes almost no gunshot noise, but while it's firing it lights you up like a lamp turned to full. Creatures notice you from 1.6 times farther away.
The creatures built on the rules
Most of the hive uses both rules. Three kinds each break one of them, and those are the ones that teach you how the rules work.
To be open about it: all three came over from BLOOMFALL, and none of them is in the current wave rotation. They're in the game's code, and we're working out where they belong on the Aethelgard's five decks.
Blind Echolocator: sound only
It has no eyes. It never sees you beyond 16 pixels, so your lamp means nothing to it. It tracks gunfire and footsteps. It's fast (58 against a Xeno Drone's 42) and has 6 health. Against it, turning off the lamp does nothing. Going quiet does everything.
Void Swarmer: light only
It only notices you if your lamp is on, but then it notices you from 260 pixels, farther than anything else. In the dark it gives up three times faster than other creatures. It's fast (82) and fragile (2 health). It can't resist a flare: fire one from the Phosphor Flare Gun and every Swarmer within 320 pixels circles the flare instead of you. The Photon Laser Beam does triple damage to it and sends it reeling.
Rogue Synth: only in the dark
It moves only while no light is on it. Inside your lamp's cone, within about 175 pixels and in line of sight, it freezes completely. So does any Synth within 60 pixels of a burning flare. Out of the light it's the fastest standard enemy in the game: speed 96, with a 0.16-second windup before it strikes. It can't be knocked down.
Why build it this way
Wave shooters tend to become pure aim tests. We wanted a reason to think before pulling the trigger. Light and noise give every choice a cost you can see coming. A loud gun ends a fight fast and starts the next one. A bright lamp shows you the room and shows the room to you.
XENO // BREACH's waves will always find you in the end. At the start of each wave, the nearest few creatures come for you right away. There are always at least three hunting you. When a wave is down to its last four, they all come. So light and noise don't decide whether you fight. They decide how many come at once, and from where. That's the part you control.
What it means for how you play
- Clear rooms quietly. The Mag-Rail Bow, Plasma Javelins, Shard Slinger and melee let you thin out a room without waking the next one. Save the loud guns for when the deck already knows you're there.
- Lamp off near sleeping groups. Off, they spot you at 60 pixels instead of 150. That's enough to get the first hit in.
- Watch the Photon Laser Beam. It's nearly silent, but while it fires you're seen from 1.6 times farther away.
- Go quiet when you can. Every sound keeps the creatures that heard it alert for another 14 seconds.
- Use noise as a tool. A Sonic Decoy pulls everything within 230 pixels of where it lands. A Sonic Holo-Beacon turret pings every 1.4 seconds to a radius of 190, then blows up. A Laser Tripwire rings when something crosses it.
- Dash less when hiding. Every dash makes a sound with a 50-pixel radius.
- Approach from behind. Creatures only see half as far behind them.
Light and noise are still being tuned, and the numbers above are the build as it stands today. Try the trade yourself: play XENO // BREACH free. The beginner's guide covers the rest of a first run.
