Heat Signature is a fascinating exercise in how well and how quickly you can improvise. You’ll be given a problem to solve. You’ll have a very short time to solve it. You’ll have a limited set of tools.
You’re going to come up with some very fun solutions. Or die trying.
Heat Signature is a top down game about breaking into space ships. It’s from the makers of the critically acclaimed Gunpoint. Sometimes this is to take an object or a person. Sometimes this is to take the space ship. In doing so, you’ll be given a range of mission parameters like whether you can kill anybody, as well as an outline of what you’ll face plus how long you’ll have to accomplish the mission.
In my favourite mission so far, I was unable to kill enemies due to their armour and shields. So I resorted to using a gadget that slowed down time for them to run past the bad guys while stealing their keys to sealed doors.
Then I ran straight through the rest of the ship and found the loot I was being paid to steal. With a horde of unkillable enemies behind me, I threw my sword through a nearby window. I was sucked into the vaccum of space where my own ship could be remotely piloted to pick me up. Several blinking lights im the void showed where unfortunate guards had been caught in the decompression.
All of that was in a time limit of around sixty seconds start to finish.
I hadn’t planned to use the window as an impromptu escape route, but the option was presented and it worked. A lot of Heat Signature is making the best of opportunities like that.
In Heat Signature, Players always have the opportunity to pause at any time. From there they can plan their next move, switch tools and check the map.
Shooting or using gadgets is a simple matter of clicking with whatever mouse button you’ve assigned. The game will move into slow motion when you’re alerting guards or being shot at. This allows for a little flexibility, as well as fantastic feeling close shaves.
In terms of what the players have to work with, it’s a neat mix of choice and randomisation. Players Choose from four Characters. These are each randomly generated with two pieces of gear in the form of weapons or gadgets as well as a randomised name. (Farewell Angel Dialect, you were too pure to survive that explosion)
Other tools must be acquired or purchased. Money is made by accomplishing missions, which require tools, and the general loop of the game is take a mission, use whatever tools you have to to complete it, restock when you plan the next one.
Overall, this is part of a big map where the player is trying to gather enough support through missions to liberate all of the other space stations from the four factions. By doing so, they add new gear and ships for purchase in player controlled stations.
It allows for a decent level of progression, where by the mid point of the game, characters can have a decent selection of gear to buy on demand.
I have to mention the gadgets. They are clever and innovative, constantly providing new ways to solve problems. To speak of only a few:
The Swapper allows players to swap their own position with that of an opponent. With quick timing, this allows you to be shot at, swap with an opponent, and kill them with their own gun. There are Breach grenades, which will just remove the room it explodes in, rapidly decompressing and sucking everything in the surrounding rooms in. Then we have the Visitor. Pick a point, you’ll teleport there for two seconds, then ping back. With the ability to pause, this allows a clever player to steal keys or gadgets from a completely safe position.
Using the gadgets properly makes the players feel smart. That’s important.
There’s one really cool concept that the game does an excellent job with. When a character becomes too famous, they stop generating as much support for liberation. The player is encouraged to retire them as a living legend.
When they do this, the player is given the opportunity to have them take a gadget or weapon into retirement. That character, and gadget, can then be found in the ongoing games of other players.
It’s a very minor thing, but it allows for a sense of shared storytelling that’s very much appreciated.
I do have a couple of minor issues. The art is quite nice, with each of the factions in the game having their own aesthetic. These are distinct, and includes how the ships are pieced together in modular rooms. It makes for an easy identification process. However, in these modular rooms, the top down view can make it a little tricky to identify the difference between internal walls and visual patterns on the floor. On more than one occasion, I thought I was behind some framework, only to trigger an alarm as a guard just looked straight at me.
Similarly, minor quibbles with the modular ship design make piloting tricky. Sometimes your entry way to a ship is inset between two square components. The collision detection on your own rectangular ship means you can find yourself bouncing off repeatedly. The game does counter this by moving the player ship in automatically when braking, but there are still rebound issues occasionally in this state too.
The problems are never enough to really upset the player, but it can be a little frustrating to try and dock with a ship on a tight time limit only to bounce off into space.
In part though, those things all just add to the main strength of the game. It’s an engine for generating stories. Desperate rescues, odds defying moments of heroism and terribly unfortunate mistakes make for the best tales to tell. Even losing a favourite character or gadget to the cold void of space is a part to be woven into the ongoing narrative.
Heat Signature is a game with far more depth than I initially gave it credit. Adapting and taking on challenges against high odds is an incredibly rewarding experience.
Available now on PC, it’s definitely worth seeing what solutions you can come up with in the inky blackness of space.
(Also the writing in this trailer is just as good as the game and I adore it)