Hot In Space: Heat Signature

[Cordeos]

There isn't a thread about this game and there probably should be. I am starting to feel brave and equipped enough to to do Hard missions. I am usually wrong.

[Badfinger]

I can already see I will be bad at this game the same way I'm bad at Spelunky. Mechanically competent, but completely unable to stop moving forward and commit to patience and planning.

[osmosisch]

Oh man, I just had an absolute nailbiter.

 

I'd been doing a bunch of nonlethal missions with a character and had amassed a cute little array of tools and the increased income meant I was ready to take on a personal mission for the first time! Why not, I thought, how hard can it be. Armor-piercing quiet pistol and a wrench had carried me through most of the earlier missions with nary a problem.

 

I was not prepared for the size of the target ship.It dwarfed my pod to an extent I had not previously witnessed. I docked and exited, trying to scope out the lay of the land. Alarm timer will take 52 seconds... oof, better make sure I'm not seen. Probably not even enough time to make it to the other side of the ship, where my goal was (to steal the Frobnatz Bandersnatch, or whatever it was).

 

Of course the first encounter I manage to mess up, and the alarm timer starts ticking.

 

Pause.

 

OK, I got this. I just need to get past this sentry here and this group of five dudes. And then there's a locked door, security level 1 I already have; 2 I can clone from this guy...let's zoom out a bit more.

 

The security levels go up to 6!? Crap.

 

Sooo.. if I corrupt this sentry it should take out this group. That will get me the next security level. I have 3 charges on my Sidewinder teleport device, that can save me a ton of time. I have a three-charge personal shield I can use to deflect a bunch of guys here into killing each other. 

 

I honestly don't remember much about the next 45 in-game seconds except that it was a mad dash and scramble. I used up all the charges on everything except my pistol. A stealth device I grabbed along the way ended up being extremely helpful, letting me just bypass a bunch of guys. Still, with about 5 seconds on the clock I approached the chest with my goal. At this point I felt I had basically zero chance to make it but I wanted to be captured grasping my objective.

 

With 2 seconds on the clock, I stood over the opened chest, the object of my desire safely tucked in my inventory, replacing one of the spent devices.

 

Pause.

 

Look around.

 

Hang on, there's a window in the next room. Wasn't there something about those? Oh right, smash window, eject into space! 2 seconds is plenty of time to aim the pistol through the doorway at the window, fire a bullet, and chase it outwards into the cold vacuum. I emerged from the ship hovering above a hostile base, as the ship I just left sailed off majestically. 0.5 seconds left on the timer.

 

That's enough for the night.

 

This game can surprise you, make you feel extremely stupid and then extremely smart. Great job, Tom.

[Nappi]

I'm yet to get over the Hotline Miami mentality of taking out every guard using a wrench or (if things go sour) guns only. While I could just pause the game and try to figure out how the other equipment work, I rarely do it because I feel like I should keep the flow going. Moreover, I usually feel that the missions are either too easy to be wasting my time on advanced tactics or too hard to risk by using said tactics.

 

I got quite far with one of my characters, bought the personal mission intel, found out it was way too difficult for me at that stage, also noticed that the only other missions available to me were hard or harder ones that required me to have equipment to deal with armored or shielded guards, which equipment I did not have nor could I buy them because of my lack of funds. This meant that I had to retire my character essentially because he went broke, which wasn't a very exciting way to end his career.

[Cordeos]

1 hour ago, Nappi said:

I'm yet to get over the Hotline Miami mentality of taking out every guard using a wrench or (if things go sour) guns only. While I could just pause the game and try to figure out how the other equipment work, I rarely do it because I feel like I should keep the flow going. Moreover, I usually feel that the missions are either too easy to be wasting my time on advanced tactics or too hard to risk by using said tactics.

 

I got quite far with one of my characters, bought the personal mission intel, found out it was way too difficult for me at that stage, also noticed that the only other missions available to me were hard or harder ones that required me to have equipment to deal with armored or shielded guards, which equipment I did not have nor could I buy them because of my lack of funds. This meant that I had to retire my character essentially because he went broke, which wasn't a very exciting way to end his career.

There is a planned patch to make sure easy and medium missions are always available but start paying less. You can always just go out and raid ships for items or money, also unlocking better subverters and armor piercing guns/melee weapons at stores is a must.

[Gormongous]

31 minutes ago, Cordeos said:

There is a planned patch to make sure easy and medium missions are always available but start paying less. You can always just go out and raid ships for items or money, also unlocking better subverters and armor piercing guns/melee weapons at stores is a must.

 

Yeah, I didn't realize at first how there are some really powerful unlocks on the liberation screen. Prioritizing ones that complement your playstyle or give you more options with the harder missions is essential.

[Nappi]

I looked at the liberation map and the stuff within my reach is mostly connected with key card cloning and teleportation. Is the unlock map randomized or is this the normal progression?

 

I just beat an audacious mission, which was only possible because the guards didn't have armor and only emergency shields. I check the stores regularly and thoroughly loot every ship I break into, but find it super difficult to find weapons to deal with armor and shields. I guess I could try to avoid all the guards, but I'm not a big fan of how sneaking feels like.

[Gormongous]

13 minutes ago, Nappi said:

I looked at the liberation map and the stuff within my reach is mostly connected with key card cloning and teleportation. Is the unlock map randomized or is this the normal progression?

 

Nah, it's entirely randomized. My closest stuff was subverters, slipstreams, and armor-piercing blades (which are a godsend and make the game half as hard).

[Nappi]

Well, fuck.

 

I feel like I should just start over until I find a better spot in the universe. Then again I'm also considering just giving up and admitting that this game is not for me. Clearing missions feels pretty good but has already started to feel repetitive (which, of course, has a lot to do with my preferred playstyle), I don't feel like I'm progressing much (mostly because the liberation rewards don't mean anything to me), and much of the stuff I liked at first, like traveling through space and docking, has started to get annoying to me.

[dium]

Here's a fun video of some rando i don't know having a good time in Heat Signature:

 

 

This game is very good at making me feel like a badass. Not consistently – and sometimes it makes me feel like a clumsy doof – but often enough.

 

It's also the sort of game that really benefits from an exploratory attitude with regards to equipment and mechanics... forcing myself to utilize specific different equipment load-outs has led to really great moments.

 

One mental hurdle that I had to get over to really dig my teeth into the game is: you can't be afraid to just use the limited use items. Just use 'em. You aren't gonna be playing this character for very long anyway, so you'll lose the item whether you use it or not.

 

With games like this I'm always afraid that the game will run out of """content""" before I'd like, but usually that's a silly thing to worry about preemptively, so I'm trying not to listen to that little voice.
 

[Korax]

FUCK, I wasn't recording gameplay when one of the best moments happened to me.

 

Earnest Kreka, rough-and-tumble space assassin, achieves his personal goal of stealing the Rotanev-Benezech Object and decides to go on one last mission: liberate the Offworld Security Stronghold.

 

It's messy. A quiet shotgun and subverter grenades make short work of the first few groups of guards, but eventually the alarm sounds and guards start running and teleporting in from all over. Careful applications of swapper and sidewinder allow him to evade the majority of the crew, kill the pilot, and set a collision course. At this point, however, the ship is already so close to the stronghold that there are about 10 seconds left until impact. There are no nearby airlocks or windows to make a mad dash towards. It seems to be a pyrrhic victory, except...

 

Earnest has a breach grenade. It will completely destroy one room in a ship, and he's been holding on to it his entire career, just in case. He throws it, trashing a section of hallway and leaping out with one second to spare. The ship smashes into the station, liberating it. A split-second later, Earnest comes tumbling through the void into the now-friendly station, which somehow catches him and pulls him to safety. He hangs up his guns and fades into legend.

[osmosisch]

Haha, great, Korax. Gotta remember that trick. I guess the same thing can be done with fuel supplies.

 

It's no surprise to me, knowing Tom, that this game mostly relies on a make-your-own-fun attitude. He's got a very exploratory playstyle, and has built this game towards that. Not for everyone, for sure (I'll probably also get tired of it in another couple of evenings).

[Korax]

I had a character that really liked using a concussion hammer.

 

[aoanla]

Having managed to get Heat Signature working in Wine (needs patching the executable to turn on LAA, which Gamemaker Studio apparently doesn't in the release the game was compiled in), I'm ... mostly enjoying playing it.

 

My usual stressors are kicking in, though, and I am very likely to let a character die if they get spaced more than once - because I'm not confident I could pick them up in time to save them anyway. As a result, I've actually barely retired anyone, and certainly not gotten anyone close to their personal mission - Hard ships are too hard for me at the moment, and I think I'm probably not going to feel better about the recovery system until I've unlocked the Angel pod.

 

For similar reasons, I can't be the only person who gets pretty stressed out by the "friends" system? I've deliberately avoided the mission I've had which involved rescuing a Steam Friend's captured character, because I didn't want to be responsible for messing it up.

 

(When things work - and I'm still learning systems; managed to accidentally space my captured target with my first use of a glitch trap, because I didn't expect it to trigger on unconscious enemies; though, it's really very fun. The pause-and-plan makes it actually playable for me, unlike Hotline Miami, which needed far too much twitch to be comfortable for me.)

[DoomMunky]

This game is fucking amazing.

[Henke]

Has anyone finished this game yet? Does it even have a conventional story ending?

 

I'm 4 hours in, enjoying it so far. I've managed to finish some Hard missions, and Defector missions, but none of the Personal ones yet. I wonder if it's something I'll stick with to the end tho.

[BillTheCat]

On 2/19/2018 at 4:16 AM, Henke said:

Has anyone finished this game yet? Does it even have a conventional story ending?

 

I'm 4 hours in, enjoying it so far. I've managed to finish some Hard missions, and Defector missions, but none of the Personal ones yet. I wonder if it's something I'll stick with to the end tho.

I finished it last October after doing every single available mission and the story ending is ok but not very memorable. I just had a lot of fun stealthing my way through ships and defenestrating people into space.

 

My favorite thing was leaving fun weapons around for my friends to find. There's some pretty great unique rare items as well: 

Spoiler

 

[DoomMunky]

I want to change the UI on this to make it super-accessible and controller-friendly so that millions will play it. I hope it did incredibly well for Tom.