You’ve been hit by a space criminal
We’ve been tracking Heat Signature, the next game from Gunpoint creator Tom Francis, for a few years. Soon enough, you’ll be sneaking your way onto ships, attempting to take out whole crews, dying, and doing it all again with a fresh would-be thief. The game launches for PC next Thursday, September 21.
This will be one of those games about getting yourself in (and hopefully back out of) chaotic jams. Aside from having certain game design expectations following Gunpoint, these bullet points paint a picture:
- Emergent gameplay: use gadgets like teleporters, stealth shields and subverters to invent your own solutions to tricky situations.
- No time pressure: you can pause any time and take as long as you need to plan, aim shots, and figure out your next move.
- Randomly generated missions: each one picks a random combination of guard kit, ship layout, and complications like space battles.
- Personal missions: every character has one grand heist to work towards: rescue their brother, steal their gun back, get revenge on their partner’s killer.
- Full modular destruction of every spaceship: shoot a fuel barrel to blow up the room and be flung into space by the vacuum. Rip ships in half, destroy secure rooms to form new entrances to dock at.
Sounds peachy!
There are also some launch-window plans to cover. During the game’s first week, you’ll be able to find a special ship carrying the Everything Gun, which “teleports everything nearby into its barrel and fires it out like a shotgun.” Board that ship, steal that weapon, and it will join your game as a random drop in future runs. “It’ll definitely get you killed,” says Francis. “But you’ll die laughing.”
Early players will also have a chance to become Steam Trading Cards.
“We want to see GIFs or short videos of crazy situations you’ve got into or clever tricks you’ve discovered, and we’ll turn the best into trading cards with your name on! You’ll have the strange sensation of being traded, sold, and perhaps broken down to make a badge.” I’m only invested in cards as a way to build up an impulse-buy fund, but I’m digging that as a community-building idea.
Heat Signature Release Date And Launch Celebrations [Heat Signature]
