Heat Signature

Heat Signature is not a bad game at all. It does lack certain aspects that are present in most modern video games, but this only adds to the experience. If you are interested in the idea of breaking into spaceships, making horrible mistakes, and thinking of outrageous ways to get out with your life, this is the game for you.

If you like toying with contraptions, though, Heat Signature is a great box of treats. The feeling of pulling off a heist in a whirlwind of gunfire, sword slashes, grenades and body-swaps, is a sensation usually reserved for blockbusters like Dishonored and Prey. But Suspicious Developments have distilled that chaotic kinaesthesia into something much smaller, smarter and spacier, which is absolutely to be praised. Even if I found myself feeling like an aggravated villain as often as I felt like the fleet-footed hero. Even if I’m still sour about the man who killed my mum.

Pulling off interstellar heists is a blast in this 2D shooter from the maker of Gunpoint.

Heat Signature rewards as much as it punishes. It takes away chunks of your hard-earned progress after even a minor mistake, but also gives you the tools to get out of impossible situations. With the right gadgets and weapons, you can overcome, or sneak by, an army of armored soldiers with only three seconds left on the clock before your invaded ships docks and you are captured. It can be terrifying, empowering, and heartbreaking, all in a single mission. The learning curve is steep, but once you break through, you arrive somewhere in a blissful middle ground between action and strategy.

With a set of thieving and assassination tools that beg to be used creatively, Heat Signature’s puzzle-like missions are great for jumping into for a few goes at a time to try something just crazy enough to work. That’s when the fun stuff happens.

The developer of Gunpoint returns with another game focused on espionage.

Heat Signature is one of the tightest indie action games I’ve played, packing a maximum amount of excitement into a minimum amount of time and space. My first few hours with the game were genuinely wonderful, filled with rapid-fire moments of delight and triumph. But when I hit my personal skill ceiling, I could do no more than repeatedly bang my head against it. I respect Heat Signature. I admire its success in accomplishing with such skill what it set out to do, and if it had been more forgiving, it wouldn’t be as tense. Heat Signature’s laser focus on in-depth mechanical play with high cons...