Heat Signature's teleporters and a ridiculous escape
"0 seconds to escape"
It has been many moons since we last looked at the sneaky, top-down spaceship invading of Heat Signature [official site] but work has not ceased. A new trailer shows some new looks for the different factions you’ll be encountering, as well as explaining how a few of your hero’s teleporter skills work. In the process, creator Tom Francis fails to sneak through a high-difficulty level, proving that the game will fit neatly into the genre of Stealth But Things Go Badly Wrong.
Skip to 4.20 to see him dock at a ship where he is supposed to assassinate someone without alerting people. Obviously, it does not pan out this way. He trips the alarm, hurriedly hacks a turret in a room filled with guards, then swaps his own character for another guard hiding behind a locked door, all before realising he has exactly "zero seconds" in which to escape the ship alive before it docks at an enemy station – a feat which he then somehow pulls off. Of course, this just causes another problem.
We’re also told by way of an accompanying blog post that Tom is off to work at Valve’s offices for three months, saying “they want my input on something”, which is mysterious and interesting. But he’s afraid to go there by himself, and is hunting for a programmer to help him sand down the rough edges of his own game. Which means: it’s almost done.
“I’m 3 years in to Heat Signature and I’d like it to be finished,” he says. “It’s almost feature-complete, but I’m looking for someone to help me with the technical aspects of finishing it.”
[Disclosure: Many of RPS’ writers know Tom Francis personally because he used to be a journo before releasing his previous game, Gunpoint. But I do not and am thus able to write about him without restriction. I was hired exclusively for this reason.]