Cleared Hot

Dearest pilots, join me again for a fireside chat about attack helicopters. Things at Cleared Hot HQ are going quite well. The jungle campaign is reaching a crescendo as we race through the final few missions of Chapter 2. Then begins the gauntlet of balancing, building a boss fight, QA testing, playtesting, and preparing to ship a major update. More on this later.Introducing Flares!Travis has been hard at work in his hangar, crafting some new counter-measures. These will distract any heat based missiles that are flying at you.Sticking with our physics-pillar, the flares are actual objects that shoot out of the helicopter and are detected by incoming missiles. In the game, the heat-seeking missiles work by looking for a heat source in the game- basically a value we put on vehicles. The flares have a higher heat value, so if the missiles see a flare, they will pick that as their target.When the heat gets too hot... add some more heat? Note the missile chasing the flares in all of these screenshots :) This means the flares are extremely helpful, but you're not invincible. They're more like 95% effective. Which I think adds a bit of excitement to the game. If you pop the fla

Pilots! Oh do I have an update for you. Let's get right into it. First, feast your eyes on this lush jungle scene. We've picked up production on chapter 2 and it is feeling great. Is that a rock or are you happy to see me We are working on a jungle mission that will involve destroying some key enemy locations along the coast, and liberating some weapons caches. The mission has a mix of bases with helipads that allow you to repair your helicopter once you capture the base. This creates a nice hub and spoke gameplay where you capture a base and then can return to it for support. The mission also features a new enemy type to contend with...Kamikaze DronesIn Travis' own words: "I hate these little f($)ers". They are persistent, quick, and dangerous. These drones pursue their target and then go into a high speed attack phase. They attack both air and ground targets. If you have friendly NPCs in the area, you'll have to defend them. Drone Control RoomThere is one twist: the drones are being controlled by operators in a drone control room. The drones will continuously spawn until you find and destroy the control room and kill the operators. We are hiding them

Cleared Hot is an excellent nostalgic helicopter shooter, and the latest release brings Native Linux support to improve performance on Steam Deck. Read the full article here:

Pilots! Our Chapter 1B update is live on Steam. It was a major performance update to the game, and we had to touch a lot of systems to make it happen. This needed to happen before the game expanded much more, and I'm really glad we can build chapter 2 on this improved foundation.FeaturesPerformance OverhaulThis was our main focus. We greatly improved performance on all platforms, and especially on Steam Deck. Steam Deck FPS increased by 30%, and hits 90 fps in low action areas.Stutters are greatly reduced. The ones that remain are from spawning units and we will improve this over time.More settings. You can set anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and render scale. This lets you get the performance / quality experience you want.Arcade Mode We've added a new section in the home base for arcade missions. Our goal for this was to add replayable content and have a place for experimental missions.Survival Mode - Defend a building against waves of enemiesSkee Ball - Use your rope to roll the ball up the ramp and into the holesSkeet Shooting - Shoot barrels mid-airCooping Mechanism - A timed chicken rescueMini Golf - Golf, but with missilesUno Reverse - Destroy turrets by redirecti