Heat Signature is about controlling space mercenaries whose job it is to break into procedurally generated enemy spaceships and get themselves into terrible situations which require a clever way out. As a space mercenary, you have very little backstory or information available, just a random name and a personal mission, which involves breaking into a spaceship. You receive these missions from the only character who won't end up dead, because they're the tutorial character. These personal missions of breaking into spaceships require you to first, take on lots of other missions which involve breaking into spaceships. So, you grab a character and off you go, in your tiny pod of a spaceship which has no guns, just the ability to be so small that the enemy doesn't notice when you've docked onto them. The flying through space is controlled with the mouse, and is really fun to get good at, you'll start by crashing into the side of the enemy and hoping to dock, only to ping off the side, but the more you play, the quicker and easier you'll find it to dock. Of course, if you fly too close to the windows they're going to shoot you, and you will go spiralling through space to your death, or survival, depending on how you are with quick time events in which you can pause, so often you just need to make it back to base to repair your pod. Once you haven't been blown up by the enemy and have successfully docked, the space raiding begins. Before walking through the airlock just for the enemy to hit you with a wrench and throw you back out again, you can look over the whole ship, no fog of war, you can see where everyone and everything is, but that doesn't mean you won't be spotted by a patrolling enemy the second you step through the airlock because you weren't paying attention. Once you've snuck on it's time to head for the objective, either kill or collect, whether it's an item, a person, or the ship itself. Of course, you'll want weapons, and by taking out enemies and going through boxes you can gather yourself a hefty arsenal. There isn't just guns and wrenches, there is a manner of interesting and useful gadgets, such as swappers which swap you with an enemy, so they shoot themselves, and subverts which hijack enemy technology so it works for you. These shields and cloaking and so many more are there to help you out of the sticky situations, you may accidentally throw the enemy with the key to progress out of a window, but by using a swapper you can swap with someone on the other side of the door. You could use a visitor to teleport into a room of six people, take two out with a shotgun, shoot another with your other gun, throw your short sword at one whilst you dive at another with your longsword, and be teleported back to your original position before the last one shoots you. Pausing is the most powerful weapon you have, it allows you to perform these awesome stunts which are always the most rewarding part of any mission. Once you've completed the mission it's probably time to leave, you could run back to your pod, fly the enemy ship and blow others up with it on the way back or smash through a window and remote control your pod to pick you up before you run out of air. If shot or knocked out, the enemies will throw you out of the airlock, which means you have to frantically fly your pod to pick you up whilst the counter ticks down to your inevitable death, which may be today, maybe tomorrow. Once your back at a base, you can buy new items, train, do defector missions which you unlock with each space station you take controller of by levelling up through missions, or retire your character and select a new one. Although your character has little story, you still feel bad when they're retired or die, mainly because you lose all the gadgets they’ve collected over their past missions, and the progress on the personal mission, it can be devastating when you finally kick the bucket on the mission which would have unlocked their personal mission. But characters are replaceable, and the different difficulties of mission allow you to start gearing up before having to face the harder missions again. Through the game you unlock more ways of doing missions, like bloodless or no witnesses, these missions will still pay you if you don’t complete them within the perimeters, just they’ll pay you less. This means you don’t feel totally defeated when you wonder on a ship in a bloodless mission and forgot to bring anything non-lethal. This game encourages risking near impossible feats, encourages creative ways of completing your mission and is fun to play for a few minutes to a few hours, with great re playability. Although the missions are all a variation of the same thing, there is uniqueness in the procedural generation and defector missions, one of which starts you in space, making you use a gun to propel yourself through space.
