Cleared Hot news & patch notes

Welcome loyal players and wishlisters, the ones who make it all possible! Cmon in and let's talk Jungle.

BTR-80

Soviet Era Armored Personnel Carrier

In our initial jungle devlog, some of you suggested this behemoth! Here it is in it's retro Soviet glory. We also made a slight modification to add some anti-aircraft missiles to the rear, to make it's attack a bit more spicy.

It also carries 10 NPCs that can disembark when it reaches a destination or when its health drops below 25%.

Weak Point System

Aka The Red Butt

We have added a weak point to the back of the BTR unit, that rewards you for landing direct or near-direct hits. This adds more depth to the combat, and rewards you for landing direct or near-direct hits on the rear of the BTR.

Death to the Circle Strafe Meta

I have hated that a lot of action games have basically one movement pattern that can be repeated over and over for any situation: the circle strafe. Just hold down the shoot button and move in circles.

BTR-80 Weak Point

We decided to experiment by putting a weak point on the back of the BTR-80 enemy. We're experimenting with 2 approaches to showing this to the player: a red pulsing area on the rear, and a large red exhaust port that's actually part of the BTR. Which do you prefer?

When you hit the weak point, you do 2x the damage. The unit is armored and has a lot of health, so this is crucial to taking it down.

Known affectionately in our discord as "the red butt"

Another variation we're experimenting with- a red exhaust port.

What Counts As a Hit

In order to do damage to the weak point, hit it with a gun or missile in that small area. The guns and missiles have 2 zones of damage: one is a very small zone that counts as a direct hit, the other is full splash damage that is reduced with distance. Splash damage does not count on the weak point- it has to be hit more closely.

Hitmarker Adjustment

In order to show the player where they're hitting, we updated the UI hitmarker to show a different color for the 3 types of hits: hit on an unarmored unit, hit on armor, and weak point hit.

Audio Feedback

We're still playing with this, but we've created new sounds that alert the player to what they're hitting. The armor hit is more of a ricochet / metal impact sound, and weak point hit is distinctly different.

I Want Your Feedback

What's your first impression of this new damage model? What other ways do you want to see more depth in the combat? This will first be released with Chapter 2 and we will iterate it with your feedback through all of early access.

Jungle Mission Teasers

We are knee-deep in the Chapter 2 campaign at this point, and it is really coming together. I don't to give away any spoilers so I'll just post some generic teaser screenshots below.

Your future home-base. Still a work in progress.

Coastal real estate, open-air hangar, bring your own helicopters

Defending against a beachhead attack

Dusk in the jungle

The Huey feels right at home here...

Poll: Your Top 3 Missions and Why

Respond in the comments: What were your top 3 missions and why did you like them? This will help us prioritize as we build out the rest of Chapter 2 and plan Chapter 3.

Mission Names

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 Drones

In 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 Room

There 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 around the map, so you'll have to track the drones back to the source.

Once you find them (and oh does it feel good to kill the operators) the drones fall out of the sky.

These fill a nice gameplay niche- they are threatening to both the player and the allied ground forces. In a few missions you'll be protecting your allies from drone attacks. The drones are especially deadly against ground troops.

Well, thank you for ... wait a second... I almost forgot...

"The Modding Initiative"

Ok I'm going to say it... we are adding mod support!

We are now writing our mission logic in Lua script, which means that modders will be able to modify all future missions, and eventually create their own.

We don't yet have a delivery date for any of this, but we want to share info and take suggestions as we build it. If you're interested in helping us develop and test our mod support, fill out this Google Survey.

Short Term

• Tweaking mission logic - objectives, spawning times, locations, etc

• Changing unit configurations - for both enemy and friendly units

Long Term

• Visual editor to place units in an existing terrain

• Support for placing any prop in the game

• Packs of pre-made bases to use and modify

• Steam Workshop support

What's NOT Included

• Being able to modify the terrain is not included, for technical and license reasons. We will provide all the terrain files from existing missions, and some placeholder ones, for you to use.

• No way to make mission logic without writing Lua code- this is more technical, and we can't support a full "super mario maker" style editor.

• Chapter 1 missions- those were created in Unity and at this time we aren't going to re-write them in Lua.

Explain Like I'm 5

• The mission logic used to be inside Unity (our game engine), not accessible to players.

• Now the mission logic lives in Lua code, in a folder on your computer.

• Anyone can modify the code, either for themselves or to publish as a mod for others.

Lua Scripting

We use the MoonSharp C# interpreter to embed Lua into the game. In Unity, scene objects get referenced by IDs. So you can write a script in Lua that references the things in the game / mission.

Each mission is defined by a .lua file that has a list of reactions. Reactions are pretty much what they sound like- a reaction to something that has happened. The flow is like this: Something happens -> if some condition is true -> do these other actions.

The "something" is an event, like a unit died, a zone was entered, the mission started, etc. These are hooked in Unity/C# and we pass the events to Lua. The actions are what you do in response - spawn units, complete an objective, play dialog complete the mission, etc.

An Example

Below is a simplified snippet of how our Survival mission works. Things will change through development but this should give you an idea of how you define counters, objectives, and handle reactions.

Thank You!

I've been having a ton of fun working on the game lately. Cooking up new content and adding modding support has been really exciting.

Join the Discord if you're not there already; we'll be sharing more jungle development soon. https://discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg

Sometimes you almost get too close to your own game to see all the possibilities, so I'm stoked to open things up to you guys to make your own changes.

Thanks for helping us get this far, and for your continued support! Y'all make it all possible.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

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.

Features

Performance Overhaul

This 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 enemies

• Skee Ball - Use your rope to roll the ball up the ramp and into the holes

• Skeet Shooting - Shoot barrels mid-air

• Cooping Mechanism - A timed chicken rescue

• Mini Golf - Golf, but with missiles

• Uno Reverse - Destroy turrets by redirecting their own missiles

• Glass Cannon - Use walls for cover and destroy 3 challenging turrets

Steam Daily Deal

We are one of today's Steam daily deals! So everyone logging into Steam will get a popup showing the game. As someone who was around when Steam was first released... this feels pretty crazy :)

We will be raising the price before Chapter 2, so now's the best time to grab it. Tell your friends! If you've already purchased the game, you get this update, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 for free as part of our early access process.

This update was a foundational update to make sure the game runs smoothly before adding content. We are investing into the game's future- I hope that feels good to our early access supporters. Now, back to work on Chapter 2!

Thanks for all of your support, it means a lot.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hello Fearless Pilots, I have a rare thing to present to you: an update release date: Chapter1B Drops on March 17th!

Video Devlog

If you prefer to digest you devlogs in video format, check out the below!

Let me know what else you would like to see in these, I'm curious to try this new format. I'm new to YouTube but I want to share our dev progress- leave a comment, a like or subscribe if you want to help out.

Chapter1B Features

Performance Improvements

This was our main focus of the last few months.

• Steam Deck fps increased 30%, and hits 90 fps in low action areas.

• Stuttering is greatly improved. The ones that remain are from spawning units and we will improve this over time.

• More settings are exposed now. You can set anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and render scale. This let's you get the performance / quality experience you want.

This includes adding the new water system! So the game should look better and run faster. The team really cooked on this one.

These updates have allowed us to render some more dense jungle scenes without sacrificing performance, and we are set up really well for the jungle campaign now.

Here's a summary of all the improvements that were made

• Native Steam Deck build - unlocked the 90 fps potential

• Optimized Destruction System

• Updated Unit Navigation - uses ECS for faster calculations, avoided some recalculations.

• Bullet decals are being pooled

• Unity 6.3 Update

• Major vegetation stutters fixed (we pre-load them)

• Major improvement from enabling depth priming, removing SMAA

• More anti-aliasing options offered (FXAA, SMAA, TAA, None)

• Ambient Occlusion is a setting that can be disabled for more performance

• Exposed a render scale setting

• Improved Unit system- more efficient update loop, and LOD priority system

Arcade Missions

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.

I want this section to be a place where we can experiment with missions that wouldn't fit in the campaign. It should allow us to create more content and to try out more community ideas in a flexible way.

We've only added a handful of missions so far, but this section will evolve a lot. Most of our focus needs to be on Chapter 2, but having this section allows us to add little bits of content over time as we go. This way you're not waiting forever without having something new to play.

AND, now I can make the super duper hard challenge missions that I couldn't put in the main campaign :)

Here's our current list of Arcade missions. These may change before launch.

• Survival Mode

• Mini Golf (with missiles...)

• Skee Ball

• Skeet Shooting

• Roping Missile Challenge

• Radar Turret Challenge

These missions are all pretty short and light, but this is just the start- we want you to help us expand this section over time.

Redirecting Missiles w the Rope

Ok so I know this isn't a top priority, but I've been waiting months to work on this again. Basically, this was possible before but not super rewarding because it didnt't work w all the missiles and when it did work, they didnt do much damage.

Now the missile's can be more reliably redirected back to the turret (or npc...) that fired them, and they will do 3x the normal damage if you pull it off.

New Water System

The new water system has been added to all the chapter 1 missions in the game!

Recently we built a system that detects when any object is entering the water and creates a splash effect. Throwing props into the water is decidedly more fun now.

This prevents us from having to do custom work for the 384593 props in the game.

Roadmap

Edit- I forgot to mention that there are 2 parts of Chapter1B on the roadmap that we have postponed until later: The helicopter customization and a new playable helicopter.

We did this in the interest of getting this update out quickly while starting production on Chapter 2. Our main priority is getting you the main campaign content as fast as we can.

We will release these features as a later date, in parallel with our work on Chapter 2. I am hoping this works better to keep the updates coming more frequently.

Chapter 2 Production Sneak Peak

We've been working on the first mission of Chapter 2 as a way to experiment with our new process and see how the water missions work.

A new hazard has entered the chat

Thank You

Thanks for following along! Mark your calendars for March 17th, and come hop in the discord to celebrate the launch with us: https://discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hello Pilots! Join me on this Saturday morning as I share what we've been up to since the holidays! New Jungle preview, new water, boats, and performance updates. Let's go...

Jungle Preview

Our revised jungle theme is coming together.

We've been doing a ton of work finding the right style for the jungle that won't melt your GPU. We're not quite done optimizing but we're getting closer. The overall vibe is coming together and I'm pretty excited about it.

The jungle will play differently than Texas, and we're exploring how those elements play into mission types. Expect to be ambushed by units hiding in the trees, fend off naval attacks, and escort your allies through dangerous extraction missions.

Water 2.0

For those of you that have been following the game for a while, you know that we started with a more low-poly style. As that evolved into our current style, the water got left behind in low-poly mode.

Thankfully Texas doesn't have a ton of water :D But now that we're headed to the jungle, it was time to make the water feel like... water.

I explored several different approaches, including some package systems, some basic shaders, and doing something with Unity's shader graph.

I ended up picking this shader that is pretty lightweight - it is meant to even run on mobile devices, so performance is quite good. We get some better looking water, and it actually moves. It should add a lot to the missions we can do in the jungle.

Buoyancy

This was incredibly fun to work on- I love the physics stuff. I tried several different implementations of the physics behavior and ended up with one that feels pretty satisfying to me.

I tried a couple different calculations for the buoyancy. A few considerations were:

• Has to run fast- performance over realism

• Simple to implement and tune for different types of vehicles (or NPCs!)

• Has to match the actual wave action of the water

I ended up picking a solution where each object has various float points that get force added to them depending on how much they are submerged, with some damping.

Left: Linear calculation without damping, Right: square root based depth calculation, with damping

The buoyancy system is using Unity Jobs to run the calculations in parallel. So we should see a nice benefit from being able to actually do something with your multiple CPU cores.

Boat Driving

The boats can now drive as well! The physics model here is pretty simple- tuned for action and a bit of chaos.

This is just a start- we have a bunch of water units we'll be implementing for Chapter 2.

Yes, the NPCs are just fine with a bit of underwater time.

Performance Side Quest

We spent a good chunk of January exploring how to improve performance in the game.

Steam Deck

We found a big improvement by making some small changes and building for Linux. This should improve everyone's Steam Deck performance and allow us to render more trees in the jungle. This will release with Chapter 1B.

Unit System

We made a handful of small improvements to how units work in the game.

• Previously all the units (NPCs, vehicles, etc) were using the same Unity driven FixedUpdate call. We updated that to use our own update call, which is a bit better.

• We now assign a priority to units based on their proximity to the player, and update further units less often.

• We ignore allies when searching for targets.

Destruction System

We found a small gain here by delaying some physics calculations to when a piece is falling off- not when something first breaks. This just reduces the amount of physics rigidbodies being calculated.

Also if you haven't played w the slider for Active Debris Limit- this will improve your CPU performance in destruction heavy scenes. It was part of a previous update but important to mention.

A* Navigation

We've updated the system that the NPCs and vehicles use for pathfinding, and switched to a system that uses Unity's ECS system for greater parallelization. We also added optimizations on navmesh calculation for static objects.

Pooling

Decals for bullet holes were not being pooled previously. This should be a small improvement to every mission.

Unity 6.3 Update

We've updated to Unity 6.3, which is their latest long term support version. We didn't notice any major improvements from this but it allows us to update a bunch of other packages which should help.

Shadow Map

We found a couple small ways to reduce the amount of extra shadows being rendered, that were outside the game view. We still have some work to do here, but we reached the level of what's helpful without rebuilding major Unity render features.

PITCH YOUR JUNGLE IDEAS NOW

• What type of water-going enemies?

• What missions come to mind when you think jungle?

• Other childhood game memories you want to relive :D

Thanks for following along- We're so thrilled to get the opportunity to make this game. All thanks to you.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Pilots! We are happy to announce that Chapter1a has been released. We fit in as much as we could before the holidays, we hope you enjoy it!

Comanche

The new helicopter, the RAH-66 Comanche is in the game! It is extremely agile but takes damage quickly. Give it a play and let us know what you think.

New Test Flight Area

We took your feedback on wanting some more things to test, and made the test flight area into a sandbox. There are now buttons / switches you can interact with to spawn enemies,

How To Access Test Flight

To enter the test flight mode, go into the hangar and then click "TEST FLIGHT" on the right side panel.

Survival Mode

This area has a handful of small mini-game modes that we are exploring. In survival mode you defend a building from waves of enemies, with health and ammo dropped in between waves. You get a cash reward for reaching the half way point and for completing the stage.

Defense Simulation

This just sends waves of enemies straight at a target. The enemies don't progress and there is no ending.

Standoff Range

Spawns both friendly and enemy NPCs and sends them into a battle.

Other Areas

There are a lot of other areas for you to play with.

• Demolition Playground

• Physics Playground

• Standoff Range

• Shooting Range

• Vehicle Range

• Turret Range

• Radar Turret Range

We are hoping this area can be a place to experiment! We'd love your feedback on all this- what do you want to see more of?

New Options

Screen Shake

You can now adjust how much screen shake is applied (in game options)

No Blood / Gore / BBQ Meat

You can now disable blood and gore. The NPCs will no longer explode into various cuts of meat after being killed by rotors or certain weapons.

Active Debris Limit

Added a slider for the maximum number of physics debris pieces that can be active at a time. Lowering this will help performance in certain CPU bound situations, or really destruction heavy levels.

UI FPS Limit

We've added an option to limit your FPS while in the game UI, to prevent melting any graphics cards unnecesarily :)

Cloud Save

We also added cloud save. So you can keep synced between your various devices. Keep in mind that with the current implementation, the game syncs on quit. So if you want to swap devices, quit out of your current session before switching.

Steam Deck Verified

Cleared Hot is now Steam Deck verified, woohoo! This update came through last week but we didn't announce it publicly.

Various Fixes

• Improved: Boss music logic so it fits better with the different phases

• Improved: Sfx on collision performance for props

• Imprived: Collision damage performance for destructible props

• Fixed: camera starting sometimes in strange positions

• Fixed: bug where you could change to different UIs in the homebase when selecting helo ending up with a broken ui

• Fixed: updated a few props to use the proper collider

• Fixed: Configured the rope pickup in some props so they work better when they spawn rotated

• Fixed: Mouse was hidden when using "Quit to menu" option while in a mission

• Fixed: Warehouse destruction model fixed so the broken parts don't kill units inside

• Fixed: Hind passenger stat now match the actual number of passengers supported ingame

Thank You + Happy Holidays

This last month has been a bit of a blur. Thanks to everyone who supported us on our launch.

We really wanted to get you this update before the holidays, to keep the momentum and show we're committed to our early access schedule. I'm really happy that we're able to send a small amount of new content for you to play over the holiday break.

I think we are all ready to take a break to relax and be with family now :D So happy holidays! Come celebrate with us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg

Thanks everyone!

-Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to say thank you again and give a recap of our first 2 weeks since launching Cleared Hot. I mean it when I say: the launch went better than any of us even dreamed of.

Thank you all for the reviews.

It was really a wild ride after we clicked the big green "RELEASE MY GAME" button. All of our long time fans hit Steam right away on launch, which catapulted is into the good graces of the Steam algorithm.

This traffic coincided with the Steam Black Friday sale. To our surprise we ended up in the top 5 of the New and Trending list for the sale. This really amplified the traffic.

More Stats

• Steam Impressions: 18,720,000

• Steam Page Visits: 993,641

• Wishlists Outstanding: 237,111

• Wishlists Added in 2 weeks: 121,170

• Reviews: 2,062 at 97% positive

We Stay Hotfixin'

We've pushed 3 updates to the game since launch. We might make another 1 really small hotfix, but otherwise we are now focusing on our next update: Chapter 1a.

Your Feedback (We're Listening)

We looked through all of your reviews, steam community posts, and in-game survey responses to help us prioritize next steps.

What You Liked

• Nostalgia

• Fun Gameplay / Combat Loop

• Good Controls (KB/M & Controller)

• Great Music & Sound Design

• Physics & Rope Mechanic

• Voice Acting Quality

• Helicopter Variety

• Good Value

• Steam Deck Compatible

What You Want Us To Improve

• More Content / Replayable Content

• UI/UX Confusion & Clarity

• Camera & Visibility Issues

• Performance Issues (Mission 10, Jets)

• Physics/Pickup Finicky

• Weapons Balance

• Difficulty Spikes & Balance

• Controls Learning Curve

• Helicopter Balance

• NPCs Damaged On Exit Helo

• More Options: Graphics + Other

• No Cloud Saves

• More Depth

Feature Requests

Things you requested that we are considering / working on:

• More Missions & Content (Ch 2-3)

• Rebindable Controls (WASD/Arrows)

• More Weapon Variety & Personality

• Helicopter-Relative Controls Option (it's in the game, need to make it more clear)

• More Difficulty Options / Presets

• More Helicopters (Ka-50, Comanche)

• Replayable Content

We don't have a fixed plan or schedule for these two things, but we are interested in doing them:

• Mod Support / Workshop

• Endless / Skirmish Mode

Also a good amount of you asked about co-op, and we don't really have a plan for this. Maybe maybe maaaaybe we will explore it later but it we really have to think it through and it's a major thing.

These are only the top level categories, so if you don't see your exact request, keep in mind it is probably included into one of the more general topics.

Next Update: Chapter 1a

Our goal is to deliver this update before the holidays. This depends on how it goes but this is our goal.

Chapter1a includes

• Critical bug fixes and stability improvements (we've fixed some of these already)

• Expanded test flight area (more stuff to shoot, more on this soon)

• Comanche helo added (in-progress)

• Early balance adjustments (helo and weapons)

We've already kicked off work on this. Look for more info here in a couple weeks.

Team Appreciation

Using the same discord screenshot from the demo since we all have gray hair now. Jk, just me :D

Just want to give the team a shout out. I'm the guy who posts here, but behind me is a truly incredible team of diverse talents. I feel super lucky to get to work with everyone on a daily basis.

Not pictured: our wonderful music composer, Catbaux, and our amazing publishing team at Microprose. Catbaux composed entirely new music for the release, and helped us integrate it into the missions through the chaos. Microprose helped us a ton through development, and then spread the word going into launch.

Everyone came together under a really tight timeline to ship the game. So, a personal thank you to the team.

Test Branch

For those of you who want to play our updates early and help us test, we will start sharing a steam beta password on Steam.

Join our email list to get access to these early updates: https://www.clearedhotgame.com/email-list

This branch will be somewhere between our playtester build and our final release. It does not replace our small group of playtesters, but allows us to get a bit more user testing before we call the updates done.

Thank You!

I couldn't be happier with how things have gone, really. Five years ago I was wondering if I could start a new career in game dev, with no idea, and no experience. Every year I would tell friends: "the game will definitely be out next year", only to repeat that the following year.

Because of you I don't have to get a real job :D That was really my highest goal. All of the comments from people are really motivating.

Thank you all for going on this journey with us! There's a lot more to come.

-Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hotfix: v0.2.5#17788

Keep the feedback coming everyone. This is a small update to fix some common issues. Our focus will now move to the Chapter 1a update.

• Fixed: all helos loadout stats.

• Fixed: end of mission screen navigation issue when using quit button from pause menu.

• Balance: hydra and hellfire missiles.

• Localization: hold ctrl to land is now localized.

• Fixed: press escape while loading was starting the game with the pause menu open and game running.

• Fixed: blackhawk cargo stats.

• Changed: improvements in ui scale support

• Changed: increased font sizes in homebase to improve Steam Deck legibility.

• Fixed: ps4 and ps5 controller icons.

• Changed: reordered upgrades to show light and heavy missiles ordered.

• Fixed: "The Battle of Big Rocks" misison now continues when picking up special weapon crate without using the rope.

• Fixed: "A West Texas Road Trip" bridge can't be destroyed out of order now so the mission and exchanges run normally.

• Changed: removed some unused instructions and added the next weapon/previous weapon in pause menu.

• Fixed: localization in homebase for some languages.

• Fixed: looped sounds playing after quitting mission to the abandoned screen.

Known Issue: Quitting mid mission will hide the mouse cursor until you get back to the home base.

We are working on a fix, for now, here are some temporary solutions:

• You can alt-tab to unhide the cursor

• Use arrow keys and enter key

• Use the mouse, it's invisible but mousing over the buttons will make them highlight. The buttons are still clickable.

Dearest players + wishlisters! THANK YOU. Holy moly what a launch week.

First, if you would be so kind, please nominate us for the "Sit Back and Relax Award" category in the Steam Awards. Or whatever other categories you want. If you feel like it. Link Here.

Thanks. Okay, on to the launch stuff.

Launch Recap

The night before the launch I set 2 alarms to make sure I didn't sleep past our 5am launch. I slept about 2 hours before I started waking up thinking I'd missed it.

So I just got up, and we prepared for the release. At about 4:52am we pressed the scary green "Release Now" button.

The 3 of us who were awake at the time made peace with our god/s and RELEASED IT.

To our amazement, pretty much everything went well. You guys turned up in droves to buy + review the game, our Discord blew up, the Reddit post made it to the top of r/gaming...

I think the thing we're most proud of is the review score. At the time I'm writing this, we're at 98% positive with 1,141 reviews, after 6 days. Whaa?! That's so crazy.

Updates + Next Steps

I'm proud to say we've already shipped 2 updates. These fixed a variety of bugs and improved performance on mission 10.

Already Fixed

Hotfix 1 and Hotfix 2 fixed the below issues.

• Fix: Improved performance in Mission 10: Data Harvesting.

• Fix: Improved performance of jet enemy on all missions

• Fix: When rescuing or delivering people made them invulnerable to prevent accidental deaths when dropping them

• Fix: Tweaked volume and frequency of scientist barks

• Fix: Fixed how instructions were shown for controls that have positive and negative axis (ex: altitude control)

• Fix: Made chickens a priority target for the rope

• Fix: Fixed ally npcs entering the van and breaking the objectives (Data Harvesting)

• Fix: Fixed dialog overlap in dialog when killing humvee (Tail Risk)

• Fix: Fixed music in The Battle of Big Rocks

• Fix: Added explicit drop zone in The Long Way Home

• Fix: Fixed some texts that were using a font without support for localization

• Fix: Fixed main fonts using fallback for cyrilic characters

• Fix: Added code to prevent issues when the options or savegame can't be loaded

• Fix: Fixed gas tank from "An Odd Tool for Odd Jobs" that was not blowing up when using the Easy of Custom difficulty options to lower Ally damage.

We are hard at work addressing all of your feedback, so keep it coming.

Near Term Fixes

Below is a list of some of the things we are planning to address in the near future.

• Changes to get the Steam Deck certification

• Cloud save

• Various logic issues in missions

  • Convoy mission bridge fix (no spoilers lol)

  • Some issues with rescuing NPCs

  • Issue w missile crate in "Holding Out For a Hero" mission

• Instructions for the "come-back shield"

• Instructions for switching missiles

• Better feedback when you try to shoot missiles but are out of ammo

• Various small weapon / helo price + stat tweaks

• Minigun overheat changes

  • force a cool down, don't penalize player from clicking when weapon is overheated

• Small performance improvements (bigger ones coming later)

• Various bug fixes

Chapter 1a

We aim to ship Chapter 1a before Christmas. This includes:

• Bug fixes

• Expanded test flight area

• Comanche helo added

• Balance adjustments

Thank You.

Thanks to all of you for making this a dream come true for us. We were joking the day after about how it felt like a dream- what if we woke up the next day and hadn't launched yet :) But really, it has been better than we even thought possible.

I feel very motivated by all the momentum, and the team is pretty excited to show you what we can do for the next updates, and remaining chapters of the game.

• Keep leaving us feedback on Discord: https://discord.gg/XmMTqEjpQg

• Join our email list to get more detailed updates: https://www.clearedhotgame.com/email-list

• Vote us for "Sit Back and Relax Award" on the Steam Awards: https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/2025

Thank you! - Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hotfix: v0.2.4#17671

Thanks for your feedback. We fixed the most pressing things we could manage to fix in a day. Enjoy!

• Fix: Improved performance in Mission 10: Data Harvesting.

• Fix: Improved performance of jet enemy on all missions

• Fix: When rescuing or delivering people made them invulnerable to prevent accidental deaths when dropping them

• Fix: Tweaked volume and frequency of scientist barks

• Fix: Fixed how instructions were shown for controls that have positive and negative axis (ex: altitude control)

• Fix: Made chickens a priority target for the rope

• Fix: Fixed ally npcs entering the van and breaking the objectives (Data Harvesting)

• Fix: Fixed dialog overlap in dialog when killing humvee (Tail Risk)

• Fix: Fixed music in The Battle of Big Rocks

• Fix: Added explicit drop zone in The Long Way Home

Hello Players! Thank you for all your feedback! We just pushed a quick fix for the below issues.

• Fix: Fixed some texts that were using a font without support for localization

• Fix: Fixed main fonts using fallback for cyrilic characters

• Fix: Added code to prevent issues when the options or savegame can't be loaded

• Fix: Fixed gas tank from "An Odd Tool for Odd Jobs" that was not blowing up when using the Easy of Custom difficulty options to lower Ally damage.

Carry on, pilots. It's great to have you in the game, finally !

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot rapid response dev team (Ariel and Ruben :D )

WE ARE LIVE

Brave Wishlisters, our time has come !!! Cleared Hot is available for purchase on Steam. Wow. it is just barely sinking in for me.

Go and enjoy this nostalgic experience we have crafted for you !

Ways You Can Help

• Buy and review the game! Early reviews help us a ton.

• Share it with your friends

• Come celebrate on discord with us :)

Thanks.

Five years ago I was struggling with a career I wasn’t enjoying. I wanted to explore game dev again- a childhood dream I had left behind- but didn’t know if it would work out.

I started learning Unity, and ended up spending a lot of time inside during 2020, making games out of cubes and programmer art. I got up the courage to try to make a helicopter fly. I made a prototype called “Kinda Air Support” where you did humorous tasks with a helicopter.

One day my childhood Desert Strike memories got ahold of me and I thought “what would this game be like with guns and missiles?”.

It turns out, it was pretty damn fun. Then it took 4 more years to finish it. (and there is more to come!)

So now, as the game launches, I want to say thank you. Thank you for making this game happen. I hope you enjoy it !! - Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Brave wishlisters, your day of glory is near!

The team is busy slaying the dragon of "releasing a game". As a global team we are starting to merge into a single time zone, which is not good. But, we are almost done. And we're in the phase of, everything is f*$(ing awesome and it's actually motivating again.

I am typing this devlog with my remaining 3 brain cells, on a Sunday after the team made an intense push to finish chapter 1 of the game. I think you're all going to be pretty excited and I can't wait to see your reactions.

Enough beating around the bush, we're here to talk DOLLARS AND CENTS. And roadmaps.

Click to full-screen the image.

Roadmap Notes

We are breaking up the full campaign into 3 chapters, that we will release through early access. These will be held in different biomes.

Each chapter builds on the previous chapter, and it is one continuous story driven campaign. We hope to add side missions as we go as well.

We will release an update after the EA launch, called Chapter 1a: "Too Close For Missiles". This update is aimed at being a quick response to the feedback we get right at launch.

• Comanche helicopter added

• Bug fixes and stability improvements

• Balance adjustments

• Expanded test flight area (where you can test helos outside of missions)

Afterwards, we'll work on Chapter 1B: "Close Air Support" update, where we will add side missions to the game. Following this one, we will be releasing chapters 2,3, and then ultimately the 1.0 launch.

Overall we want to incorporate your feedback through our development, and make this an interesting journey for you to join us on. You guys have already been an amazing community, making suggestions and giving us feedback. I want that continue in EA. It should be a fun process.

$14.99

First things first: Cleared Hot will release at the low low price of $14.99 with a 10% launch discount, bringing that to 13 big ones and change. As stated on our Steam page, we plan to increase the price as we ship new content and features. So get it now while the gettins' good.

We will be adding a lot, so any of our early access players will get a lot for this price. For those of you who have been begging me to "shup up and take my money", Thursday is your chance :D

Final Days!

Thanks everyone for following along here! If I wasn't so busy and stressed, I might enjoy this moment :D But instead, I'll enjoy it on Thursday. Remember that we launch this Thursday, Nov 20th, 5am PST.

• Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/XmMTqEjpQg

• Join our Email List: https://www.clearedhotgame.com/email-list

• Tell your favorite YouTubers / Streamers about the game

• And of course, add it to your wishlist on Steam!

Feels kinda crazy, I've spent the last 5 years crafting this fun experience for you all. This team came together and all contributed their unique strengths into this one game.

Thanks for making it possible for me to not have a real job. And to create other not-real-jobs for other people! I've enjoyed it and hope you do too.

Thanks,

-Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Dearest Wishlisters, the time is finally here for me to share some news!

Cleared Hot will be released into Steam Early Access on November 20th, 5am PST !

Release Date Trailer

I am equal parts excited and terrified :D But I can't wait to let you guys see what we've been working on, and start the next chapter of the game.

Early Access

We chose to do Early Access for 2 reasons:

• Letting the community guide the direction of the game

• Give us the option to build more content as we go

Without early access, we would be much more limited on the scope of what we can do. You guys have been really great at providing feedback, and I want that to continue as we expand the campaign.

For now, we are launching with the first "chapter" of the campaign, which takes place in Texas. We are planning to do 2 additional chapters during early access, as well as expanding with side / contract missions.

We will be posting an early access roadmap before launch, which will give some more info on what you can expect.

Spot The New Helos

We went on a helicopter spree and modeled + implemented 3 more helicopters since last devlog! They all have slightly different stats, movement, and loadout options.

Mi-24 "Hind"

"A Hind-D? Colonel, what's a Russian Gunship doing here?"

Bell 222 - "Sky Wolf"

A slightly modified version of the Bell 222, that has some extra guns and missiles :)

UH-1 Huey

"Git some"

Upgrades + Loadouts

Cleared Hot now has a loadout and upgrade system! I can't wait for you to try this and help us plan how to extend it.

In the loadout view, you select your helicopter, and equip it with guns and missiles. In the future we will expand this with other utilities.

In the workshop, you can buy and upgrade weapons. These are classified into Light vs Heavy guns and missiles. Each helo has corresponding slots.

This is just a starting point- we want to include your feedback in the future of the upgrade system.

How To Help

These last 21 days (who's counting?) are going to be super important for our launch. I'd really appreciate any help on sharing the game and just building the hype. We would've never made it this far without you guys, I really appreciate it.

• Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/XmMTqEjpQg

• Join our Email List: https://www.clearedhotgame.com/email-list

• Retweet: https://x.com/colin_k/status/1983881573125456344

• Tell your favorite YouTubers / Streamers about the game

• And of course, add it to your wishlist on Steam

Thank you all for the support this whole time. I have been living this strange life making a video game for 5 years now. It's really hard to believe in 21 days the game will be out. Which reminds me... I should get back to work :D

Thanks everyone, we're almost there !!

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Dearest wishlisters, join me on this Saturday morning and feast your eyes on this big beautiful helicopter... THE CHINOOK!

We had to improve our rotor wash FX just for this occasion.

Will the Chinook break the game? Will it fit in the hangar? Shhh... it's all taken care of. (I think).

It fits on the helipad at your home base, just barely. You might have to adjust the satellite TV after taking off.

It even fits inside the hangar (just barely)

Hell, we even got a new game idea out of it. Thank you SeaBiscuit.

This thing is fun as hell to fly. I gave it a lot more mass and inertia. So it's slow to accelerate but actually pretty fast at it's top speed.

The movement requires you to think ahead a bit more which was a nice new addition. I have been playing all missions exclusively with it since I added it to the game. Can't wait to get your feedback on it soon...

New Content, No Spoilers

Content! Content everywhere! My wrists are sore from making so much content.

Humvee Avenger

We added the Humvee that shoots stinger missiles out of the back. The Avenger.

It has room for a gunner in the seat. We're not quite sure if we'll require an NPC back there or not. The other decision is if it should fire the same stinger missiles fired by NPCs. They are quite effective, and if fired in quick succession they're hard to avoid.

Looking saucy on that destructible bridge

Radar Turrets

We prototyped these awhile back but they have made their triumphant entrance into the campaign.

These rotate fast and shoot you when you enter their cone of "vision". You can defeat them by hiding behind cover and shooting them when they're turned the other way.

They are more impactful in the game now because nearly all your cover is destructible. So you might be hidden but find that your cover is collapsing.

Loot Inside Buildings

As we started adding larger buildings, we thought it would be interesting to be able to put stuff inside buildings that you discover after destroying them.

This way you have to scavenge through the wreckage for friendlies to rescue, ammo, health, or dispense with enemies.

Our 3D artist has been killing it with our destructible models. He's been getting so good at making them that he can barely contain his modesty these days... Thanks, Mane ;D

Tokyo Game Show

Our friends at MicroProse presented Cleared Hot at Tokyo Game show. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to play the demo!

RELEASE DATE

What? Huh? Who said something about a release date?

Sorry I couldn't resist. We will announce the release date in the NEXT devlog. Consider this the release date announcement announcement.

There is so much happening in the game right now, it's exciting and terrifying. This has been a 5 year journey for me, from learning Unity in 2020 while stuck inside to releasing a game in 2025 (soon).

Thanks again to everyone who has followed along. We're almost there. Keep being awesome (and share the game with your friends).

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hello Faithful Wishlisters,

We are heads down on production but I wanted to give you a quick update on some new things! Gather round, it's time for some helicopter gunship gifs.

New Mission - Defending Friendly NPCs

One of the new missions involves helping your NPCs on the ground defend various targets. It's pretty cool to see the battle raging below you, and to help defend your units as best you can.

Yes, that guy did get run over... it just didn't fit in the 5MB gif limit

Convoy Mission

I'm pretty happy that we found a good spot for this mission. I know escort missions sometimes suck, but do they normally have flying trucks and mid-air missile explosions?!

My favorite feeling in helicopter games is being able to help the ground units fighting beneath you. I think that even goes way back to Desert Strike and being able to rescue people. It always felt unique.

So this was my motivation to want to have missions where you protect a convoy going from A to B across enemy territory. This one has a lot of ambushes and awesome physics moments.

It's a trap. Yes screenshake will be able to be turned off for those of you with a weak stomach :) It's maybe a bit much right now.

We even found a way to still allow using the rope during it. I was worried that players could just carry the trucks straight to the end- but by having 2 trucks, you can't carry one without risking the other one.

Anti-Tank Missiles

We added the concept of armored targets into the game. Currently these just reduce the damage done by 75% except for any anti-armor weapons, which will bypass this reduction. This allowed us to make the tank more powerful, but give the player anti-armor missiles.

These missiles launch slowly, but then accelerate towards the last target you were aimed at. They don't require any kind of lock, but we are considering adding that for a future missile type.

They feel quite powerful!

Manned Turrets

We developed the game with a passenger system that allows NPCs to get into vehicles, and we've recently been extending that to other units.

We had talked about how cool it would be to see NPCs running towards an anti-aircraft gun when the spot you. You would have the chance to kill them before they become "more powerful" by getting on the gun.

I'm happy to show that we've implemented that in our latest changes! In this gif you can see the NPCs running to get into the turret, and me killing them before they can get there. We are still balancing this and trying to determine how much damage the NPCs themselves should take once they're on the turret.

Don't let them get on the AA gun!

Once the NPCs get in the turret it becomes quite powerful, it shoots fast and packs a punch. The best strategy is to fly around behind it, since it can't rotate as fast as you can fly.

Our 3d artist Mane did a great job with this ZU23 model. It's an older soviet AA gun. We are working to make things grounded in reality- it feels like this would be some cold war era hardware that has been passed around a bit.

Those chairs don't look super comfy

NPCs Inside Buildings

Our NPCs can go inside vehicles and turrets, why shouldn't they go into buildings? And if they were inside the buildings, they would probably come out when the building is getting destroyed...

Knock knock

For some reason this gave me nostalgic memories of Strike games and also... Rampage. You would punch holes in buildings and discover what was inside, and it was a mix of good and bad things. Godzilla / Cleared Hot crossover title? Final Boss?

Just don't eat the toaster (or toilet)

We are building a mission right now focused mostly on destroying enemy bases, and having each destroyed building have a chance at giving an ammo or health crate. I wanted to see what it would be like if enemy NPCs came running out as you destroyed the buildings.

Trick or Treat?

Gamescom

Our publishing partner MicroProse was at Gamescom showing off the Cleared Hot demo this past week! We got a lot of good feedback from players and press.

Thank You!

Thank you again for your continued support, you guys are the best. I've been trying to keep up with your comments in Steam Community, Youtube, Email, etc. Really cool to get everyone's feedback and hear how much you've enjoyed the demo.

If you haven't followed our new company account on Twitter / X, you can do that here: https://x.com/notknowingcorp We have been posting pretty often there.

There's a lot more I wish I could talk about! I will post another update soon. We updated our release year in Steam to 2025 soooo... things are happening. We still have a lot of work to get through, but I can't wait to talk about it soon.

We are waiting a bit longer to release a demo update in order to keep our pace on production, but you can look for that soon as well.

Thanks for following along!

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Thanks for playing the demo and giving us feedback!

Releasing the demo was quite a milestone for us as a team, and for me personally.

I started learning game dev in 2020. I've gone a LONG time without a public demo for anyone to play. Imagine the pressure of having 100,000 wishlists and releasing the first playable build!

To my relief, people really really liked it. We have a lot of feedback on what to change, improve, and all that, but I think the core takeaway for me was: We are on the right track. That is SUCH a good feeling.

Some Quotes From You

Planned Features + Changes

Thank you for completing the survey as well- this data is super helpful for us. We are working on prioritizing game changes + future features based on your requests.

Larger, Open-Ended Missions

We got a lot of feedback from people that- while they liked the demo- they missed having larger missions that were less scripted. We are adding a mission to the demo that will serve as our experiment with large missions. Once this is released, we want your feedback on how it feels.

The goal here is to explore some slightly large game loops that require the player to plan a bit: do I want to take on this next base, or do I want to go find health or missile ammo first? Is that missile crate guarded by enemies worth the risk?

In-Game Full Screen Map

We have added a first implementation of this, and will include it in the next build. This is part of our goal of introducing larger missions.

Dodge

We are planning to make the dodge more useful, but with a more limited use. More info on this later.

Better Ground Indicator

A lot of people mentioned not being sure where the helicopter was, especially when being shot by the enemy jet. We are going to work on making the ground indicator show on the water, and look into some other ways to make this better.

Vehicle Relative Movement

This was the control scheme in the Strike series- so It makes sense. We are tracking this and going to do some playtesting with adding this as an option.

Localization

We have started the technical work to localize all the text in the game and will have it translated to a first set of languages soon.

Additional Options

We're tracking a number of things here, a lot of these options are planned and won't be very difficult to add.

• Option for minimal UI

• Disable screen shake

• Blood toggle

• Adjusting UI position on ultrawide monitors

• Some fixes for the profanity filter options

• Better button binding- we will expose the movement buttons and fix some issues

Features/Changes After Demo

The above list is just what we're focusing on in the near term. We are categorizing the rest of your feedback and tracking it for the full game. So if you didn't see your request above, don't worry.

Join The Discord!

Along with the demo, we finally opened up our public discord. We will post changelogs and more details there: Discord Invite Link

Huge thanks to everyone for playing. We hope to deliver more to you soon!

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Play The Demo!

We Are Live On Next Fest!

Hello wishlisters and future current pilots! I hope you're enjoying the demo- we've been loving all your feedback in the demo survey and all your comments that you've posted on social media.

If you haven't played the demo yet, go give it a try and send us your feedback!

It's happening !! Everybody stay f%*#ing calm! The demo is now available to download on our Steam page!

How To Play

We thought about delaying it but we didn't want to make you wait any longer

To our relief, it went really well.

We can't wait for you to play and share your nostalgia + feedback with us!

Wtf is Not Knowing?

We Are In Production

New Maps

Vehicle Pathfinding

Play Tests

Thank You!

Destruction!

NPC Reactions

• Investigation: If an NPC hears a shot nearby, sees someone shooting, or hears an NPC say "enemy spotted", he will go investigate what's up
• Panic: If an NPC dies from a collision nearby, or if he sees an NPC get picked up by the rope, he will panic and run away
• Follow: If an NPC sees the helo but is outside of their shooting range, they will run into range and shoot
• Wandering: An NPC will ocassionally walk around and look at things :)

Persistent Changes

Playtests Coming

Thank You

Barracks Building

Enemy Spawner

Shielded Turret

Make the player go around

Underground Turret

Make the player get close

Artillery / Mortar Enemy

The "oh sh*t" moment

Machine Gun Telegraph Attack

"When The Wave Breaks Here, Don't Be There"

What Do You Think?

Thank You

Defend the Satellite Dishes

Chaos

Experiment: Comeback Mechanic

Playtests

Ragdolls

Fixing Collisions with Many NPCs

Playtest Survey

New 3D Assets

Performance Improvements

NPC Performance

Unity 6 Update

Combat Refinements

• AA Missiles- Neutral
• BFG - Chaser
• BFG - Mild
• Rapid Fire Green - Harasser
• Rapid Fire Red - Patterned Harasser
• AA Gun - Punisher
• AA Gun "Shotgun"- Punisher
• Juggernaut - Huge rope-able rockets (WIP), maybe a cruise missile

Closed Playtests

Announcement Trailer

What this means for you

What this means for Cleared Hot

New Content

Enemy Strafing Runs

New Jungle Biome

Quadcopter Prototype

25 Years In The Making

Air Drops + Supply Crates

New Terrain System

Thank You

The Real Apache AH-64 Gunship

• More powerful (heavier main cannon, more advanced missiles)
• More armor / can take more damage
• Accelerates more slowly
• Longer cannon and missile range
• Flies at a slightly higher altitude (but this can be controlled)

Anything is a seat if you're brave enough

New Missile: AGM-114 Hellfire

Blessed by the Youtube Gods

Join the Email List