Here's some things I like about it.
1. The Random Generation
The space boats are cool, and I think Tom's got some (unintentional) interesting things to say about dungeon-design as such in his blog posts about the development of the ship's generation. Here's a link: https://www.pentadact.com/tag/procedural-generation/
2. The Gadgets
Easily my second favourite part of the game. Here are the three types of teleporter it uses:
Side-winder: You just teleport there, but there must be a clear line to get there (no closed doors for example)
Switcher: You switch places with someone, otherwise, no limits.
Visitor: You just go somewhere, no limits; BUT you go back to where you were when you activated it after two seconds (which in Heat Signature can be a long damn time.
Each has its own uses (though the Side-Winder unfortunately just seems to me to be the most usually useful) and I have great anecdotes about all of them, though they suffer similarly from the DnD anecdote problem where they are far more exciting in the actual playing than in the re-telling. They do roughly involve:
- Having literally 13 seconds to capture my target on the other side of the ship before they teleport off forever. Cue mad teleport dashing with a side-winder and shooting key-card-carrying-guards to get there in the nick of time.
- Having accidentally jettisoned the only guard carrying the key to my objective into space, so using the visitor I picked up to slip inside just long enough to pick it up.
- Killing about a dozen guards who all teleported in on me by switching around them and unloading a couple of shots over and over so they could never quite get a bead on me in a glorious explosion of violence.
And that's leaving out my exploits including:
- Getting a jammer accidentally shot when he opened a door with a sentry gun behind him, which saw me, and fired, killing the Jammer.
- Grabbing my rescue target and deciding to take the window out into space to get picked up by my remote pod (a much better idea in this game than in real life presumably. The next few steps all happen in the same split second, in this order.
1. I fire my gun.
2. A half dozen guards hear the gun shot and teleport right next to me.
3. The bullet breaks the window.
4. All of us are jettisoned into space.
5. The Pod picks up my character and the rescue target before we asphyxiate.
6. We do not pick up the other guards.
Similarly, watching a predator (the most dangerous contractor you can run into) step on a glitch trap, and get teleported off into space never gets old.
Oh, maybe I should say,
3. The Endlessly Entertaining Anecdotes.
4. The Death System
Its good.
If you get knocked out, you're fine and will wake up soon. Unless they throw you into space, in which case you have an 02 bar while you float about in space, during which you can control your pod to pick you up. You only die if it runs out, and its quite generous.
Getting shot (or stabbed) is similar. You fall unconscious, and have 30 seconds before you bleed out. I'm not 100% sure how it works after this, but roughly speaking there are check-points in the bleed-out process which, once you pass, limit the maximum amount of time you can bleed out in the future. If you're quick, you won't bleed out much, and you'll still have plenty of time next time. If you faff about, you'll really struggle later.
I feel like there's some kind of system in there for DnD which is similar to 5e's, but better.
Briefly, back to the game, you can also sometimes end a character's run by being captured by one of the factions, which brings in a delightful element of the game. One of the available replacement characters will be spawned with a personal mission to rescue the character who was captured.
5. It has my favourite Style of Stealth.
This could possibly be a blog post on its own, but in short, there are a few ways missions go down.
1 - You figure out you don't have the kit to actually do the mission, and bug out. (Thankfully rare, and there are also no penalties for aborting missions, which is good.)
2 - The mission goes perfectly, and you execute the mission with slickness and precision. Very satisfying.
3 - You beat your head against the wall over and over, getting repeatedly thrown out the air-lock until eventually, you make it through. Aggravating if it happens too often, but still good.
4 - The Perfect Storm; These are the missions that are really just outside your capabilities as a player and/or character, but not quite, and they are the best. You infiltrate initially, maintaining stealth or concealable violence as long as you can, the tension mounting as you delve deeper into the ship until the barrier bursts, and all hell breaks loose. Guards are running and teleporting in all over the place, you're throwing out gadget charges left and right, using up that subvertor you swore you'd keep for the personal mission, teleporting that visitor you found ages ago in the first crate to you to deal with the guard, shooting your assassination target in the face, and then shooting out a window to throw yourself into space to escape, and then you release the pent up tension in your lungs.
I have a few gripes with the game, like how Guard Armour is an impassable barrier until it isn't, but shields are impassable until you begin to be able to sort of deal with them, but you never then progress to a point like with armour where they aren't a deal at all.
Most of my other issues are that there isn't more of it really.
If it looks like fun in the trailer, there's a tonne more than I've talked about like character traits, the rad progression system, and the neat music and visuals. Check it out.
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