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 flares early, you're almost guaranteed to not be hit. But beware, if you release them late, the missiles do actually chase the flares, and will still impact near the flares and explode.

Utility Slot

Adding the flares required thinking through what else we could equip in this method. This gave birth to the utility slot.

Each helicopter will have 1 slot that you can equip a variety of devices to. In addition, these devices can be picked up mid-mission by picking up a special utility crate.

There is only room for 1 device, so if you had a device equipped and you pick up a new one, the old one will drop to the ground. This means you have to think about which crates you'll need when, and strategize about when to use them. Here are some ideas that I'm considering:

• Chaff (counter-measure for radar based enemies)

• Smoke grenades (smoke screen that you can hide in and fire through)

• Air Strike (call in a one time air strike on a location that you mark with a laser)

Got ideas for other Utility Slot devices you want? Post them in the comments.

Chapter 2 Teasers

Here are some images from the missions we've been working on lately.

A geothermal power plant, located in a volcanic crater lake.

A data center in a remote crater... ripe for pillaging

In one mission, you attack an enemy training camp. As you fly up, the NPCs scatter and try to get into the vehicles to shoot back at you.

You can kill them as ground troops... or let them reach the vehicles and fight armor instead.

Take out the soldiers before they can get into the vehicles!

NPC Patrols

Our brave NPCs have discovered how to walk... in circles. We can now have boats, ground vehicles, or ground troops patrol around an area. This will add more dynamic sections to the missions.

Price Increase (in ~1 month)

As we mentioned in our release devlog, we will be raising the price of the game through early access.

Current owners are not affected by this change, and get Chapters 2 and 3 for free

As per our early access roadmap, chapters 2 and 3, plus other features are included for anyone who buys the game in early access. So don't worry, if you got in early, you just get everything for a lower price in the end.

The new price will be $17.99 and it will go into effect in about a month. I will post another devlog with a notice a few days before it increases.

We priced the game lower on release so that early players would get the game for a fair price. We are raising the price to reflect the additional content coming in Chapter 2.

This is the last chance to buy the game at it's EA release pricing. I suspect most of you reading this already own the game, so don't worry, you're good to go. Chapters 2 and 3 will just be a free update.

Chapter 2 Release Window

I'm happy to announce that Chapter 2 will be releasing this fall. We will announce more information as we get closer to release.

I know people are ready to get their hands on Chapter 2, we are doing our best to build it quickly. There is a lot of planning, prototyping, art, coding, dialog, story, voice over, and testing work to be done. I'm really happy with where it's at, and I can't wait to get all of your thoughts and feedback.

Helicopter Wishlist - Vote in Discord

After posting this I will kick off a poll in our discord, to see which helicopters people want to see in Cleared Hot.

The CH-53 Pave Low was a last minute call up, thanks to this discord user:

Join the Discord to vote: discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg

Thank You

Y'all have been with me for a long time now! I have been working on this idea in some way shape or form since late 2020 or 2021... and you guys have written some really awesome comments in that time. It feels special to work on a creative project that people care about.

So, thank you! We are getting into a special time now, with Chapter 2 coming up. The game is finding its footing more and more and we are adding some exciting things to the game.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team