Desperados 3

THQ Nordic’s Desperados 3 is a unique game in the fact that it uses its popular Wild West themes to create a compelling stealth experience. As one of five playable characters, Desperados 3 offers a wide variety of weapons and skills to conquer the many different combat scenarios it presents players with. It plays primarily like a tactics game, and you can either take your enemies head-on or employ more creative strategies which usually involve stealth. Another important point worth mentioning is that the game is a prequel to Desperados 2 and as such fans would, of course, have to know the basic plot before jumping into the game.

Suspicious Developments, of Gunpoint fame, has quite the underrated 2017 release in Heat Signature. The game is a year old now, and has received a significant 40 percent discount on Steam until October 4th, along with a large new update.

Titled “The Space Birthday Update”, it adds numerous interesting wrinkles to the core gameplay of infiltrating procedurally generated ships on system-hopping missions. One of the newest features is character traits. Each character chosen at the game’s beginning now has two random traits, which can be positive (bonus recovery time for a weapon) or negative (a life expectancy of 10 minutes). Traits can be re-rolled though, and are essentially a way to augment the difficulty.

The AI has also been significantly upgraded, with guards moving about in pairs, and new Contractors that will provide buffs to any surrounding guards, among other things. There are four different kinds of Contractors, and they’re quite tough to deal with. There’s a lot more to go through, including Glory Missions and clients, new hazards, daily challenges, and much more. Check it all out for yourself here.

SpaceChem

SpaceChem is an intriguing and wickedly clever title that challenges you to create different designs for effectively converting raw materials to chemicals. It sounds straightforward but the actual process is full of potential since you can determine how different outputs are constructed, what the best ways to streamline production can be and everything else in between. It’s fairly complex and not the easiest to dive into for beginners but that moment where everything just clicks together for your own personal “Eureka!” moment is fantastic.

Suspicious Developments, better known as the developer behind Gunpoint, has released a significant new update for its latest game Heat Signature. That’s the “Hotline Miami in space” overhead action puzzler you’ve probably heard about where you “make terrible mistakes, and think of clever ways out of them.”

The latest update is called “The Fair Points” and in it, the developer seeks to address some of the major issues that critics had with the game. For example, are missions with shielded and armoured guards getting you down? The player is now told about each type of guard in a mission and how many there will be. Acid and Crash Traps have also been added which let you deal with armoured and shielded enemies that much easier – Acid Traps destroy armour while Crash Traps disrupt electronic shields.

Another “fair point” is how progression is too slow if you can’t do Hard missions. The developer thus added a Liberator for those who haven’t liberated a station for some period of time. This is a randomly generated character with high level gear and a personal mission for liberating a station. They have all the tools required to get in and get the job done.

The developer also made sure to clarify that there won’t be tons of free updates like this. “This update is a one-off, we don’t plan to do updates like this on a regular basis. We might add items from time to time, but only buy the game if you want the game as it stands – we don’t make promises about future content.”

Heat Signature is currently discounted by 20 percent on Steam. Head on over there to pick it up or acquire all of the developer’s games in a bundle with 20 percent off the price.

Ever wondered what Suspicious Developments, the studio behind Gunpoint, has been up in the last few years? It’s been working on a rogue-like title with space elements and murder called Heat Signature that’s out on September 21st. Check out the trailer below to see it in action.

Heat Signature seems fairly straightforward – you can choose from several randomly generated characters, each with their own unique end mission to battle towards. Your mission is usually to break into a spaceship, complete your mission – which involves stealing something, rescuing someone, capturing or even killing a target – and escape.

The emergent gameplay with various gadgets and randomly generated missions pushes players to think of creative ways to complete the objective while escaping. For instance, you can trigger an explosion to break the glass windows, shoot into space and guide your ship to pick you up. Let’s not forget the “lovely spacey music” the game also boasts.

To learn more about Heat Signature, head over to the official Steam listing for more information.