It doesn’t really matter why the enemies are there, just that they are. They show up, fire a few bullets to make life difficult, and then drift along their merry way unless taken out first. They don’t like you, you don’t like them, and that’s just fine for everyone. Granted, there’s way more of them than there will ever be of you, but that’s what power-ups are for. An arena shooter doesn’t need any reason beyond “we got guns!”, and while Rising Heat will have a plot (or at least a scenario) the demo that dropped today doesn’t hint at it. There’s a whole lot of enemies to blow through and that’s more than enough.
One Arena, Two Attacks, Dozens Of Enemies
Rising Heat is an arena shooter that almost feels like it could fall into the Survivors genre but requires a bit more active play than that. The enemies come in from all directions around the overhead-view arena, and the object is to survive to defeat the final boss at the end, taking out as many drones as possible to level up to a point that the boss is surviveable. The ship comes with two attacks, in the form of a standard shot and dash that doubles as a powerful ram, and balancing their abilities or specializing in one is the key to making it through.
Rising Heat is an arena shooter that almost feels like it could fall into the Survivors genre but requires a bit more active play than that.
The shot is always good for keeping enemies at bay, although it’s fairly slow firing and needs to reload after only a couple of bullets. All enemies drop experience on defeat, but those that were shot just have it lie there on the ground while ramming an enemy into oblivion rewards an instant pickup. At the start of the run ramming is the clear way to go, but tougher enemies that can resist the dash and cause player damage instead show up as the waves progress.
Horde Survivor-Shooter Rising Heat Fires Up a Reveal Trailer
There’s one of you, lots of them, and Rising Heat’s starting ship will be nothing like the one it’s been upgraded to at the end of a run.
The trick, of course, is in the level-up, with each one giving a selection of three cards to add to the arsenal. Destroying enemies earns charge, and charge is used to buy as many upgrades as you can afford on the level-up screen. Not only that but cards can also be upgraded to increase their strengths or reduce weaknesses, merged together to try for something better, or sold off when a pricey but needed upgrade appears.
There are some hard choices to be made, though, because the charge is never as plentiful as you want and cards frequently have major trade-offs in their abilities. Gaining a stronger dash to ram tougher enemies at the expense of the gun’s clip size or accuracy might be worth it, or maybe not. Or maybe it’s good to pick up for the early part of the run where ramming doesn’t yet have any disadvantages, then sold off later to help to afford a game-changing relic. There’s choices to be made and they can be surprisingly difficult.
The result is an arena shooter that has a ship playing very differently at the end of a run from how it started, with a bit of luck of the draw and a little adaptability to change the game plan when a good opportunity arises. The demo only contains a bit of content, three pilots with their own abilities and three ships with individual perks, but it’s good fun to mix and match to see what’s most effective. Even a weak gun is useful if you find a card that makes a bullet circle it on reload, and it’s even more effective when coupled with a ship that gives a super-bullet bonus to the first shot fired after ramming an enemy. The enemies drift in and get denser as the waves intensify, but a good build can clear it all with a little care and thought, plus a whole lot of shooting.
Rising Heat’s demo isavailable on Steamas of today, as is the launch trailer to celebrate its release.
