If you have problems with any patch, please fill our our Bug Report Form to let us know what went wrong!
Space Winter is back, there's a patch, and a sale!
Each winter, until the 31st of Space December, the Voidmother encroaches on this dark corner of the galaxy, and we all stay close to home and swap random objects with our Steam friends via industrial gift chutes. We also have a new patch that'll help more folks get into the Daily Challenge, and experienced Challengers have a smoother time. And we're half-price!
On Sundays, the daily challenge is easier. Normal daily challenges are Hard > Hard > Mistake. Easy Sundays are Medium > Hard > Hard. Perfect performances still get a time bonus, so for more experienced drifters this will be a test of your speedrunning skills.
Rethinking Technophobe
The Technophobe trait used to give gadgets a chance of breaking each time you used them. It's one of the harshest traits, and randomness played a big part in it, which wasn't great for Daily Challenges where you're all supposed to be on equal footing. So now, Technophobes never break gadgets - but they also can't recharge or self-charge them. However many uses they have, that's all you'll ever get. If you pass the item on as an heirloom or gift, it'll work fine for non-Technophobes.
Rarest Items Less Rare
Unique items are now more common in crates: was 1%, now 2%.
Exceptional items are also more common in crates: was 2%, now 4%.
Added a line to the Living Legends screen that reports how many unique items are owned by your active characters, and how many are still available to find.
Catch Everyone You Care About
Any time you have a mission- or vow-related reason to need guards alive, you can now catch them in your pod just like your target. We've also fixed some cases where guards (and you!) could get sucked into space by a window breach at a time that didn't make sense, so the situation should come up less!
Space Winter details
Drift Gifts! For the duration of Space Winter (21st to 31st of Space December), you can use the objective delivery chute and choose one item (per day) to give to your Steam friends.
Equally, you may see a 'Gift!' annotation on your stash. Look for an item with pink text: it's a gift from a friend. If you don't have any friends, or your friends are allergic to space or fun, you'll still get a random present from the citizens of the Drift once a day.
Stay Home! Space Winter is a season for friendship, giving, and staying home so the Voidmother can't take your mind. In Space Winter, those who stray too far into the cold... they come back, but they come back wrong. Spending some time at the bar may help.
The Voidmother isn't real, of course, she's just a ridiculous story made up by people whose minds were taken by the Voidmother.
Sorry About The Colours! Against vital safety protocols, independent stations have chosen to modify their long range beacon lights to emulate 'festive', or 'ugly' colours. Thousands will die in collisions caused by the reduced visibility.
Other Patch Notes
Sentry guns are now crashed by opposing Jammer Devices.
Added Replacement Pod to Daily Challenge shop.
Fixed a bug that may have made the Valentines weapons rarer than intended.
Fixed forcefields continuing to suck when player re-boards a ship.
Fixed occasional mission failure when destroying path to teleporter on 'Target Flees' missions.
Fixed crashed guards sounding alarm when they recruit other guards to investigate.
Fixed unable to select melee weapons as favourite items for Weak characters.
Selecting a new character while guards are asphyxiating in space no longer counts kills against new character.
New Patch: 2018.11.5.1
We've uploaded a new patch, here's what's changed:
2018.11.5.1
Melee impact noise causes guards to look, but doesn't automatically make them sound the alarm. (They'll still sound the alarm when they see you.)
Reduced radius of Concussion Hammer's melee impact noise.
Fixed pods sometimes leaving behind contents when undocking from ships.
If you have problems with any patch, please fill our our Bug Report Form to let us know what went wrong!
Space Halloween Returns, Death Is Canceled
Once again for the duration of Space Halloween - 28th of Space October to the 1st of Space November - life and death in the Drift will be a little different:
Removed: Death
Due to science, you cannot die during Space Halloween. Bleeding out, suffocating, or being incinerated in an exploding pod will permanently turn you into a living skeleton. Once Halloween is over, you’ll remain a skeleton but any lethal damage will finish you off. On the plus side, skeletons are undetectable by guard’s heat sensors, and can spacewalk indefinitely since they no longer need to breathe.
Characters with the Dying trait will be rid of it if their time to live expires during Space Halloween. They will be a very fragile skeleton forever though, so swings and roundabouts.
Actual Ghost Missions
When taking a mission with the Ghost Clause, you are now an actual ghost. As with real-life ghosts, you can still be seen but all attacks pass through you. You’ll return to normal once the mission is over.
Actual Skeleton Crew
Ships running a Skeleton Crew are now literally running a crew of skeletons. The skeletons are functionally the same as normal guards except that they can no longer feel hope.
Does That Mean I Could Potentially Become A Skeleton Ghost?
That’s a ridiculous question. Of course you can become a skeleton ghost.
New Patch: 2018.10.17.1
We've uploaded a new patch, here's what's changed:
2018.10.17.1 <*> Support longer names in leaderboards.
<*> Improved text/messaging in Glory Leaderboard.
2018.10.16.1
Fixed Detonate Remote Grenades not selectable with gamepad.
Fixed Shaky warning not appearing on Grenade Launchers.
Added Glory Adjustment to Traits panel.
Added View Scaling to Options > Technical Options. This can help if text is too small or too large for your screen.
2018.10.15.1
Break ties in Daily Leaderboard with Missions Completed and Time Spent.
Added Glitch-Proof Hull to 3rd Daily Challenge Mission.
Added Mission details to Glory Leaderboard.
Gloria client tries to generate a mission awarding higher Glory than your character's current best.
Reduced likelihood of random ships breaking Vows or Special Clauses.
Fixed a bug making Warzone, Time Limits and Hijacks much rarer than previously.
Fixed a bug where Reinforcement alarm responses would not increase the mission's pay in the intended way.
Fixed a bug causing some Glory missions to reward a ridiculous number of Liberations.
Fixed a bug where Liberate missions didn't kill crew when crashing into Station.
Fixed a bug where A Good Day didn't unlock while re-playing the Daily Challenge.
Added a new beta branch to let you play without the Space Birthday Update if you like: choose the 'prebirthday' branch in Steam.
If you have problems with any patch, please fill our our Bug Report Form to let us know what went wrong!
An update on The Space Birthday Update
We've been patching a lot since the Space Birthday Update went live and we didn't want to spam you with announcements, so I'm writing this one to round up the changelist and highlight some things:
The update is optional
We heard from a few people who wanted to still be able to play without the update changes, so we've set up a permanent branch of the game without them. If that's you, right click Heat Signature, go to Properties > Betas and choose the 'prebirthday' beta. It's not actually a beta, it's the build of the game that was live for six months without needing a patch, so it's pretty solid!
One thing to be aware of is that if you change your mind and come back to the update, the characters you bring with you won't see their Glory scores on the public Glory leaderboards. The way we check if a character is legit has changed, so time-travelling characters look suspect and we leave them off public leaderboards. You can still play as them just fine.
An easier option, if you sometimes wanna dip into missions as they used to be, is the Old Timer. They're one of the Clients the Space Birthday Update added: at their station, the missions don't feature any of the new variables like Contractors, Autopilot, etc. It was a simpler time.
If you're having any control trouble
Launching in Compatibility Mode now lets you disable gamepad support and/or reset your control settings, which helps in some rare cases where things have gone awry.
Gameplay tweaks
Extreme Rapid Fire guns now fire on trigger release like other guns, instead of auto-firing as soon as you press. Auto-firing is how it's worked since launch, but watching folks play a certain Daily made it clear almost no-one expects this behaviour - and it leads to some awkward moments if you don't.
When both the player and a capture or rescue target are floating in space, your pod's brake will now match to whichever is nearest rather than always matching to the player.
Technophobe trait no longer affects Grenade Launchers.
If you start the Daily Challenge but don't get as far as leaving the station, it doesn't count as played.
Grenade Launcher pricing tweaked, self-chargers were wildly over-priced.
Fixes
Enabling gamepads no longer requires restarting game.
Fixed messages about sending items to stash.
Fixed some shotguns using pistol sprites.
Fixed Daily Challenger sometimes marked completed after exiting game.
Fixed incorrect submitted score appearing during Daily Challenger re-play.
Fix for Daily Challenge Shop not always changing each day.
Daily Challenge now correctly deducts 10pts per kill on No-Harm days.
Noise radius indicator for guns is more accurate.
Any inventory items in your pod are stashed when docking with an Inventory Lock ship.
Fix crash when Daily Challengers use Practice mode.
Added option to disable gamepads.
Thanks!
It's been so wonderful to hear from so many folks who are loving the update, and especially to see so many of you joining us in the Daily Challenge: making new kinds of terrible mistakes and thinking of new kinds of clever ways out of them. Thank you!
The Space Birthday Update is out! Daily Challenge, Character Traits, 4 unique enemies, 20 features!
Heat Signature is one Space Year old today! To celebrate, we've released a big free update we've been working on for five months, with over 20 features - including our own twist on a Daily Challenge.
The game is also 40% off this week, for the first time! The Daily Challenge and the new Glory leaderboards are best if you have some friends who play, so it's a good time to unfairly pressure everyone you know to buy it - or passive aggressively gift it to them.
This update is a one-off, we don't plan to do updates like this on a regular basis. You should only buy the game if you want it in its current state - we don't make promises about future content.
This update was made by
Tom Francis: design/code
John Winder: code
John Roberts: art
Dedicated to John Francis
We started this update in April this year, and my dad passed away in May. He was an electrical engineer, a software engineer and an inventor. He got me into computers at an early age, inspired me to be ambitious with his infinite faith in me, and protected me from the fear of failure by making me feel I could never disappoint him. I hope everyone reading this knows they deserve that kind of boost in life, whether you've been lucky enough to receive it or not.
Dad was extremely excited when my games took off, making his own graphs and projections from the sales figures I sent him. All of you who bought Heat Signature or Gunpoint made him so happy and proud. I hope this update can say thank you for that.
