Cleared Hot News

Cleared Hot is a truly fun helicopter combat game made in the spirit of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - with a big update due this month.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/03/excellent-helicopter-combat-game-cleared-hot-is-getting-a-native-steam-deck-build/

[p]Hello Fearless Pilots, I have a rare thing to present to you: an update release date: Chapter1B Drops on March 17th! [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]If you prefer to digest you devlogs in video format, check out the below! [/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Let me know what else you would like to see in these, I'm curious to try this new format. I'm new to YouTube but I want to share our dev progress- leave a comment, a like or subscribe if you want to help out. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Performance Improvements[/h2][p]This was our main focus of the last few months. [/p]

• [p]Steam Deck fps increased 30%, and hits 90 fps in low action areas. [/p]
• [p]Stuttering is greatly improved. The ones that remain are from spawning units and we will improve this over time. [/p]
• [p]More settings are exposed now. You can set anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and render scale. This let's you get the performance / quality experience you want. [/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p]This includes adding the new water system! So the game should look better and run faster. The team really cooked on this one. [/p][p][/p][p]These updates have allowed us to render some more dense jungle scenes without sacrificing performance, and we are set up really well for the jungle campaign now. [/p][p][/p][p]Here's a summary of all the improvements that were made[/p]

• [p]Native Steam Deck build - unlocked the 90 fps potential[/p]
• [p]Optimized Destruction System[/p]
• [p]Updated Unit Navigation - uses ECS for faster calculations, avoided some recalculations.[/p]
• [p]Bullet decals are being pooled[/p]
• [p]Unity 6.3 Update[/p]
• [p]Major vegetation stutters fixed (we pre-load them) [/p]
• [p]Major improvement from enabling depth priming, removing SMAA[/p]
• [p]More anti-aliasing options offered (FXAA, SMAA, TAA, None) [/p]
• [p]Ambient Occlusion is a setting that can be disabled for more performance[/p]
• [p]Exposed a render scale setting[/p]
• [p]Improved Unit system- more efficient update loop, and LOD priority system[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Arcade Missions[/h2][p]We've added a new section in the home base for arcade missions. Our goal for this was to add replayable content and have a place for experimental missions. [/p][p][/p][p]I want this section to be a place where we can experiment with missions that wouldn't fit in the campaign. It should allow us to create more content and to try out more community ideas in a flexible way. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We've only added a handful of missions so far, but this section will evolve a lot. Most of our focus needs to be on Chapter 2, but having this section allows us to add little bits of content over time as we go. This way you're not waiting forever without having something new to play. [/p][p][/p][p]AND, now I can make the super duper hard challenge missions that I couldn't put in the main campaign :) [/p][p][/p][p]Here's our current list of Arcade missions. These may change before launch. [/p]

• [p]Survival Mode[/p]
• [p]Mini Golf (with missiles...)[/p]
• [p]Skee Ball[/p]
• [p]Skeet Shooting[/p]
• [p]Roping Missile Challenge[/p]
• [p]Radar Turret Challenge[/p]

[p]These missions are all pretty short and light, but this is just the start- we want you to help us expand this section over time. [/p][p][/p][h2]Redirecting Missiles w the Rope[/h2][p]Ok so I know this isn't a top priority, but I've been waiting months to work on this again. Basically, this was possible before but not super rewarding because it didnt't work w all the missiles and when it did work, they didnt do much damage. [/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]Now the missile's can be more reliably redirected back to the turret (or npc...) that fired them, and they will do 3x the normal damage if you pull it off. [/p][p][/p][h2]New Water System [/h2][p]The new water system has been added to all the chapter 1 missions in the game! [/p][p][/p][p]Recently we built a system that detects when any object is entering the water and creates a splash effect. Throwing props into the water is decidedly more fun now. [/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p]This prevents us from having to do custom work for the 384593 props in the game. [/p][p][/p][h2]Roadmap[/h2][p]Edit- I forgot to mention that there are 2 parts of Chapter1B on the roadmap that we have postponed until later: The helicopter customization and a new playable helicopter. [/p][p][/p][p]We did this in the interest of getting this update out quickly while starting production on Chapter 2. Our main priority is getting you the main campaign content as fast as we can. [/p][p][/p][p]We will release these features as a later date, in parallel with our work on Chapter 2. I am hoping this works better to keep the updates coming more frequently. [/p][p][/p][p]We've been working on the first mission of Chapter 2 as a way to experiment with our new process and see how the water missions work. [/p][p][/p][p]A new hazard has entered the chat[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for following along! Mark your calendars for March 17th, and come hop in the discord to celebrate the launch with us: https://discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg[/p][p][/p][p]- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team[/p][p][/p]

[p]Hello Pilots! Join me on this Saturday morning as I share what we've been up to since the holidays! New Jungle preview, new water, boats, and performance updates. Let's go... [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Our revised jungle theme is coming together.[/p][p][/p][p]We've been doing a ton of work finding the right style for the jungle that won't melt your GPU. We're not quite done optimizing but we're getting closer. The overall vibe is coming together and I'm pretty excited about it. [/p][p][/p][p]The jungle will play differently than Texas, and we're exploring how those elements play into mission types. Expect to be ambushed by units hiding in the trees, fend off naval attacks, and escort your allies through dangerous extraction missions. [/p][p][/p][p]For those of you that have been following the game for a while, you know that we started with a more low-poly style. As that evolved into our current style, the water got left behind in low-poly mode. [/p][p][/p][p]Thankfully Texas doesn't have a ton of water :D But now that we're headed to the jungle, it was time to make the water feel like... water.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I explored several different approaches, including some package systems, some basic shaders, and doing something with Unity's shader graph. [/p][p][/p][p]I ended up picking this shader that is pretty lightweight - it is meant to even run on mobile devices, so performance is quite good. We get some better looking water, and it actually moves. It should add a lot to the missions we can do in the jungle. [/p][p][/p][p]This was incredibly fun to work on- I love the physics stuff. I tried several different implementations of the physics behavior and ended up with one that feels pretty satisfying to me. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I tried a couple different calculations for the buoyancy. A few considerations were: [/p]

• [p]Has to run fast- performance over realism[/p]
• [p]Simple to implement and tune for different types of vehicles (or NPCs!)[/p]
• [p]Has to match the actual wave action of the water [/p]

[p]
I ended up picking a solution where each object has various float points that get force added to them depending on how much they are submerged, with some damping. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Left: Linear calculation without damping, Right: square root based depth calculation, with damping [/p][p][/p][p]The buoyancy system is using Unity Jobs to run the calculations in parallel. So we should see a nice benefit from being able to actually do something with your multiple CPU cores. [/p][p][/p][h2]Boat Driving[/h2][p]The boats can now drive as well! The physics model here is pretty simple- tuned for action and a bit of chaos.[/p][p][/p][p]This is just a start- we have a bunch of water units we'll be implementing for Chapter 2. [/p][p] [/p][p]Yes, the NPCs are just fine with a bit of underwater time. [/p][p][/p][p]We spent a good chunk of January exploring how to improve performance in the game. [/p][p][/p][h3]Steam Deck [/h3][p]We found a big improvement by making some small changes and building for Linux. This should improve everyone's Steam Deck performance and allow us to render more trees in the jungle. This will release with Chapter 1B.[/p][p][/p][h3]Unit System[/h3][p]We made a handful of small improvements to how units work in the game. [/p]

• [p]Previously all the units (NPCs, vehicles, etc) were using the same Unity driven FixedUpdate call. We updated that to use our own update call, which is a bit better. [/p]
• [p]We now assign a priority to units based on their proximity to the player, and update further units less often.[/p]
• [p]We ignore allies when searching for targets. [/p]

[h3]Destruction System[/h3][p]We found a small gain here by delaying some physics calculations to when a piece is falling off- not when something first breaks. This just reduces the amount of physics rigidbodies being calculated. [/p][p][/p][p]Also if you haven't played w the slider for Active Debris Limit- this will improve your CPU performance in destruction heavy scenes. It was part of a previous update but important to mention.[/p][p] [/p][h3]A* Navigation [/h3][p]We've updated the system that the NPCs and vehicles use for pathfinding, and switched to a system that uses Unity's ECS system for greater parallelization. We also added optimizations on navmesh calculation for static objects. [/p][p][/p][h3]Pooling[/h3][p]Decals for bullet holes were not being pooled previously. This should be a small improvement to every mission.[/p][p][/p][h3]Unity 6.3 Update[/h3][p]We've updated to Unity 6.3, which is their latest long term support version. We didn't notice any major improvements from this but it allows us to update a bunch of other packages which should help.[/p][p][/p][h3]Shadow Map[/h3][p]We found a couple small ways to reduce the amount of extra shadows being rendered, that were outside the game view. We still have some work to do here, but we reached the level of what's helpful without rebuilding major Unity render features. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p]

• [p]What type of water-going enemies?[/p]
• [p]What missions come to mind when you think jungle?[/p]
• [p]Other childhood game memories you want to relive :D [/p]

[p][/p][p]Thanks for following along- We're so thrilled to get the opportunity to make this game. All thanks to you. [/p][p][/p][p]- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team [/p]

[p][/p][p]Pilots! We are happy to announce that Chapter1a has been released. We fit in as much as we could before the holidays, we hope you enjoy it![/p][p][/p][p]The new helicopter, the RAH-66 Comanche is in the game! It is extremely agile but takes damage quickly. Give it a play and let us know what you think.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We took your feedback on wanting some more things to test, and made the test flight area into a sandbox. There are now buttons / switches you can interact with to spawn enemies, [/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]How To Access Test Flight[/h2][p]To enter the test flight mode, go into the hangar and then click "TEST FLIGHT" on the right side panel. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Survival Mode[/h2][p]This area has a handful of small mini-game modes that we are exploring. In survival mode you defend a building from waves of enemies, with health and ammo dropped in between waves. You get a cash reward for reaching the half way point and for completing the stage. [/p][p][/p][h2]Defense Simulation[/h2][p]This just sends waves of enemies straight at a target. The enemies don't progress and there is no ending.[/p][p][/p][h2]Standoff Range[/h2][p]Spawns both friendly and enemy NPCs and sends them into a battle. [/p][p][/p][h2]Other Areas[/h2][p]There are a lot of other areas for you to play with.[/p]

• [p]Demolition Playground[/p]
• [p]Physics Playground[/p]
• [p]Standoff Range[/p]
• [p]Shooting Range[/p]
• [p]Vehicle Range[/p]
• [p]Turret Range[/p]
• [p]Radar Turret Range[/p]

[p][/p][p]We are hoping this area can be a place to experiment! We'd love your feedback on all this- what do you want to see more of? [/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Screen Shake[/h3][p]You can now adjust how much screen shake is applied (in game options)[/p][p][/p][h3]No Blood / Gore / BBQ Meat[/h3][p]You can now disable blood and gore. The NPCs will no longer explode into various cuts of meat after being killed by rotors or certain weapons. [/p][p][/p][h3]Active Debris Limit[/h3][p]Added a slider for the maximum number of physics debris pieces that can be active at a time. Lowering this will help performance in certain CPU bound situations, or really destruction heavy levels. [/p][p][/p][h3]UI FPS Limit[/h3][p]We've added an option to limit your FPS while in the game UI, to prevent melting any graphics cards unnecesarily :)[/p][p][/p][p]We also added cloud save. So you can keep synced between your various devices. Keep in mind that with the current implementation, the game syncs on quit. So if you want to swap devices, quit out of your current session before switching. [/p][p][/p][p]Cleared Hot is now Steam Deck verified, woohoo! This update came through last week but we didn't announce it publicly. [/p][p][/p]

• [p]Improved: Boss music logic so it fits better with the different phases[/p]
• [p]Improved: Sfx on collision performance for props[/p]
• [p]Imprived: Collision damage performance for destructible props[/p]
• [p]Fixed: camera starting sometimes in strange positions[/p]
• [p]Fixed: bug where you could change to different UIs in the homebase when selecting helo ending up with a broken ui[/p]
• [p]Fixed: updated a few props to use the proper collider[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Configured the rope pickup in some props so they work better when they spawn rotated[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Mouse was hidden when using "Quit to menu" option while in a mission[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Warehouse destruction model fixed so the broken parts don't kill units inside[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Hind passenger stat now match the actual number of passengers supported ingame [/p]

[p][/p][p]This last month has been a bit of a blur. Thanks to everyone who supported us on our launch. [/p][p][/p][p]We really wanted to get you this update before the holidays, to keep the momentum and show we're committed to our early access schedule. I'm really happy that we're able to send a small amount of new content for you to play over the holiday break. [/p][p][/p][p]I think we are all ready to take a break to relax and be with family now :D So happy holidays! Come celebrate with us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XmMTqEjpQg[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks everyone![/p][p][/p][p]-Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team [/p]

[p]Hi Everyone, I just wanted to say thank you again and give a recap of our first 2 weeks since launching Cleared Hot. I mean it when I say: the launch went better than any of us even dreamed of. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all for the reviews.[/p][p][/p][p]It was really a wild ride after we clicked the big green "RELEASE MY GAME" button. All of our long time fans hit Steam right away on launch, which catapulted is into the good graces of the Steam algorithm. [/p][p][/p][p]This traffic coincided with the Steam Black Friday sale. To our surprise we ended up in the top 5 of the New and Trending list for the sale. This really amplified the traffic. [/p][p][/p]

• [p]Steam Impressions: 18,720,000[/p]
• [p]Steam Page Visits: 993,641[/p]
• [p]Wishlists Outstanding: 237,111[/p]
• [p]Wishlists Added in 2 weeks: 121,170[/p]
• [p]Reviews: 2,062 at 97% positive[/p]

[p][/p][p]We've pushed 3 updates to the game since launch. We might make another 1 really small hotfix, but otherwise we are now focusing on our next update: Chapter 1a. [/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][p]We looked through all of your reviews, steam community posts, and in-game survey responses to help us prioritize next steps. [/p][p][/p][h3]What You Liked [/h3]

• [p]Nostalgia[/p]
• [p]Fun Gameplay / Combat Loop[/p]
• [p]Good Controls (KB/M & Controller)[/p]
• [p]Great Music & Sound Design[/p]
• [p]Physics & Rope Mechanic[/p]
• [p]Voice Acting Quality[/p]
• [p]Helicopter Variety[/p]
• [p]Good Value[/p]
• [p]Steam Deck Compatible[/p]

[p][/p][h3]What You Want Us To Improve[/h3]

• [p]More Content / Replayable Content[/p]
• [p]UI/UX Confusion & Clarity[/p]
• [p]Camera & Visibility Issues[/p]
• [p]Performance Issues (Mission 10, Jets)[/p]
• [p]Physics/Pickup Finicky[/p]
• [p]Weapons Balance [/p]
• [p]Difficulty Spikes & Balance[/p]
• [p]Controls Learning Curve[/p]
• [p]Helicopter Balance[/p]
• [p]NPCs Damaged On Exit Helo[/p]
• [p]More Options: Graphics + Other[/p]
• [p]No Cloud Saves[/p]
• [p]More Depth[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Feature Requests[/h3][p]Things you requested that we are considering / working on: [/p]

• [p]More Missions & Content (Ch 2-3)[/p]
• [p]Rebindable Controls (WASD/Arrows)[/p]
• [p]More Weapon Variety & Personality[/p]
• [p]Helicopter-Relative Controls Option (it's in the game, need to make it more clear)[/p]
• [p]More Difficulty Options / Presets[/p]
• [p]More Helicopters (Ka-50, Comanche)[/p]
• [p]Replayable Content[/p]

[p]We don't have a fixed plan or schedule for these two things, but we are interested in doing them:[/p]

• [p]Mod Support / Workshop[/p]
• [p]Endless / Skirmish Mode[/p]

[p]Also a good amount of you asked about co-op, and we don't really have a plan for this. Maybe maybe maaaaybe we will explore it later but it we really have to think it through and it's a major thing. [/p][p]
These are only the top level categories, so if you don't see your exact request, keep in mind it is probably included into one of the more general topics. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Our goal is to deliver this update before the holidays. This depends on how it goes but this is our goal. [/p][p][/p][p]Chapter1a includes[/p]

• [p]Critical bug fixes and stability improvements (we've fixed some of these already)[/p]
• [p]Expanded test flight area (more stuff to shoot, more on this soon)[/p]
• [p]Comanche helo added (in-progress)[/p]
• [p]Early balance adjustments (helo and weapons) [/p]

[p] We've already kicked off work on this. Look for more info here in a couple weeks. [/p][p][/p][p] Using the same discord screenshot from the demo since we all have gray hair now. Jk, just me :D[/p][p][/p][p]Just want to give the team a shout out. I'm the guy who posts here, but behind me is a truly incredible team of diverse talents. I feel super lucky to get to work with everyone on a daily basis. [/p][p][/p][p]Not pictured: our wonderful music composer, Catbaux, and our amazing publishing team at Microprose. Catbaux composed entirely new music for the release, and helped us integrate it into the missions through the chaos. Microprose helped us a ton through development, and then spread the word going into launch.[/p][p][/p][p]Everyone came together under a really tight timeline to ship the game. So, a personal thank you to the team.[/p][p][/p][p]For those of you who want to play our updates early and help us test, we will start sharing a steam beta password on Steam. [/p][p][/p][h3]Join our email list to get access to these early updates: https://www.clearedhotgame.com/email-list[/h3][p][/p][p]This branch will be somewhere between our playtester build and our final release. It does not replace our small group of playtesters, but allows us to get a bit more user testing before we call the updates done. [/p][p][/p][p]I couldn't be happier with how things have gone, really. Five years ago I was wondering if I could start a new career in game dev, with no idea, and no experience. Every year I would tell friends: "the game will definitely be out next year", only to repeat that the following year. [/p][p][/p][p]Because of you I don't have to get a real job :D That was really my highest goal. All of the comments from people are really motivating. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all for going on this journey with us! There's a lot more to come. [/p][p][/p][p]-Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team [/p][p][/p]