Heat Guardian Demo

Humans are not very good at dealing with the elements, which is why we have to use clothes and shelters to keep ourselves either warm or cool. Granted, most of the planet is temperate enough for this not to be a huge problem, because if temperatures dropped two hundred degrees at night our evolution would have been a lot more interesting to watch throughout the ages.

Heat Guardian is a top-down survival game in which you have to explore a frozen world and deal with all sorts of nasty creatures that make your life even harder. The action takes place in a classic Soviet environment, which means that it should be able to create a neat atmosphere if you are familiar with the communist vibe and everything that the regime in question entails.

Unfortunately, the writing is poor to say the least, because you have no idea what you should be doing, who the main character is and why is everything frozen around you. On top of that, the English translation is horrible, because there are entire lines that do not make any sense. This hurts the overall experience and makes it difficult to immerse yourself in the experience.

You receive missions along the way that ask you to travel to a certain location and deal with certain issues. Traveling is quite dangerous, on the other hand, especially since you must be near a source of heat at all times to avoid death. Thus, every walk must be kept as short and as quick as possible, because you immediately die if you happen to get lost and cannot find a campfire or a building to take shelter in.

The graphics are pretty impressive, on the other hand, especially for a top-down game using a pretty low-key engine. Hence, there are all sorts of nice post-processing effects, as well an overall haze that makes the cold feel almost palpable. On the other hand, the level design is too boring and simple, which kind of ruins the whole atmosphere.

When it’s all said and done, Heat Guardian is not a bad concept, but the execution leaves to be desired in many regards. Thus, the game needs better writing, a good story and optimized gameplay mechanics in order to keep the players engaged for longer than a few minutes.