Heatwave Review

WARNING: DO NOT PLAY IF YOU HAVE PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY.

Heatwave is an indie Point and Click adventure by the Developer Scavenger, a company driven to make classic style games set in futuristic worlds with heavy influences into the virtual realm. Gaining a small fan base with their first release “Death Wore Endless Feathers”, which gained around 8000 downloads, this company continues with its consistent style of Humans and Anthropomorphic beings, ranging from behemoths to Rats, living together in one big world.

Story

The story starts off in the virtual realm as our main protagonist, Dai Araiguma, failing at one of the raids in the game ALOIM and arguing with his “teammate”. The argument gets heated and just before they begin to fight each other the power cuts out and Dai is kicked back into the real world. Dai is told by his Muse, an AI like being that can be likened to a floating PDA in use and personality, that a Heatwave has struck the city and burnt out the power in the nearby area.

The first objective of the game is too keep cool, but slowly builds to a helping a man with his ice cream van. Though the story is rather short the story feels rather unique and enjoyable for the ride it takes you on, bringing a new feel to the point and click adventure games that older gamers know and love.

Gameplay

The gameplay is like what you would normally find in any point and click adventure, you use the mouse for every aspect of the game, from left clicking to move and interact with objects and right clicking to put away or cancel what you were doing.

Heatwave sticks to puzzles for its gameplay, not adding too much else to the mix, but the puzzles themselves are fun and well thought out, if a bit easy at times. Against the stylised world, the manipulative objects could be improved a bit as they seem to blend in a bit too well with the background, making it hard to see what you can touch and what you can pick up.

Overall Thoughts and Feelings

The soundtrack to Heatwave is very pleasing, with soft tones in the investigative parts of the game, soothing music for parts of moral revelation as well as action music for the cutscenes in the virtual world. With Scavenger being an indie company the music is of a surprisingly professional quality which is rather good to see, against some developers who seem to leave music till last without much thought.

Overall I would give Heatwave a 4/5, it is a very unique take on the point and click genre and really brings a professional feel to the table. I would suggest this game to any fan of the genre, you can’t go wrong with giving this game a download, I mean it’s free, isn’t that cool enough?… I suck at puns.

Game Download: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1737/

Blog: http://khato.furrified.com/blog/

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.

Aidan Bates

Computer Games Design Graduate from Staffordshire University with Animation and Motion Capture as my main subject. I am a neutralist both in world views and people, everyone and everything is equal. If sexism comes up in a game I will weigh it based on the themes at play and the story implications it has. Not afraid to give harsh criticism. Graphics and technology don't make the game, it's the gameplay that makes the game. Favourite Genres: RPG, Adventure, Action. Favourite Games: Joint 1. Final Fantasy VII (PS1) Joint 1. Jade Cocoon (PS1) 3. Persona 3 (PS2) 4. Tales Of Vesperia (X360) 5. Dragons Dogma (X360)