Heat by Wuppos

There is too much damage. It is inevitable that the building will collapse soon. Quickly douse the fires to delay the collapse and get as many people to safety as possible!
Heat is a fast-paced mouse-clicker game, where you have to divide your attention between putting out fires and saving lives. Dousing fires will keep people alive longer, but saving people will give you points. Which will you prioritize?
- A fast-paced mouse-clicker game
- Save people to get points
- Fires will make people die faster
- Will you focus on people or on fires?
- Can you beat the highscore of the developer: 100?
Play the game here: https://wuppos.itch.io/heat
Note: This game was not made for mobile devices, but the WebGL version will work on them. You will have to use only one finger and drag the people around instead of clicking.



| Link | https://wuppos.itch.io/heat |
| Link | https://wuppos.itch.io/heat |
| Link | https://wuppos.itch.io/heat |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/heat |
Ratings
| Overall | 298th | 3.469⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 357th | 3.234⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 375th | 3.141⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 305th | 3.656⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 185th | 3.766⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 312th | 3.242⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
I very much enjoyed the art style. Nice pixel graphics are always a win in my book :thumbsup:
The theme is middle-ground to me. I think it fits the theme well, but I also think its a little bit obvious (people are going to die, don't let them die kind of thing).
I had a lot of fun playing for the first few minutes! The only thing is that after your first couple playthroughs, the gameplay starts to feel a little simplistic at times, I think there needs to be a few things added to make it feel more rich. Putting out fires and dragging humans is only so entertaining for a short while :D
But overall I really like what you got accomplished in the short time we had!
The only thing downside for me was that it could be very hard at times to drag the people to safety because of how small they were.

The graphics are simple but very effective and set the mood nicely.
I also like how you found a good size of the grab region. For sprites that small it could be really frustrating if the area is too small and not challenging if it is too large.
A game like this would really benefit from sound effects, even simple autogenerated ones, e.g. with https://sfbgames.itch.io/chiptone. It's not a lot of work but adds a lot of flavour.
I love how you add a little tutorial in the beginning and also the hold to continue idea is a nice touch.
Overall a cute minimalistic game that was satisfying to try out.
@william-corrin I am happy you liked it :D Also thanks a lot for taking the time to write some serious feedback. These kinds of comments are what I look forward to most in Ludum Dare!
I agree that the theme is maybe a bit too obvious in my game. The idea was to have some kind of disaster that is inevitable, and that you have to delay it to save people. In the end it kind of just became 'delay people from dying', but oh well :P
It makes sense you lose interest after a few runs. I might indeed think of extra stuff to do to keep it interesting.
@rottenthunder997 Thanks a lot for playing! Ah, I hear your feedback. It is not something I had trouble with myself, but maybe for different systems it is harder to pick up people. Thanks for the feedback!
@cerno-b Also you thank you so much for writing some serious feedback. I really appreciate it :D Good to hear that in your case you did not have (too much) trouble picking up people.
I agree completely about the sound effects and I planned to do them, but I simply ran out of time >_< I have never heard of chiptone before, but it looks cool! Thanks a lot for the tip! I usually use bfxr and sfxr myself and never really looked for alternatives.
I am happy you liked my game :D
- Love the art, simple and effective.
- Solid game mechanic which makes good use of the theme.
- Fun difficulty progression, gets hectic quick but has a nice arcadey feel.
Only issue was with selecting the people. Would maybe be good to have them get highlighted or somethin when you mouse over.
Nice work :)
@roblaro Thanks a lot for playing! I am happy you liked it!
@jonah-srg Haha, the original plan was to have the fires do more than just passively kill people, but you know, limited time and all >_< You have a keen eye! The people could indeed walk out of the building themselves if they were so inclined :P It happened during playtesting and I decided that it would not do any harm to keep it in. They cannot walk back in though :)
Thanks a lot for your kind words and I am happy you liked it!
I've had fun playing, the game looks stylish and plays excellent.
@onnofal Thanks a lot for playing and for your nice summary :) I agree that the lack of sound is a real shame. I need to put that on a higher priority next game jam. Good to hear you liked it!
@ani I can understand that spotting people near fires is a problem, that is great feedback. Thanks a lot! I am happy you enjoyed it :)
Love the aesthetic design. It's clean, simple to see what's going on for the most part, and the monochromatic color scheme fits the theme well given its fiery coloration. The only issue I had as far as the graphics went was occasionally losing track of a human's HP bar, but usually I was already in the losing stages of the firefight at that point so I was going to lose soon anyway.
Gameplay is pretty easy to understand. It was definitely noticeable that the fires were killing people a lot faster, especially when multiple fires cropped up around the same time. I found it a bit tricky to get the people out quickly, as something in my head kept just trying to pull straight out rather than through the door, though I got used to it after a bit. I'm also not great at rapidly clicking, but only having to click three times on a flame wasn't too much of an issue. I had a fun time with it once I got the hang of it, even if I never managed too high of a score.
As a heads up, I did have an issue with grabbing the people at first, but it turns out that was more of a personal system issue (Chrome's hardware acceleration was off, which led to a bit of stuttering), but I figured it I should mention it in case anyone else is having similar troubles so that they can enjoy the game to its fullest.
Thanks for the cool game!
The issue with chrome is interesting, thanks for letting me know. That might indeed explain why different people have different experiences with the game. I am using firefox myself, so I never noticed that issue.
I am happy you liked it! I will keep your experiences in mind :)
@jvolonte Thank you for playing! Happy you enjoyed :D
@neithernathan I think you are right. A little bit of a slower climb in difficulty might have been good. I was kind of scared that it might stay too easy for too long and become boring, but it seems I did not need to worry about that so much XD
@daniel-username Happy you liked it!
@riley9 60 is a very respectable score :) Thank you for your feedback and for playing!
@ossi Thank you for playing! Yeah, the balancing between two things was my idea of a small twist to simply dragging people out as fast as possible. I am happy you liked it! For me I usually focus on putting out flames first, before I save people. I am happy you enjoyed it!
My first run I prioritized taking fires out asap. But after reading themes comments and seeing that my score was WAY behind at 34, I figured I should try to do people first. That didn't work either! Turns out I was just bad. Trying harder I finally am happy with 75. You getting 100 is insane though...
The decision-making was light but effective since this game is all about hecticness. So you had to make quick decisions on the fire vs person choice, identify which person might be nearly dead, but also the chance to click something correctly. I would favor packs of people because if I misclicked, I might pick up some random guy while I'm at it.
I really enjoyed this game. It also highlighted to me how few games there are that sorta play with this concept. Usually they are time management games like Diner Dash, but Heat is all controlled by your mouse so it more directly tests the player's clicking abilities. Great stuff and I wouldn't mind seeing future versions!
It becomes quite hard very fast. I would have loved some kind of powerups
@glaikunt I agree a scoreboard would be cool, but I never made anything like that before. I feel like I could have wasted a lot of time on that if I tried, haha
@peachtreeoath 75 is a really good score! I honestly did make it to a hundred, but was very lucky with the waves I think, haha. I am happy you found it unique! I never thought of it as really unique myself :) Thank you very much for your in-depth review! I really appreciate that :D And of course thanks for playing!
@sleepystudios I always make sure to put at least a bit of time into the tutorial. I think a game should be playable just by itself, without any introduction beforehand, so then a tutorial becomes kind of necessary. Thank you for playing and I am happy you enjoyed it! :D
@tanis Powerups would indeed be nice to keep the game interesting for a bit longer! I am not sure if I feel like putting more energy into this game, but if I do I will definitely keep it in mind! Thanks a lot for playing!
It's easy at first but then it become hard to catch those little guys in the middle of fire :sweat_smile:
Solid entry and a well polished game, good job!