HeatStroke

It's a "game" that ensnares you with the promise of being a challenge and a very difficult one at that. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely is exactly that, but it's less of a game and more of a book that forces you to read through it in one sitting. Eventually you become so lost in the story that you don't realize it's 4 AM while you read through the text, hands typing away at every letter you process. Kind of like a grandma knitting like reading, but your ass hurts from sitting so long and you've been typing with terrible posture for 3 hours. You even occasionally flip upwards to steer as if turning pages in a book. Total time: just under 4 hours. Would probably do it again if i could type faster. Can recommend 100% if you're up for the challenge. Edit: also while I was going through this i was like 15% of the way through it and my friend booted this s##t up and caught up to me in like 10 minutes screw you Alice stop flexing on me with your typing speed

a grueling, terrifying gauntlet of a game that makes you feel as beat-down and hopeless as the characters in the story it tells . well done talia , never make a game like this again

this game goes against all conventions, but that's far from saying i disliked this. for once in my life, i've read a book.

Good but brutal on the hands (3h at 100wpm with only 7 minutes' breaktime; you get 16 minutes total) so play it when you're ready for a marathon and with a litre of water next to you. Short story is fascinating & memorable & having to type it out makes me remember it even better. Tip for the driving: [spoiler]the wheel autorotates so if you simply click it bottom left it'll automatically drive you to the left as the wheel spins back before you start drifting right again. Saves you a lot of driving time as you can just write instead and occasionally click the wheel.[/spoiler]

Interesting take on the Desert Bus variety of game. Not as grueling as you would expect what with the shorter completion time (I took about 3hrs45mins) and the typing game keeping you awake but I still think it was a worthy successor. Story was interesting too but I don't want to spoil that so I'll just say it gets unhinged really quickly after a point. Bring some friends along so you have people to discuss it with! Oh and don't make the same mistake I did and drive on the oncoming lane too much. Lost to that stunt about 40 minutes in

Game randomly stole all of my pause time and i crashed in [spoiler] part 11 [/spoiler] after 4 1/2 hours. 10/10 excited to do it all again

As a psychology/philosophy major and an aspiring writer, this is one of my favorite game/experiences/books/whatever you wanna call it ever. Briefly and without spoiling anything important, this book features a bioengineer who gets recruited to help preserve the richest man in the world's brain after getting brain cancer. It very quickly becomes so much more than that. I'm personally a fan of fantasy because science fiction turns me off, one of the biggest contributors to that being sci-fi BS jargon that writers expect people to just believe but the author doesn't try to shove neuroscience that not even neuroscientists understand in your face. The stuff it does go over is limited but either believable or correct Very well written. Perfectly paced. At times, I thought that it was going a little too fast and skipping over some important details but I realized quickly how wrong I was. While this story absolutely feels like a slog that takes an eternity as you're playing it, the story itself is incredibly concise. Everything included is there for a reason and they really made sure to cut out as much as they could and keep all the best parts. Fundamentally, this game is a masterfully crafted thought experiment. My best comparison is Dostoyevsky. While at first glance it seems incredibly disjunctive to wrap a lazy texting and driving simulator with no saves around a book that can't be found anywhere else, the gameplay somehow wraps it all together. It puts you in the mood. It forces you to linger. It puts you on edge. It fills you with despair of the constant but slow onslaught of time. Everything in this has been purposefully made to expertly provoke existential ideas that have very strong philosophical grounds. I strongly recommend this to everyone who plays games, even if you hate it the whole time you play. Games are fundamentally experiences. All that you are in this world is the experiences you have that turn you into the person you are. This experience is worth adding to your life. It took me about 6 hours to play through it in the one sitting it demands, and I took a good amount of breaks by ignoring the typing, driving the car, and talking to my friends in call. Grab some snacks, drinks, and DON'T pause the game for more than 15 minutes. This will be an awful experience but you'll come out better for it.

wish it was harder

The game Idea is ok, however after 2h of writing nonstop (, your wrists will hurt and the pause button is literally limited to 15 minutes. w.t.f. In comparison to Perfect Vermin and Swallow the Sea, which were really good, enjoyable and replayable games, Heatstroke rather feels like someone has hardly found out how to automatically implement text into a gameplay loop and copy paste it in. and then some fancy visuals and background noise depending on the time of day and process. I do not recommend this to anyone who doesn't like to read or write books, even less so to people who have a hard time typing in the letters. Even with some good muscle memory, the length of this game and the exceeding of your endurance will force you to write slower sooner than later anyway. The story is pretty good though.

This game is a test of willpower and patience, proved to be quite the challenge despite me playing on Steam Deck which allowed me to take breaks, which may have taken away from the experience but I believe having to type from memory due to the keyboard covering the text highly makes up for that benefit... That aside, I found myself immersed with the story this game presents more than I normally would be and was left feeling fascinated and accomplished by the end. Truly worth the hours.