Charge 41, logged at intake

HEATSINK Hold the trigger.

Heat is what kills you, and what multiplies you.

6 sectors of a machine built to take your temperature. One thumb. No auto-aim. Nothing down there shoots back: they are reaching for you.

Android and iOS. Portrait. 60 stages, 6 bosses, 6 weapons, and a daily board everybody plays on the same rack.

The redline: a dense field of exchange elements with every instrument in critical red and the multiplier at 3.8
Stage 3-9, native capture92% heat // x3.8
  • PlatformsAndroid and iOS
  • GenreArcade shooter, score attack
  • OrientationPortrait, one thumb
  • EngineGodot 4.7

The pressure

One input, 3 consequences

Heat is not a system with a name and a bar. It is the one variable the entire game is made of, and every decision you make is about it.

  • 01

    One variable, felt everywhere

    Heat is not a bar in the corner. It is the colour of your barrel, the pitch of the whine under the music, the shake in your hand and the red creeping in from the edges of the screen. Past 55% the whole machine starts pulsing at 26 Hz, so you feel the danger zone before you look at it.

  • 02

    What kills you is what pays you

    Your multiplier is your heat, so playing cool is playing poor. Every run is the same negotiation: one more second on the trigger, one more row of points, with the redline coming up and no way to un-hold a button you have already held too long.

  • 03

    Nothing aims for you

    Where you touch is what you hit. The barrel swings to your finger on the same touch that pulls the trigger and follows it while you drag. No assist, no snap, no soft targeting, because a beam that finds its own target is auto-aim wearing a different hat.

The shipping numbers

Hold until
holding is frightening

Your multiplier is your heat. That is the whole game and it is not a metaphor: the rates below are the ones the build runs on, and this gauge runs on them too. Hold it past the top and it will take the run off you.

Heat gain
+29% per second
Cooling
44% per second
Cooling delay
160 ms
Multiplier
1.0 + heat x 3.0

Thermal load0%

Multiplierx1.0

The rack

6 weapons, 6 arguments with one gauge

You carry 2 and swap between them mid-run for a flat 8% of heat. The swap costs, and the gauge does not reset when you make it. Choosing a pair is choosing which kind of trouble you would rather be in at 90%.

  • WPN-01

    Repeater

    Sustained fire, sustained heat. The baseline everything else is measured against.

    Flat rate. Heat climbs the whole time you hold, and stops the instant you let go.

  • WPN-02

    Scattergun

    Short bursts, long cools. Rhythmic rather than sustained.

    A large spike per shot and a slow cadence. You pay up front, then ride the gap down.

  • WPN-03

    Beam

    The tension is duration, not frequency.

    Heat accelerates the longer you hold. So does damage. Every extra second is worth more and costs more.

  • WPN-04

    Coilgun

    Releasing is the attack.

    Charges while held, discharges on release. No heat while charging, all of it at once when you let go.

  • WPN-05

    Returner

    Every round banks from the top and cuts a second line back.

    Hold to launch saw rounds. Releasing stops the stream, and rounds already in flight return on their own while the gauge cools.

  • WPN-06

    Vent Cannon

    Turn a hot gauge into pressure blasts that tear through formations.

    Spends heat to fire, and is dead below 25%. Hotter shells vent a wider blast, then contract as the tank cools.

Field captures

The current build, untouched

6 native 1080 by 1920 frames straight out of the game. No mocked HUD, no landscape crop, no PC build: every silhouette, projectile and instrument you see is drawn by the same build you would install.

The schedule

One corridor, photographed at 6 points

Every sector is the same cycle further along, and the reading on the wall is lower every time you look at it. The last 3 are on the schedule too. What happens in them is not for a website.

  1. 01

    Intake

    Where the charge is logged. Mass: one. 9 stages, and a shield that does not want to be shot in the face.

    2140K

  2. 02

    Pump House

    The whole zone runs on a 2.4 second beat. The waves, the field, the score and the boss shutter all share it, and the elements do not descend so much as lurch.

    1608K

  3. 03

    Counterflow

    Pressure without a beat. A faster world, and something in it that chokes your cooling while you are trying to use it.

    1102K

  4. 04

    Replication Bay (redacted)

    Redacted.

    806K

  5. 05

    Ignition Stack (redacted)

    Redacted.

    388K

  6. 06

    Cryogenic Exchange (redacted)

    Redacted.

    41K

The plant publishes its schedule at intake and then meets it, exactly, 6 times.

Thermal Control

The only voice in the game

Charge 41 logged at intake. Mass: one. Scheduled discharge: 41 K, at the exchange. 6 stages. Shed on schedule.

It states the plan before you have fired a shot, and then it does exactly what it said it would do. The reading falls, sector by sector, precisely on schedule.

You do not cool.

What is in it

The whole game, and none of it for sale twice

Mobile arcade players assume the worst about a free shooter and they are usually right. Here is the list, including the parts that are usually the catch.

  • 60 authored stages

    Across 6 sectors, plus 6 boss fights that each break a different rule of the game around you.

  • 9 enemy types, none of which shoot

    Every one of them is trying to reach you. What they take is heat, position or time.

  • 6 weapons, 10 modules, 5 upgrade lines

    Modules are offered 3 at a time at the start of every stage. The run you get is the run you built.

  • Endless mode on a daily seed

    Fixed upgrade rack, no bench mods, 2 weapons dealt from the date on a 15 day rotation. Everyone plays the same machine on the same day, which is the only condition under which a board means anything.

  • No account, no login

    The daily board works the moment you open it.

  • Retry is free and instant

    Always, and it always was. No energy meter, no timer, no paywalled continue. Nothing is withheld to be sold back to you.

  • One-handed portrait

    Built for a thumb, on the train, with the other hand full.

  • Reduced motion never changes difficulty

    Same spawn rates, same heat, same board. The setting takes away movement, never information.

HEATSINK. Android and iOS.

One thumb. One variable. 6 stages of a machine that has already scheduled your discharge.

Store pages open closer to launch. Nothing on this site is a pre-order and nothing here takes a payment.

Get notified at launch.

Android and iOS. One message when Heatsink has a date, one when it is out, and nothing in between.

One message at launch. Nothing else, and one click out of it.