Excellent helicopter combat game Cleared Hot is getting a "Native Steam Deck build"

Cleared Hot is a truly fun helicopter combat game made in the spirit of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - with a big update due this month.

The "Chapter1B" update has been announced for March 17th and it's coming with a lot of performance upgrades, including a "Native Steam Deck build". In other words - a Native Linux version, because the Steam Deck uses SteamOS Linux. Much in the same way that Baldur's Gate 3 and Cronos: The New Dawn did direct support for the Steam Deck.

Some of the improvements they made include:

• Native Steam Deck build - unlocked the 90 fps potential.
• Optimized Destruction System.
• Updated Unit Navigation - uses ECS for faster calculations, avoided some recalculations.
• Bullet decals are being pooled.
• Unity 6.3 Update.
• Major vegetation stutters fixed (we pre-load them) .
• Major improvement from enabling depth priming, removing SMAA.
• More anti-aliasing options offered (FXAA, SMAA, TAA, None).
• Ambient Occlusion is a setting that can be disabled for more performance.
• Exposed a render scale setting.
• Improved Unit system- more efficient update loop, and LOD priority system.

Plus they've added in an Arcade Mode that will be a place for replayable content and for experimental missions. There's only a few missions in there so far, but they said they will keep expanding on it. They've also improved the rope system for redirecting missiles and there's a really a fancy new water system included.

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More to come which was a bit delayed including helicopter customization and a new playable helicopter, along with more missions in the upcoming Chapter 2.