Cleared Hot has to be one of the biggest indie revivals of 2025. For people who have been playing games since the 90s, this is clearly inspired by Desert Strike, and not only that but it plays the same too. Due to the fact that this game is lauded as a spiritual successor for that series, the developers behind it want to honor that series with future updates to Clear Hot. As I said before in another article, this is clearly reminiscent to the early days of gaming on 16 bit systems, and it truly never fails to capture that idea despite the new coat of paint on top.
Cleared Hot is a sensation
There’s tons of things to talk about, mainly how far we have come with advances on the industry, and how old ideas keep being appealing despite being old. Old does not mean that something is bad or even outdated, the term shouldn’t hold any sort of negative connotation because time and time again we are proved old was actually very good. Back in the early days games were made by nerds and for nerds, by actual people who played them and that knew how to combine some amazing ideas together to make something unique.
Today’s industry is riddled with lots of corruption and horrible treatment towards the lifeblood of the industry, that being developers and artists. Cleared Hot is made with passion for the past, and passion for what made games so good, that’s not to say there might not be some controversy behind the company, but nothing has surfaced regarding this. Game making is tough like any art, and as always art is the process rather than the result, we need to downscale games so we can start thriving like we did in the early days of the industry, Cleared Hot succeeds at doing this.
