Heat

Heat includes Homestead, a single-player mode, and an online multiplayer survival mode for up to 40 players. In Homestead, you inherit your grandfather’s old farm and work to restore it, building the farm by day and sleeping at night. The mode combines farming with survival elements and offers 10 scenarios, each with a different starting homestead and equipment; some also have special conditions. The game saves when you sleep, supports loading older saves and includes full admin commands.

Survive and build

In multiplayer, you survive in 19th-century America by gathering and hunting for food, collecting materials, crafting and building a home. You can grow into a colony, expand your territory, raise a family or pursue positions of power as President, Sheriff, Chief or Governor. Characters can be killed and robbed, and other players can raid and loot your property, so you can use resources and defenses to protect it.

The 67 km² world contains 20 biomes, each with sub-biomes, across landscapes from mountain peaks and deserts to tropical shores and swamplands. Dense forest floors must be cleared before you can build. The world changes visually through all four seasons, and dynamic weather brings conditions such as rain and winter snow. You cannot farm in winter, so you need to prepare food supplies, wear insulated clothing and keep it dry, and light furnaces to stay warm. The Newspaper provides a weekly weather forecast.

Farming and trade

Use tools such as hoes, watering cans, sprinklers and scythes to grow a range of crops, with different tool tiers and fertilizers to consider. Harvested crops can be cooked at cooking stations or sold through shipping bins. These bins also have a catalogue for ordering items with in-game currency.

Heavy materials such as wood, stone and ore need to be stored in large stockpiles, while light goods fit in small containers. You can also craft a stash container that holds a mix of light and heavy goods, though it has limited slots. Stockpiles take up space and need to be considered when planning your defenses.

The towns of Washington, Tombstone and Sacayo let you buy and sell goods. Each has some items that are unique to that town, which you can trade between towns for a profit. Merchants offer goods unavailable in the shipping-bin catalogue and provide a way to sell while travelling. Towns also have inns and banks, and you can give dowries to townsfolk to win their affection. Buy train tickets at stations to travel between towns. Shooting townsfolk or merchants makes you an Outlaw, attracts Heat and brings the law after you.

Craft and defend

Build anything from a hobo shack or woodland cabin to a mansion or fortress. You place walls, floors, doors, windows, furniture and other fixtures individually, and process materials at workstations such as sawmills, tanneries and smelters. You can use processed goods to craft items and purchase blueprints. Cannons and large rampart sections are among the options for fortifying your property.

You can make roads and pads around your base with a rake, using materials including wood chips, dirt, sand, gravel and pavement, or lay fresh-cut lawn. The landscape also has American wildlife that you can hunt or tame as livestock or pets. Tamed horses and other animals, including bears, can be ridden.

Family and leadership

You can start a family with another player or an NPC. Players can give birth to a newborn, which grows into a baby, then a child and eventually an adult. Alternatively, you can adopt through an orphanage by ordering a baby basket from the shipping catalogue; adoption is expensive but guarantees an outcome. Children combine the visual DNA of their two parents, and babies, children and adults need food and water. Once children reach adulthood, you can equip them with outfits, gear and weapons, and they can help protect you while you are online.

As President, you own the Whitehouse, land south of the monument, an intern, a golden gun and two Secret Service NPCs, and can set and collect a land tax. The Sheriff, Chief and Governor also receive their own areas, items and NPCs.

Combat and characters

Combat options include craftable handguns, rifles, shotguns and other firearms, as well as bows, javelins and melee weapons. You can capture and restrain other players and put them in an interrogation dungeon with various contraptions. Combat can include dismemberment, artillery cannons and TNT, and vigilante justice can be experienced from either a first- or third-person perspective.

Character customization lets you choose a gender and adjust skin tone, height, girth, facial features, hair or lack of it, and voice tone.