Gunpoint developer Tom Francis has released a video demonstrating a prototype of his upcoming stealthy space game Heat Signature.

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The idea is you need to sneak up on enemy ships, board them, then take out their crew. Since ships all come with heat sensors, you need to cool your engines before methodically altering your trajectory to glide into their airlock.

Each ship will be randomly generated with different layouts, sizes, crew members, weapons, and heat sensors. The idea is that every playthrough begins with you being assigned a role and a target. Maybe you're an assassin tasked with eliminating someone, or maybe you're a thief hired to steal some important documents. The catch is you won't know what ship houses your goal, so you'll have to sneak onto various other ships, hack their databases, and see if you can find intel on your objective. Maybe you'll discover that your target is on an Alliance ship, or find out what build it is, or which sector it's in. Complete your goal and you'll be given another one until you inevitably get killed.

While Heat Signature only has its most basic mechanics in place, Francis discussed some features he'd like to add. At the moment enemy ships are merely nondescript rooms with roaming guards, but Francis said he'd like to add individual types of interactive rooms. There'd be the cockpit and database rooms to start, but also turrets that you can take control of and heat sensors to disable. As such, you could rip out a ship's security devices, take control of a turret, and shoot another ship causing both vessels to go to war with one another while you make off with the goods - assuming you don't get killed in the crossfire. Better yet, you can control a craft once you've annihilated its crew, so you could gradually keep stealing more powerful vessels rather than just causing a ruckus aboard them.

Heat Signature is obviously still a ways off as only its most core mechanics are in place in the prototype video, but it gives us a pretty good idea of what to expect from Sir Francis Tom in the future. It sounds exciting anyway.