There is a certain kind of pleasure that belongs almost entirely to the 1990s: piloting an attack helicopter over a scrolling battlefield, winching up fuel canisters, and reducing enemy armour to smouldering scrap. For the better part of three decades, that pleasure had no obvious modern home. Cleared Hot, developed by Not Knowing Corporation and published by MicroProse, is making a serious bid to change that, and its next major update looks set to deepen the proposition considerably.
Not Knowing Corporation's helicopter action game brings back the destructive joys of 1992's Desert Strike and its sequels. Originally announced by the game's director, Colin Karpfinger, back in 2021, the title spent at least four years in development before finally launching in Early Access on November 20, 2025. The reception was immediate. Cleared Hot racked up a 98% "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating out of 1,200 reviews shortly after release, which is a remarkable result for an early access title built on a genre that had its heyday more than 30 years ago.
The main appeal of Cleared Hot is how it takes the template laid down by EA and upgrades the action with modern spectacle. Missiles thud into tanks and structures and burst in a physics-powered shower of debris, while enemies fly about after being hit by your minigun, and the grappling hook swings freely as you collect health and ammo upgrades. Your helicopter is also equipped with air-jets that enable it to dodge enemy attacks, useful for evading RPGs and anti-air missiles, and the grappling hook can pick up almost anything, from enemy corpses to explosive tanks that you lob at enemies for extra firepower.
The Chapter 1B Update
Chapter 1B will arrive on March 17. The headlining addition is a significant improvement to one of the game's most inventive mechanics. Like the original Strike games, Cleared Hot furnishes your chopper with a winch-powered grapple that you can use to grab items from the ground, but the development team has now refined how that tool interacts with incoming fire. The next update will address missile redirection, with missiles now able to be more reliably sent back to the turret or enemy that fired them, dealing three times the normal damage if the player pulls it off. That seems an appropriate reward for lassoing a missile midair and whipping it back into an enemy's face.
Better missile catching is not the only feature Chapter 1B will bring. The update also improves Steam Deck performance by 30%, introduces optional arcade missions ranging from a survival mode to more eclectic options like skeet shooting and missile-based minigolf, and adds a new water system that creates dramatic splash effects when debris from explosive assaults falls into it.
Steam Deck support is another significant focus of the patch, bringing a native build, optimisations to the destruction physics, a new render scale setting, and a range of bug fixes. The developers found a notable improvement by building for Linux, which should improve Steam Deck performance across the board and also allow more trees to be rendered in future jungle environments.
The arcade missions section has been added to the game's home base with a clear goal: to provide replayable content and a home for experimental missions that would not fit in the main campaign. The developers describe it as a flexible space for testing community ideas.
A Broader Content Roadmap
Chapter 1B is not the end of the development road, merely a waypoint. A second chapter will swap out Chapter 1's arid environments for a rainforest setting, paying tribute to Desert Strike's sequel Jungle Strike. The roadmap also calls for another helicopter, improved controls, and helicopter skins in Chapter 1B, with Chapter 2, titled "Into the Jungle", adding the jungle biome, new enemies, and more helicopter customisation options.
The broader context for Cleared Hot's success is worth considering. The Strike series started in 1992 with Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf. After just five years, the series stopped receiving new entries, as gaming moved towards 3D graphics and more cinematic experiences. Electronic Arts shifted focus to franchises like Battlefield and Medal of Honor, and Nuclear Strike in 1997 became the last game in the series.
The nostalgia market for older genres has proven consistently underestimated by major publishers. Consumer protections covering digital goods have matured in Australia since the early access model became common, giving players greater confidence when buying into in-development titles. That regulatory backdrop, combined with the demonstrated appetite for lovingly crafted revivals of dormant genres, goes some way to explaining how a small studio can achieve near-perfect review scores while still technically in early access.
There is a legitimate question about whether the early access model, for all its benefits to developers, places too much trust on the consumer side. Players are in effect funding development with the expectation of future content that may or may not arrive on schedule. Not Knowing Corporation appears to be handling that responsibility well so far, with a transparent roadmap and consistent communication. The team has expressed genuine momentum, with the developer noting they feel very motivated by the response and excited to show players what they can do across the next updates and remaining chapters.
The reasonable verdict at this stage is that Cleared Hot represents exactly the kind of outcome the early access system should produce: a small, passionate team taking a calculated creative risk on an unfashionable genre, delivering honestly on their promises, and building a community around iterative improvement. Whether the full release lives up to the early access promise remains to be seen, but the Chapter 1B update is a solid indicator that the trajectory is pointing in the right direction. For anyone who wore out a Mega Drive controller on Desert Strike in the early 1990s, the wait for a worthy successor appears to be very nearly over.
Cleared Hot is available now on Steam Early Access. The Chapter 1B update is scheduled for March 17. More information about the game's development roadmap is available at the official Cleared Hot website.