Cleared Hot's Chapter 2 update lands on 15 October
Cleared Hot's next big update, Chapter 2: Jungle Storm, arrives on 15 October as a free download for everyone who owns the Early Access helicopter shooter.
What Chapter 2: Jungle Storm adds
The studio behind Cleared Hot has put a date on the game's second chapter. Chapter 2: Jungle Storm arrives on 15 October as a free update for anyone who already owns the Early Access helicopter shooter, and the developer is describing it as a massive one.
The headline additions
The campaign grows by nine missions, which the studio says should run about as long as the Chapter 1 campaign, and there is a new boss fight it is deliberately refusing to describe. Two more helicopters join the hangar — the Ka-52 Alligator and the MH-53 Pave Low — after the community voted for them in a poll, taking the roster to eleven aircraft, each of which is getting a unique ability.
Beyond the aircraft, the update adds a Utility Slot system, so flares, chaff, EMP, airstrikes and smoke grenades can be carried as in-world pickups as well as bought as hangar upgrades. A new weather layer brings rain, lightning and thunder to the jungle campaign, and the enemy list expands to take in BTR armoured vehicles, Shilkas, gunboats, swift boats, drone swarms and new turrets.
Modding, water and guns that overheat
Two changes reach beyond the new content. Cleared Hot is getting a level editor and early file-based modding support, letting players build their own missions or write custom mods, along with helicopter skins unlocked with in-game currency. A new water system with buoyancy physics, a reworked gun overheating model and new water-landing behaviour round out the mechanical changes.
Our opinion
The important part of Chapter 2 is not the nine extra missions, it is the level editor. A nostalgic helicopter shooter with a community opinionated enough to vote on which airframes get modelled is exactly the kind of game that lives or dies on what players build once the studio slows down. An editor and mod support are cheap to ship and expensive to live without, because they turn a fixed campaign into a long tail. The risk is shipping them half-finished, which would sour the goodwill the poll-driven additions have clearly earned. Even so, a free chapter with a boss, two aircraft, a weather layer and a mission builder is a far better answer than a paid map pack.
Cleared Hot has been in Early Access on Steam since November 2025, developed by Not Knowing Corporation and published by MicroProse. Chapter 2: Jungle Storm will be free to existing owners when it lands on 15 October.