Heatseeker is a weird platform action game, written by Paul O’Malley and published for the Commodore 64 by Thalamus in 1990. It’s probably one of the strangest games I’ve ever played, and it has to be said that the game does suffer a little because of that. It’s so unconventional as to be borderline playable.

In Heatseeker you play as a bouncing leg with a ball on top of it, and you must jump around a series of levels, looking for sources of heat to absorb to give to plants so you can save them from pollution… Well, I did say it was weird…

You can use the ball to shoot out to hit any wildlife that may pose a threat to the leg, and the ball can also be thrown out to collect heat, which will then be transferred to the leg so that it can then be given to the plants. You must deliver heat to the plants during the day and also at night. When the leg has collected enough heat the ‘pass counter’ gets boosted, and when the pass counter reaches 9999 you can then teleport to the next level.

While Heatseeker is an attractive game, with interesting mechanics, it will remain baffling to most gamers. Reading the manual does help, of course, but it isn’t a panacea. If you’re persistent, and play the game carefully, you might be able to master it.

More: Heatseeker on Moby Games