During the night, players can take part in illicit street racing, which rewards REP. During the day, players can take part in sanctioned race events, which reward players with cash to spend on new cars and upgrades. Unlike Need for Speed Payback, the game does not include a 24-hour day-night cycle, but players can switch between day and night.

The in-game map features diverse geography, including mountainous areas, dense forests, and open fields. Need for Speed Heat is a racing game set in an open world environment called Palm City, a fictionalised version of Miami, Florida, and its surrounding areas. The game is succeeded by Need for Speed Unbound, which released in December 2022. In February 2020, EA shifted development of the franchise back to Criterion Games-the developers of the Burnout series, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) and Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012)-and reduced Ghost Games to an engineering studio for the Frostbite engine, reverting their name back to EA Gothenburg. Heat was Ghost Games' final game both for the Need for Speed franchise and as a lead developer. The game received mixed reviews from critics, who mostly found the game to be an improvement over the 2015 Need for Speed reboot and Payback but not enough to be a full return to form for the franchise. It is the twenty-fourth installment in the Need for Speed series and commemorates the series' 25th anniversary. Need for Speed Heat (stylised as NFS Heat) is a 2019 racing video game developed by Ghost Games and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

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