My new laptop (Asus N750JK, Nvidia GTX850) seems to get pretty hot when playing Hammerwatch, I know excessive heat is a common problem with gaming laptops but mine doesn't seem to have problems with other, supposedly more demanding games. I have tried checking out all graphic bells & whistles and it seems to do better, but I miss all the pretty stuff.

Has anyone experienced this? is it a known issue?

Try to limit FPS, turn on V-sync (either in-game or via Nvidia control panel).

I couldn't find anything about limiting FPS in the game menu, but turning on the V-Sync checkbox did the trick: over 1 hour of play with most graphical enhancements on and no significant overheating (no more than other games).

Thanks!

You're welcome. :)

Just incase you don't know svmariscal, this is something that applies to pretty much all games so it may help keeping it in mind for future.

It's also worth mentioning that some rare (badly designed) games when in a pause/menu can end up pushing hundreds (even 1000+) of FPS, so pausing the game and leaving it at a menu while you go do something can cause the game to overheat the hardware, possibly to the point of failure. It's rare but worth keeping in mind if you pause games for more than a minute. Unfortunately this kind of mistake can even happen with a "big" game, I think Starcraft 2 was an example, so it's always something to watch out for when not limiting the framerate.