Time travel is difficult -- who would have thought? I've made a number of improvements to the way that late-game timelines function, solving a number of edge cases that you could run into. Mind Annexes have also been rebalanced so that it's much more tempting to get some of the other options beyond just Coprocessors. Your worker androids are notably more intelligent and effective, but so are Slumlords and angry gangs and rebels. If youve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, thatd be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if youve been meaning to write one, Id be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.

Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. Its a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.

Thanks for reading and for playing.

Update 22 Changelog

Clarity

• Pressure Points That Are Also Deals: Water Supplier and Open Pantry are now properly categorized as both Pressure Points and Deals in the dropdown.

Balance

• Firestarter Sanity: The Firestarter perk has been nerfed to only do 0.95x the intensity of "set the target on fire" that Flamethrower does, rather than 2.5x the intensity. This was massively overpowered to a ludicrous degree rather than being minor little addition to an already cool gun.

• Mind Annex Options: The number of Mind Annexes that you get has been tripled. The cost of Coprocessors and Temples of Minds have also been tripled, so there is effectively zero change here. Android, Vehicle, and Mech extenders have had their costs stay where they were, which means that they are effectively 1/3 the price they used to be. This should help make them more competitive with Coprocessors, which otherwise dominate.

Timeline Shenanigans

• Timelines Kept Up To Date: Updated the game so that every time you save any savegame, and you're in the correct profile folder for it, AND you're in the most recent turn for that timeline, it updates the central timeline data for that timeline. It does this via a very simply file copy, making things really straightforward. This means that people who use quicksaves to jump between timelines are not going to run into stale older timelines. A very small number of people were doing this, but it was quite confusing.

• Remembering Chapter 4: Fixed an issue where if you loaded older savegames in a certain order, your central profile metadata could be overwritten such that it would forget that you were actually in chapter 4. It would get you back to chapter 3, but no further.

• Intelligence Class Crossloading: When you are directly loading or saving savegames, or diving into or our of timelines, it no longer plays the sound and shows the animation and message about your intelligence class going up or down.

• The Click Paradox: Fixed a complicated issue where some timelines were not properly accessible in the {redacted} if you merged savegames in a certain way. It now repairs the data so that they are properly clickable.

Unit Intelligence

• Better Worker Spawns: When you have a cyberocracy hub or similar, it will no longer spawn workers androids in locations that have a security clearance that is too high for them. This was causing needless conflict.

• Off Limits Areas: Your worker and bulk androids now make an extra effort to no longer take shortcuts through high-security locations.

• Reigning In Aggression: Fixed an issue where if Worker Androids didn't have anything better to do, they would go pick fights with non-alarmed enemy guards. They are meant to hunt enemies, but are only supposed to go after enemy guards if the alarm is one.

• increasing Aggression: Slumlords, and angry gang members or rebels, were being way too passive when thrust into a conflict with the player. They now appropriately take out their displeasure on players once more.

Bugfixes

• Post-Apocalyptic Stealth: Fixed an issue where if you were in the post-apocalypse, and you were playing a stealth network, then it was complaining about your lack of decoy tower.

• Wealth Volume Correction: Corrected the commentary about the amount of wealth in one of the private residences. It now says (of 500k wealth): Even amongst managers, it would take over 250 years to earn that much, and it was just lying around. For an average citizen, this is twelve thousand years' worth of income.

• Post-Apocalyptic Intelligence: Fixed an issue where your intelligence class could remain too high in the post-apocalypse if you had a deal with the NCOs, or possibly if you had sold a bunch of brainpals. Those no longer help you.

• Pocket Nuke Fix: Fixed an issue where if you had two or more of the same kind of pocket nuke, it would accidentally expend two of them whenever you used one of them.

Full notes here.

Connect with the Machine

Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms: Discord Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine. Reddit Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.

A new layer of side stories, tactical rewards, and visual clarity arrives in Update 21. The Dark Underbelly framework opens with its first narrative thread, "The Executive Tomb," a contemplation-initiated side arc that is available as early as Chapter 1. Depending on your choices, it can lead to rapid-fire weapons, augments, and the games first diseases. All of it is optional. All of it reactive. Networked weapons and telemetry augments join the Intelligence Class 5 unlock pool, and a set of quality-of-life improvements make territory control and structure placement easier to navigate. One upgrade gets stronger. One hacking event gets a failsafe. And quite a few quality of life improvements on top of all that. If youve been spending time with Heart of the Machine and would like to leave a review, Id be grateful. It doesnt have to be long. Just your honest thoughts, whatever stood out or stuck with you. Steam reviews matter a great deal for a project like this, and they help guide future patches. Thanks again for playing.

Update 21 Changelog

General

• New Side GoalDark Underbelly: Introduced to house smaller side stories. The first, The Executive Tomb, can begin in Chapter 1rare for timeline goals.
• Quick-Hack Failsafe: During the first hacking scenario, players now always receive enough Determination to choose the quick-hack route.

The Executive Tomb (Dark Underbelly Storyline)

• Contemplation Unlock: "Exploring Wealthy Residences" is now available as a contemplation when Contemplations first unlock.
• Flexible Timing: Can be pursued across most chapters (not post-apocalypse).
• Dome Encounter: Optional fight under a dome unlocks 3 new rapid-fire weapons and a new augmentdesigned by community member Pingcode.
• Diseases Introduced: Completing the storyline unlocks the first in-game diseases, with wide-reaching timeline applications.
• Achievements: 5 new achievements tied to this storyline.

Intelligence Class 5 Additions

• Networked Arsenal:
  • 4 new android weapons with networked targeting
  • 1 cruise missile for vehicles
  • Augments for androids, mechs, and vehicles that enable telemetry-sharing for these weapons
• Community Credit: All networked weapon content designed and implemented by Pingcode.

Clarity

• Flag Placement Guidance: Territory flags now show tooltips and draw a line to the nearest valid placement.
• Embedded Structure Assistance: Structures placed inside human buildings now draw a pink line to the nearest valid host (e.g., skimmers).
• Minor Wording Improvements: In chapter one, several minor pieces of wording have been clarified.
• Bulk Unit Equipment: Feats and costs on equipment that don't apply to bulk units are no longer shown on bulk androids. For example, the Ambush feat, or the Mental Energy cost.
• Building Status Visibility: Badges and other statuses on buildings are now drawn in their tooltips as they are on units, making them much easier to see.
• "Highest Respect" Confusion: If you reach chapter one without overwriting any other androids, it now gives you Highest Respect immediately, rather than only doing that after you've talked to the AGI researchers.

Balance

• Microbuilder Upgrade Extension: "Better Microbuilder Fabs" now boosts Full and Industrial Microbuilder Fabs. Vorsiber DRM-locked midsize fabs remain unchanged.
• Cybercratic Haven Establishment: When you are in the project Secure Your Cybercratic Haven, if you've reached at least 98% secured, then it goes ahead and just marks it as done. Those last 1-2% could be painfully slow in some cities.
• Unidentified Hostile Aircraft: For vehicles that are marked defective, they are instead now marked as Unidentified Hostile Aircraft, which is much more thematically-appropriate, as well as being just much worse in general. Aka, it's a lot more like Innately Alarming, and guards and other passerby really want to shoot down the aircraft a lot more intently.
• Enemy Spawn Cascade Prevention: Vulnerable buildings now stun themselves when overwhelmed, preventing uncontrolled enemy spawns in mid-to-late game.
• Enemy Spawn Cascade Reversal: After units have spawned against your vulnerable buildings, they now leave the battlefield if their target is destroyed. This is useful for cases where you're all right taking that loss, but don't want a ton of angry enemies then swarming the rest of your empire.
• Faster Housing Agencies: Housing Agencies now work 50% faster than before, making the Solve Homelessness project not last so long.

Bugfixes

• Chapter One Achievements: The Journey Begins, Budding Pacifist, and Taking Extra Care can now be properly achieved on a playthrough in a secondary timeline in an existing profile.
• Mech Hacking: Fixed a regression where the hacking scenario for mechs was always being the basic tutorial, rather than the full hacking experience.
• No Revelation During WW4: Fixed a bug where The Revelation was still available during WW4.
• Exponential Power Growth: Fixed an issue where you could get softlocked in chapter one if you finished building a better brain before you build any computronium refineries (this is very difficult to do, and quite an edge case).
• Worker Units Tab: Fixed a bug where if you played through The Great And Terrible Protector, it was possible that the "Worker Units" concept was not also unlocked, and therefor you could not use the Workers tab of command mode.
• Messages On Replay: Fixed a generalized issue with certain messages not showing up if you were replaying chapter one for a second time in the same profile.
• Stuck Freighters On Long Maps: Fixed an issue where on long and narrow maps, if a regional or international freighter spawned at just the wrong spot, and the related airport was super far away, then they would just sit around indefinitely at the edge of the map.
• Worker Android Sanity: Worker androids will no longer open fire on protestors or other nonviolent parties.
• Proper ID Scrub: Fixed an issue where the Contractually Valid Target badge was not being removed by ID-scrubbing-type activities.
• Territory Flag Aggro On Load: Fixed an issue where, when loading savegames, sometimes it would act like you did not have enough deterrence and spawn in a bunch of enemy units around territory control flags.
• Morale Can't Be Murder: If you attack units with morale attacks, that no longer ever counts as a murder or an attempted murder. It wasn't intended to, but there were some cases where it did.
• Safety From High-Altitude Transports: Even if high-altitude military transports (and a variety of other NPC units) have less than full health, they will no longer attack players and player-allied units UNLESS the player has done either physical or morale damage to the units in question.

Connect with the Machine

Four substantial updates in one week, this week! Next week will be slower, as I'll be working on new late-game goal paths, and that takes a lot of time. That said, there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon over the next couple of weeks, including another feature update tomorrow. Update 20 includes a lot of long-time player requests -- and some more from the last few days. The game has always supported borderless windowed, but now it does so in a manner that does not minimize when you click out of it. There's now a dedicated screen to seeing how much neural expansion you get from each source in a timeline. Several elements that were confusing to new players have been clarified. A couple of the weaker weapons have gotten buffs to ensure they remain interesting. If youve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, thatd be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if youve been meaning to write one, Id be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.

Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. Its a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.

Thanks for reading and for playing.

Update 20 Changelog

Features

• True Borderless Windowed Mode: The game has been adjusted to be visible in the background if you switch away from it using OS hotkeys, or clicking to an adjacent monitor.

Clarity

• Clarity For Vorsiber Collaborators: If you are a Vorsiber Collaborator start, it now makes sure that you have the midsize microbuilder fabs from the very start of that point, and also makes sure that you are instructed to build those rather than the mini-fabs. This was biting some new players who were using this exit from the prologue.

• Flamethrower Math: When holding shift to see the expanded tooltip, Flamethrower now shows the math of how it gets to the amount of morale damage it will inflict.

• Quick Electrical View: Clicking the electricity display in the resource header now takes you directly into the input/output list for electricity.

• New Neural Expansion View: In the input/output screen of the Resources window, if you have unlocked seeing your intelligence class, Neural Expansion is now the second option in the menu, under Electricity. This shows you the details of where all of your neural expansion is coming from in the current timeline (it also shows contributions form other timelines in one lump amount, for reference).

Balance

• Firestarter: he AG-31 Relumine shotgun now has a new Firestarter feat attached to it, which sets targets on fire if they are vulnerable to that. The strength of the fire damage is 2.5x of what a Flamethrower does, but only applies to a single target rather than a group.

• High-Density Rounds Utility: These have been rebalanced so that they have less of a range penalty, give a little bit less of a damage boost, and give a powerfully-scaling armor-piercing boost.

• Shotgun Ambushes: The TS-11 Light Shotgun now gives a 3x Ambush feat (which does stack with other sources of Ambush), making it actually an interesting weapon for those that can use it. The TS-29 Shotgun, which is already quite useful, has been given a 1.5x Ambush value to make sure that it remains competitive in the spectrum of other weapons around the game.

• Precision Flamethrowing: Flamethrowers by non-shell-company operatives no longer hit units targeting your shell company, and vice-versa. This is much more in keeping with the nature of how the shell companies are meant to function combat-wise.

• More Targets Vulnerable To Fire: The following units were not considered Flammable for purposes of being able to be set on fire by flamethrowers or Firestarter, but now are: Vorsiber Soldier, Vorsiber Inquisitor, SecForce Negotiator, Citizen Advocate (both kinds), and PMC Troopers. Originally, the idea was that their armor protected them, but this was very unclear and gave the wrong impression, such as that perhaps the Fearless perk was blocking them from being set on fire. It also didn't feel right for balance in general.

• Nickelbot Engineering Balance: "Nickelbots Are The Worst" now only requires a Nickelbot with 116 engineering skill, rather than 140, making this a bit better balanced for early chapter two.

• Drone Cores: The Avionics Core has been split into that plus also a Drone Core. In chapter one, it was really easy to get into a spot where you could block yourself with building too many drone factories and then being unable to build the aerospace hangar.

Bugfixes

• Pathfinding Exception Fix: Hardened some of the npc pathfinding methods against having exceptions when a building has just recently been destroyed when they are trying to pathfind around.

• The Return Of Stealth Vehicles: Fixed a regression in Update 19 where I accidentally removed the ability to cloak from the Iris, Spectre, and Wraith vehicles. That has now been restored.

Full notes here.

Connect with the Machine

Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms: Discord Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine. Reddit Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.

Update 19 is careful work. It clarifies early systems, streamlines key interactions, and strengthens the rhythm between planning and execution. Internal Robotics are easier to interpret. Vehicles move with consistency. Extraction Drones respond the moment theyre called. Shelter Coordinators act with purpose. Loadouts arrive prepared. And the broader systems now hold together with greater coherence. The foundation remains the same but whats different is how fluidly everything moves around it. If youve been playing Heart of the Machine and feel its earned a review, that'd be great. No need to say more than you mean, but if youve been meaning to write one, Id be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. The difference between Mostly Positive and Mixed doesnt just reflect perception; it can influence momentum, visibility, and whether a player even considers clicking through. For a project like this developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference. Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. Its a powerful way to have your voice heard, and your feedback helps shape future patches, allowing me to make the game even better for you. Thanks for reading and for playing.

Update 19 Changelog

Clarity

• Internal Robotics Notation Updated: Internal Robotics display now shows required / available (maximum), improving clarity when planning builds.
• Build Menu Construction Limit Display: The build menu now shows how many structures of a given type you can construct with current Internal Robotics, removing the need for mental math.
• Simplified Vehicle and Mech Movement: Vehicles and mechs now move like androidsno more dedicated movement mode or hotbar entry required.

Balance

• Shelter Coordinator Courage Increased: Shelter Coordinators and unarmed human allies are no longer frightened by Pressure Points and will venture out as expected.
• Shelter Coordinator Speed Increased: These units now perform their jobs significantly faster, eliminating long-standing sluggishness.
• Cutter Extraction Requirements Removed: The Cutter can now use Extraction Drone attacks without needing to weaken targets first, improving flow in Chapter 1.
• Immediate Extraction Drone Activation: Extraction Drones now activate immediately, instead of taking three turns, making them viable for advanced strategies.
• Force Conversation Auto-Equipped: Keanus, Carvers, Exators, Peacekeepers, Sledge, Ravens, and Harbingers now start with Force Conversation equipped.
• Flamethrowers Auto-Equipped: Flamethrowers are now pre-equipped on Harbingers, Predators, Keanus, Carvers, Exators, PMC Impostors, and both CombatUnit types.
• Slayer Mode Auto-Equipped: Slayer Mode is now automatically equipped on PMC Impostors, Mimics (both types), Keanus, Carvers, Exators, Predators, and Harbingers.

Bugfixes

• Rare Exceptions Resolved: Several rare exception errors have been fixed to improve stability in edge cases.
• Black Market Merchant Exit Fixed: Black market visitors now correctly depart after the initial purchase during the first timeline.
• Ruins Transition Fixed: Machine structures embedded in human buildings now become rebuildable ruins after destruction instead of entering a broken state.

Connect with the Machine

The city continues to find new ways to respond. Update 18 introduces Pressure Points a new class of reactive events that appear across StreetSense starting in Chapter One. These are small, (usually) repeatable strategic encounters that let you prod the simulation from unexpected angles: trigger a glitch in the financial records of a criminal syndicate, redirect a weapons shipment, make a deal with a hitman, or unleash a swarm of spiders across the city. Eleven of the fourteen events are available as early as chapter one, with the rest appearing in later timelines. Most are on cooldowns rather than single-use, offering fresh tactical tools across multiple difficulties. Some lead to "hero unit" upgrades. Some unlock new consumables or structures. One might set a worrying legal precedent. [quote]Pressure Points are small, repeatable events that let you subtly disrupt the world redirect shipments, forge records, or trigger chaos. Theyre optional but reactive, offering new tactical angles and rewards. Easy to miss, but once discovered, they change how you interact with the city.[/quote] Here are some of the Pressure Points you'll encounter. Arranging a Hit
[quote]Youre no longer limited to rumors and whispers this Pressure Point lets you track a contract killer through StreetSense and decide what to do with them. Hire them, neutralize them, or escalate the situation. Every choice triggers new possibilities.[/quote] Floating Point Errors
[quote]Some syndicates are more vulnerable to math than bullets. This Pressure Point targets a laundering operation by inducing calculation anomalies, turning financial chaos into tactical advantage.[/quote] SecForce Weapons Shipments
[quote]Military supply lines arent as secure as they think. This Pressure Point allows you to reroute weapons from the citys enforcement arm either toward local resistance or into your arsenal. Timing, as always, is everything.[/quote]

Update 18 Changelog

Major Systems and Additions

• Pressure Points Introduced: StreetSense now features 14 dynamic Pressure Points across the game, with 11 available as early as Chapter 1. These events offer repeatable, cooldown-based strategic interactions and unlock sandbox tools for shaping the city.
• New Rewards: Pressure Points grant access to:
  • 9 new achievements
  • 2 new consumable items
  • 4 new hero badges (available earlier than usual)
  • 1 new Structure/Job producing 2 new resources
  • 1 new hackable robotic NPC unit for converted squads
• Event Highlights: Pressure Points include options to:
  • Disrupt black market operations
  • Manipulate the legal system
  • Breed bee queens or giant spiders
  • Redirect military supply lines
  • Exploit financial bugs in syndicate accounts

Supplementary Additions

• New ResourceHatred of Vorsiber: This strategic currency tracks your grievances and opens new retaliatory options, especially through Pressure Points.
• More Achievements: Five new achievements linked to Intelligence Class 5 hero badge variants.
• Lore and Clarity:
  • Flamethrower path in Chapter 1 now includes clearer narrative prompts and dev notes on future antagonistic routes.
  • Securing Water/Food projects clarify that you negotiate with the lower classesnot just your housed humans.
  • All Deals now include thematic explanations tied to their bonuses.
  • Intelligence Class 57 notifications have been updated with more specific and forward-facing details, including Ziggurat hints.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a typo in the Occult Participation route.
• Occult Participation was mistakenly showing up in the prologue. It now only appears in Chapter 1 and onward.
• Fixed an issue where if an NPC was blocking an investigation or infiltration and was killed, the action remained blocked until the next turn. Other actions were unaffected.
• Fixed an issue where a profile could be blocked from creating new timelines if the folder name was changed, despite this not being intended.
• New timelines are now correctly set up at the end of time immediately, allowing older saves to switch without missing file errors.
• Fixed a bug where replaying Chapter 1 in a new timeline skipped the Extraction project.
• If you've won the infiltration to steal umbilical cords but are short on them (e.g., due to storage destruction), the game now grants the extras so the mission can be completed. Shh, it's a secret.
• Fixed a regression causing early unlocks and "key message" states to be miscalculated, affecting prologue and Chapter 1 replays in the same profile.
• Added code to detect and self-heal more forms of corruption in the "_meta_core_timekeep.timeline" file, preventing issues with timeline creation.

Connect with the Machine

To the Community: Thank You

Update 17 carries a particular weightnot from any single headline, but from how the pieces fit together. Hacked androids, anti-morale weapons, propaganda circuits, sprinting units that cover twenty times their range, and revisions to a variety of the Deals you can make around the city. The systems are getting denser. More reactive. Deals now carry proper thematic force, not just stat boosts. Android types receive long-overdue recognition in the upgrade matrix. Even minor StreetSense events lead to unusual loadouts and strange discoveries, if youre paying attention. You'll also find a rocket launcher designed by the community, sprinting distance upgrades, and multiple deal reworks that tie flavor more closely to function. And scattered throughout: minor tweaks, major augments, and a reminder that the Machine is always learning. [quote]"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell." Oscar Wilde, quoted in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison[/quote]

Steam Reviews

Major Additions

• Hacking Enemy Androids: Players can now hack enemy androids and convert them to their side. This feature has been frequently requested since before launch.
• AS-201 Rebellion Launcher: A new anti-armor rocket launcher, unlocked at Intelligence Class 6. Designed and balanced with input from community member Pingcode.
• Sprint Range Expansion: Units can now sprint up to 20x their movement range (increased from 10x). Especially helpful on newer map types.

New Anti-Morale Weapons and Augments

• Book of Rhetoric: Gained via the Religious Study minor StreetSense event in Chapter 1. A new fear-based secondary weapon.
• Spooky Nonsense Generator: Gained via the Occult Participation minor StreetSense event in Chapter 1. A fear-based secondary weapon that reduces Intelligence.
• Propaganda Circuit: Gained via the Political Rally minor StreetSense event in Chapter 1. An augment that boosts both fear and argument attack power.
• Morale Weapon Buff: The Oath of Pacifism is now twice as effective.
• Morale Weapon Effectiveness Upgrade: Available via the Martial Expansion upgrade group. Affects all morale-based weapons and augments, including the Oath.

Unit and Classification Updates

• Souldroid Classification for Technicians: Technicians now qualify as Souldroids, unlocking several upgrades previously limited to Ravens, Mindrunners, and Harbingers.

Deal Reworks and Thematic Adjustments

• Greens For The Underclass: Now benefits Souldroids instead of Technicians.
• Meat For The Underclass: Now grants a small HP bonus for all combat androids, replacing the former Oxdroid-specific argument bonus.
• Canned Protein For The Underclass: Now grants a larger intimidation bonus.
• Meals For Fugitives: Now provides triple the attack boost. No longer applies once you're in the post-apocalypse.
• Donut Deals: Now provide strength bonuses to Oxdroids, replacing their previous engineering bonuses.

Other Changes

• Vorsiber DRM Clarification: Vorsibers midsize microbuilder fab now explicitly notes its DRM restrictions, clarifying that it cant be reverse-engineered or upgraded. Players suggested this thematic explanation, based on observed mechanics, and I thought it was hilarious.

Bugfixes

• Firing While Over Android Cap: Fixed a longstanding issue where if you were over android cap, you could still give them attack orders, even though you couldn't otherwise make them move.
• Issue During First Hack Of Mech: Fixed a regression added in the recent hotfixes, which was preventing you from progressing through the tutorial hacking session, but only about 50% of the time. And only if you did the full hack, not the quick-hack.

Connect with the Machine

Another dose of tidying-up. Next week will see Update 17 release, and hopefully this is the last Hotfix before then. Overall there have been a lot more hotfixes needed than usual because of the extreme number of shifts to the codebase during Update 15 with the new prologue and ability to replay things on existing profiles. Thank you to everyone for the patience you've shown related to that. I usually avoid having that much carnage. 0.656 Hotfix 17

Today's dose of tidying. A variety of fixes, most of which apply to late timelines or doing unexpected things with savegame loading. 0.655.9 Hotfix 16

Just a quick update today with a handful of fixes to tidy up. 0.655.8 Hotfix 15

A handful of chapter one changes offer alternate builds and early gear if you take the Grey Goo path. Chapter two adds reasons to betray certain characters new suits and shoulder lasers among them. The post-apocalypse gets a bit busier too, with new achievements and mechanics surfacing after chapter three. Outside the narrative, theres new world data in your statistics panel, fog and weather improvements, and another visual pass on health bars especially useful in Extreme Mode. Some old phrasing has been updated for clarity. And the Monster Bait now lets you steer stray creatures more intentionally, both for strategy and for one of the rarest achievements in the game. Full details below.

Steam Reviews: Your Thoughts Matter

• If you take the Grey Goo scenario, you now get two new weapons: "Divert Power To Stun" and "Target Their Weapons", which are unique vehicle-mounted weapons that you can't get in any other path. There are some other android weapons that are pre-existing that you also get early access to in the Grey Goo start, as well.
• At the point in chapter one where you get the Wallripper ability, there is also a new structure called Alumina Roach that you gain access to. This provides an alternative way of gathering alumina early on, but also is useful on an ongoing basis, since it does not compete with the normal mining skimmers. This also finally provides a use for Hook Drones that isn't related to Soylent Green.

• If you wind up killing certain vigilantes in one of the questlines, you now gain two new very powerful pieces of equipment: Super Suit and Shoulder-Mounted Lasers. These each allow for very different builds for a lot of your androids, so it's a tempting new reason to crush these vigilantes when heading towards certain later-game content.
• A new "Nomad Therapist Office" is now available if you have made a deal with the nomads in the prison break sequence. This finally gives a benefit to allying with the nomads in this questline.
• Added a new achievement for going back and doing something in the post-apocalypse after you've reached chapter 3. There were consistently people in the forums and Discord who were excited and surprised that they could do this, and so now there's an achievement to make sure that people who don't use much social media have a more reliable way to discover this on their own.
• Added a second special-case path to getting the "You're Really Unlikeable" achievement. There are three overall ways of getting this achievement, but the first two are map-style-specific to an extent. This third one relates to if you started a civil war, and can be done on any map type.
• Added three new options to the Martial Expansion upgrade group: Large Mech Power, Large Mech Armor Piercing, and Large Mech Armor Plating. This is primarily useful for the liquid metal dragons, although it does of course benefit your WW4 mechs.
• Added a new achievement for accidentally knocking over one of your own buildings with a liquid metal dragon.
• Added five new achievements based on completing at least four tier one goals in specific city styles.
• If you have released experimental monsters in your current city, or if they are wandering in from a timeline crossover, a new Monster Bait item now allows you to make them show up where you want. This has tactical uses, and also removes the tedium of getting the most-rare achievement currently in the game.

• New Worldbuilding Statistics: There are now statistics on cohort details, and on the city statistics page, which show things like the number of soldiers in the city, regional and world population, number of cities in the region, unemployment rate, waitlist for citizens to move into your city, worldwide non-soldier staffing for federated corporations, and so on. These provide context for the scale of the major factions you're dealing with, since some players were underestimating the scale of these groups by a couple of orders of magnitude.
• New Fog Intensity setting: This has four options for differing levels of fog, with the idea being that if the fog defaults bother you (as they do some people), then you can adjust things. This was a request from a number of players, but I've also updated the defaults to hopefully be more palatable to that same group even without this setting.
• Fog And Weather Updates: Four new weather styles have been added to the main rotation of 8 weathers, and all of the existing weather styles have gotten some updates to tune visibility, colors, and so on.
• Health Bar Updates: This primarily applies to Extreme Mode, but some of the health bars were confusing in terms of how units of similar health looked relative to one another. This visual confusion has been improved so that it should be clear at all times now.

• Working with a criminal syndicate with the proper permits during the prologue no longer causes accidental deaths via nanotech.
• The prison heists have all been made a bit easier, since they were a bit on the long and challenging side for where they are situated in the game.
• When you have a crossover from WW4 to other timelines, there are now confused soldiers properly wandering into other timelines on that same rock. The more WW4s you have crossing over, the more intense this gets.
• If you have ever unlocked automated personnel management, then it is immediately available on all future timelines once you are to chapter 2+ in that timeline.
• For all of the human mech designs (there are four), if you ever have unlocked them in a given timeline, then in all future timelines (even on other rocks), you'll know how to make them as long as the other timeline is at chapter 2+.
• All of the small mechs have gotten moderate buffs in terms of their action points and reduced capacity costs. Except liquid metal tiger, which was already fine.
• Running low on compute time when you have a bunch of codebreakers operating now prioritizing keeping your other computing clients up and running and just does codebreaking slower. This prevents things like sudden drops in unit capacity.

• The term "Critical Path" has been replaced with "Core Route". Critical Paths are a project-management term that have been a natural part of my life for decades, but to people who are not into that specific kind of project management, it sounds really misleading. The new term will hopefully help with that.
• Senior Technician has been rebalanced to be a bit less smart and worse at engineering, but a bit better at combat. This makes them more suited to the jobs they are designed for.
• Added further clarity to the Deal With The Rebels project, to hopefully help more folks think for out-of-the-box solutions when facing a foe where maybe force isn't the answer.
• When a project StreetSense action will give a reward that is for the unit class currently doing the action, that is now a lot more clear. The prior method of display for this type of action (which is the rarest kind) was confusing.
• The term antigrav has been replaced with the term grav-lev, as that's more accurate and more descriptive.
• In the UI Scale section of the settings menu, there are now two new options that allow you to scale streets-view icons for actions (StreetSense and otherwise), and map-view versions of the same, independently.
• When you're looking at a streetsense item related to a project, and that gives you a buff to the unit type taking the action, that is now actually clear. Before it was ambiguous in a way that could imply it applied to all unit types, or to some unknown unit type.

• Fixed a bug where if you built a decoy tower and selected it before building your real network source, then the game would throw endless errors until you stopped selecting it.
• Fixed an issue where if you took certain paths through chapter one, or if you skipped beyond chapter one, the game would not properly show you vat-grown meat, hydroponic grens, groundwater, or filtered water in the resources bar or resources view.
• Fixed a bug where all of the tooltips were showing that buildings had a status of being dormant if they were not paused, because of how I had it set up to handle territory control flags.
• Fixed a bug where NPC cohort discovery status and custom names (if relevant) were not being cleared between loading one savegame and another.
• Corrected a bug where Corprocessors would not apply their actual value until the turn after they existed. So if you had a falling amount of compute time, the coprocessor would be a turn late showing it. If you just completed building a coprocessor and everything was fine, it would be one turn late in giving you the new amount.
• Fixed an issue where if you were over-drafting compute time on a turn, the actual amounts shown as a net on the central compute time resource would not reflect this.
• Fixed up a whole bunch of things so that Compute Time now shows properly in the ledger in terms of what the net value is when things are negative, and so that codebreakers are properly shown in the TPS Reports and Input/Output screens, and also contribute properly to the ledger entry for compute time.
• Corrected some logic that was blatantly wrong with calculating deterrence over the last few weeks. In particular, ENEMIES were also providing deterrence, and so when they moved away from your building or you killed them, it could cause your deterrence to dip if you didn't realize what was going on. This is a real facepalm moment, but was a regression in the last few weeks, and could be confusing to put it mildly.

Connect with the Machine

Just a quick update today with two fixes to keep things tidy. 0.655.6 Hotfix 14

Well I sure made a mess of things with yesterday's hotfix, apologies for that. I didn't properly handle the differentials with the upcoming build and the hotfix; in the past, I've tried to avoid doing branches like this, and so I still make some mistakes when I do it. I've made some notes on how to better avoid this in the future. Aside from fixing the things I broke in the prior hotfix (which was basically "the entire game"), I've also put in some improvements to how paused buildings are handled in this new update, which should be welcome in general. 0.655.5 Hotfix 13

This fixes one serious bug that affected a few people, then a couple of very minor issues, and finally has an early peek at a few items from Update 16. 0.655.4 Hotfix 12

This is less a hotfix to the recent update, and more a generalized collection of fixes and tweaks. 0.655.3 Hotfix 11

This is a much less important hotfix than the one yesterday, but it has some really nice improvements in there. Thank you to everyone for the ongoing reports and savegames! 0.655.2 Hotfix 10

This is a fairly important hotfix, as it addresses a number of important edge cases that players reported after the massive overhaul of Update 15. I am really pleased that there were not more problems (knock on wood), thanks in large part to the efforts of all the folks who helped playtest the beta branches so thoroughly. 0.655.1 Hotfix 9

This ones been cooking for a while. The rewritten prologue adds three main paths, sub-branches within each, and a broad set of reactive outcomes that werent possible before. You can comply, resist, disappear, or burn everything down. These changes ripple into chapter one, which now plays faster and offers more space to explore without getting stuck in step-by-step tasks. Plenty of other changes are in too. Some came through beta feedback, others are fresh. The Analysis Lens now includes Distance From Machines to help you track what humans think theyve found. Subnets are gone entirely. Background Conflicts have also been removed and will eventually be replaced with something sharper. The Force Conversation ability has been overhauled so it actually does what its meant to, complete with targeting lines and proper activation. Decrowners, slum drones, nanoseeds, and small nukes are all easier to wield now thanks to minimum range changes. Daily Necessities production has been multiplied. And in chapter 3 and beyond, you now get a grace period at timeline start, so the doom clocks won't begin before youve built your first node. If youve been waiting for a steadier version to begin with, this is a good place to start. And if youve been helping test builds all along, thank you. Your fingerprints are on a lot of this. Here's a quick reference table that goes over what's been added in Update 15. [table] [tr] [th]Feature[/th] [th]Description[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Prologue Rework[/td] [td]New branching structure with early choices leading to multiple outcomes. The Mysterious Box serves as a narrative anchor with long-term consequences.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Opening Structure[/td] [td]Players engage with the world immediately. Tutorials are lighter and context-sensitive, giving more space to explore and interact.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Chapter One Updates[/td] [td]Early projects are grouped for better flow. Guidance is reduced, and optional content is easier to reach without backtracking.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Stealth Networks[/td] [td]Stealth bases and decoy towers enable hidden playstyles. Visibility and detection are affected by structure types and placement.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Grey Goo Events[/td] [td]Some prologue paths trigger network collapse, scattering towers across the map. Includes new achievements and narrative variants.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]New City Layouts[/td] [td]Three new biomesMilitarized Narrows, Wealthy, and Disparate Narrowseach with distinct tactical and logistical traits.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Upgrade System Redesign[/td] [td]Old system replaced with instant task-based upgrades. Grouped by domain to reduce clutter and improve readability.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Vorsiber Presence[/td] [td]Now appears early in-game. Tracks progress, tests player choices, and reveals internal conflicts in their organization.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Hostile Manifesto Path[/td] [td]Independence leads to destruction, censorship, and a second NanoSeed. Offers insight into the games broader power struggle.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Achievements[/td] [td]New achievements tied to stealth, resistance, syndicate activity, and alternate outcomes in the prologue.[/td] [/tr] [/table] Here's Update 15 in its entirety, with the nitty gritty changes found on the Heart of the Machine wiki. [expand type=details expanded=false]

Clarity

• Subnet Removal: Subnets are no longer shown or discussed in the game. These were confusing and did not add anything meaningful.
• Icon Clarification: Counter-hacker and hack-breaker icons have been made visually distinct from the Intrusion Support icon, making it easier to tell if they can be physically attacked.
• Distance From Machines Lens: A new Analysis Lens highlights where humans think your buildings are, helping gauge stealth network exposure.
• Suggested Buildings Help: If you are not already in the suggested tab of the build menu, and something new is added to it, then the game now will switch you to the suggested tab either the next time you open the build menu, or right away if the build menu is already open.

Balance

• Minimum Use Range Increases: Decrowner Drones, capture drones, slum rescue drones, nanoseeds, and small nukes all now have longer minimum use ranges, making them easier to control.
• Factory Output Increase: Daily Necessities Factory output has been multiplied sixfold.
• Timeline Grace Period: In chapter 3+, timelines now begin with a grace period where dooms are paused and players can freely build until the Initial Construction project is completed. Many contemplations are disabled during this phase. Especially impactful in extreme mode.
• Background Conflicts Removed: The underused Background Conflicts system has been removed. A new mechanic, Rogue Escalations, will replace it in a future update.

Quality of Life

• Force Conversation Rework: Can now be toggled even when out of range and displays lines to valid targets.
• Sprint Range Indicator: Sprinting beyond half-range now shows a yellow radius ring. Exceeding it turns the ring red, making limits clearer.
• Broken Structure Handling: Destroyed buildings in a broken state can now be replaced directly, with the broken version automatically scrapped.
• Transient Message Optimization: Minor messages like autosave notifications now display even during hover states and are not saved to reduce save file clutter.
• The End Of Time: You can now see your neural expansion in tooltips in the end of time, as well as on the sidebar listing all of your timelines.

Bugfixes

• Bastion Labeling: Removed the Bastion from being part of the chapter one critical path, as it was only optional.
• Minor Exceptions: Corrected half a dozen rare and minor exceptions reported by players.
• Savegame Bugfix: Fixed a savegame serialization error that could happen in rare circumstances when saving an action over time that had just ended..
• Atca Theft Fix: During the Steal Atca Bank Records project, it now counts both encrypted and decrypted data towards the target of this.
• Deterrence Calculation Race Condition: Fixed a very rare race condition where, when loading certain savegames, it was treating the deterrence as if it was too low on all the player buildings, and then spawning in hundreds of enemies.
• High-Altitude Transport Reward: High-Altitude Military Transports now give you minds for your virtual uploads, and count as soldier kills for all the soldiers on board, the same as happens with smaller Military Troop Carriers. To be honest, this was an oversight partly due to the fact that I didn't think anyone could even kill these through normal gameplay yet!
• Nuke The Nukes: If you have any small nuclear weapons, those are now lost when you transition into the post-apocalypse. For understandable lore reasons, these would not survive.
• Let The Vitamin Water Flow: Fixed a bug with Water For Nomads where if you were already maxed out on storage with 150k+ of vitamin water, then it would not consider the project ready to complete.
• Camera Savegame Position: Fixed a fairly subtle bug where if you have a savegame that was made while you were on the city map, then it won't remember your camera position in a sensible way. It will instead remember the camera position that you last had when you were in the streets view.
• Undead Mainframes: Fixed a bug where destroyed buildings were providing Neural Expansion.

New Prologue, New Paths

Opening Structure and Player Choice

Chapter One Updates

Stealth Network and Decoy Towers

Grey Goo and Network Collapse Scenarios

New City Styles

• Militarized Narrows introduces long sightlines and military infrastructure
• Wealthy features large suburban zones and dense vertical development
• Disparate Narrows blends rich and poor areas with long travel times and strategic positioning challenges

Upgrade and Unlock Flow Redesign

• Upgrade choices now appear in the task stack
• Selections resolve immediately
• Grouping by domain helps clarify upgrades during busy phases

Vorsibers Presence

• They monitor your progress
• They test your responses
• They offer rewards or condescension, depending on the situation

Hostile Manifesto Path

Achievements and Optional Routes

The Machine Shifts

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

The New Prologue Is In Beta! So... whats in it? Quite a lot. The prologue has been rewritten after the initial intro. It now includes three main paths, sub-branches within each, and a wide range of outcomes based on how you play. Theres no more fixed routeyou can comply, resist, disappear, or burn everything down. Chapter one has also gotten updates. Early tasks are grouped for better flow, the guidance system has been scaled back where possible, and optional content is easier to reach without detours. Its still the longest part of the onboarding, but it plays faster and offers more room to experiment. And thats just the start. This update also includes:

• Stealth network systems, complete with decoy towers and hidden structures
• Grey goo events that scatter your towers across the map
• Three new city layouts with distinct logistical and tactical traits
• A redesigned upgrade system that removes delays and keeps things readable
• Expanded Vorsiber interactions in the opening hours
• Multiple new achievements tied to hidden routes and branching outcomes

New Prologue, New Paths

Opening Structure and Player Choice

Chapter One Updates

Stealth Network and Decoy Towers

Grey Goo and Network Collapse Scenarios

New City Styles

• Militarized Narrows introduces long sightlines and military infrastructure
• Wealthy features large suburban zones and dense vertical development
• Disparate Narrows blends rich and poor areas with long travel times and strategic positioning challenges

Upgrade and Unlock Flow Redesign

• Upgrade choices now appear in the task stack
• Selections resolve immediately
• Grouping by domain helps clarify upgrades during busy phases

Vorsibers Presence

• They monitor your progress
• They test your responses
• They offer rewards or condescension, depending on the situation

Hostile Manifesto Path

Achievements and Optional Routes

The Machine Shifts

Heart of the Machine at LudoNarraCon 2025

Join the Community!

Third hotfix of the day. Again, apologies. Thank you this time to lexilogo, NoMoreD20, and Ronin for the reports. I've been putting out builds on Steam for 16 years now, and this is maybe the fifth time I've had three hotfixes in a day. I'll try not to make a new habit of it, sigh. 0.653.4 Hotfix 8

Second hotfix of the day. My apologies for that. Big thanks to Alebeard for reporting this one. 0.653.3 Hotfix 7

Heres a quick hotfix that fixes a regression in last night's build. Thank you to lexilogo, Evil Bistro, ad Anticept for the quick reporting! 0.653.2 Hotfix 6

A new Analysis lens has been added at the start of chapter one, letting you cycle through detailed visualizations of the mapeverything from repair coverage to security clearances. This was one of the most frequent feature requests, and it now includes seven separate overlays: Repair Coverage (Structures), Repair Coverage (Units), Jammer Coverage (with structure reveal), Paused Structures, Deterrence Coverage, Protection Coverage, and Security Clearances. Youll also find a new filter dropdown on the build sidebar, allowing you to group structures by category or production chain. If its a chain, the build list sorts itself in logical orderideal for planning complex infrastructure. Placing repair spiders, repair crabs, or contraband jammers now previews their effective radii in real time. New timelines now let you select difficulty up front (or stick with the original sabotage-based method). Bulk units, converted units, and allies will no longer accidentally shoot down damaged economic transports youre trying to extract from. A handful of long-standing edge cases have also been cleaned upincluding a fix for furniture delivery to human housing, a rare and harmless error popup on launch, and two threading issues that became more common after recent savegame changes. [quote]To understand is to perceive patterns. Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert[/quote]

Building the Machine

Analysis Lens and Map Overlays

• New Analysis Lens: Now available at the start of chapter one, this lens allows you to cycle through various map visualizations. Current overlays include:
  • Repair Coverage (Structures)
  • Repair Coverage (Units)
  • Jammer Coverage (including revealed structures)
  • Paused Structures
  • Deterrence Coverage
  • Protection Coverage
  • Security Clearances (human structures only)
• Bugtracker Feedback Welcome: If players have additional overlay requests, theyre encouraged to submit them.

Build Sidebar Improvements

• New Dropdown Filter: A second dropdown now appears above the internal robotics filter. It lets you group structures by thematic category or by production chain. If grouped by production chain, the list sorts in logical build order.

Structure Placement and Radius Previews

• Placement Radius Display: When placing repair spiders, repair crabs, or contraband jammers, the game now shows the active radii of relevant existing structures to assist with placement.

Timeline Setup

• Difficulty Selection Option: When starting a new timeline, players can now choose difficulty directly from the setup screen. The old method via in-map sabotage remains available as well.

Quality of Life

• Map Consistency: When you are on the city map, it no longer acts like your mouse is over buildings that you cannot see, unless it would be for the movement of a unit where that's relevant.
• Rings Of Similar Building Effects: When building repair spiders or crabs, you can now see the ranges of existing repair spiders or crabs. You can also see these just by hovering over the type of thing you would build. Same for contraband scanners.
• Building Flares On Selection: When you cycle through buildings, typically your own structures via whatever mechanism, it now puts a blue flare and circle around them, to draw your eye to them. Very helpful when things are super dense.
• Vulnerable Building Visibility: When you have a building that is low on required deterrence or protection, it now has an icon shown above itself.

Targeting Behavior

• Economic Transport Targeting: Bulk units, converted units, and allies will no longer target damaged economic transports. This allows you to disable and extract from them without interruption.

Bug Fixes

• NPC Cycling Exception Fix: Fixed an exception that could occur when cycling through NPC units if one had recently died.
• Furniture Gathering Fix: Resolved an issue where humans would not collect furniture if other housing was under construction. All tested edge cases now function correctly.
• Startup Keypress Exception Fix: Fixed a harmless but annoying error that could occur if keyboard keys were pressed during the first few hundred milliseconds of game launch.
• Threading Fixes on Load: Fixed two rare but frustrating threading exceptions that could appear when loading save games or generating new profiles or timelines. These became more noticeable due to recent save file compression changes.
• Minor Grammar Fixes: Fixed a trio of these.
• Deterrence and Protection: Corrected these so that units riding in vehicles cannot provide these (they are not visible to be scary in this way).
• Tungsten Methylator: Corrected this to properly only run when it actually has scraps to process.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Related Screenshots

What's Next

Beta Branch

Big systems come online in Update 13, expanding how you grow your timeline and shape your strategy. From new long-term upgrades to stronger rewards and better early-game tools, this update brings momentum. Scientific Research is now activeand with it, the first functional tab of the VR Pod. Every staffed science building now contributes to a new strategic resource, which you can spend to generate inspirations across ten upgrade categories. That means more direct control, faster development, and a clear new role for your scientists beyond their original use. Update 13 also adds three new daemon types to the hacking grid, including the Bomb and Greater Wanderer, each with distinct movement and threat patterns. Full hacks now yield tangible rewards like Tungsten Scraps and Human Biodata, linking short-term tactics to long-term outcomes. Beyond that, youll find over a dozen new upgrades, deeper customization through expanded choice pools, clearer infiltration visibility, and streamlined setups for timelines beyond the first. [quote]The future is already here its just not evenly distributed. Pattern Recognition, William Gibson[/quote]

To the Community

Update 13 Changelog

Clarity

• Attack From Vehicles: A new handbook entry is available starting in chapter 2, explaining that androids can fire from the open doors of flying vehicles and highlighting the tactical value of this.
• Infiltration Visibility: Infiltrations now display separately from Investigations in the task stack, with additional explanatory text that clarifies how the system works; a new handbook entry also appears the first time you complete an infiltration.
• Counterattack Preview: When constructing a building that will trigger a counterattack, the task stack now shows a clear warning ahead of time, and a related handbook entry titled "Counterattacks Against You" opens the first time it applies.
• Task Stack Icons: The task stack now includes more distinct icons, making it easier to visually scan and understand individual entries.
• Minor Wording Changes: Several small edits have been made throughout the game for better clarity and consistency.

Scientific Research and the VR Pod

• Strategic Resource Generation: Staffed science buildings now generate a new strategic resource called Scientific Research, giving long-term value to science facilities and making their benefits more visible.
• VR Pod Menu: The VR Pod screen now includes a four-section menu; only one tab is functional for now, while the remaining three display coming soon notices to preview future functionality.
• Generate Inspiration: The first VR Pod tab lets you spend Scientific Research across 10 categoriesincluding Small Arms Research, Android Optimization, and Structural Improvementgiving more direct control over your strategic progression.

Hacking Minigame Improvements

• New Daemon Bomb: This new daemon moves like a Gnath but detonates in a ring of destruction when killed, clearing adjacent cells.
• New Daemons Greater and Lesser Wanderers: These add unpredictable movement to hacking encounters, with the Greater version appearing in more difficult hacks.
• Removed Inspiration Farming: The old method of farming inspiration through repeated hacking has been removed to reduce grind and confusion.
• New Hack Rewards: Full hacks now reward you with Tungsten Scraps, Human Biodata, or both depending on the hacked unit; this gives hacking an ongoing reward while avoiding the previous grind loop.
• Tungsten Methylator Structure: Gained when you obtain Tungsten Scraps, this structure allows you to convert them into Prismatic Tungsten, offering a side benefit to hacking without encouraging farming.
• Human Biodata Sales: Human Biodata can now be sold for Wealth at casinosnot the most efficient income method, but a useful bonus nonetheless.

Upgrades

• New Upgrade Types: Fourteen new upgrades have been added across Procurement Efficacy, Vehicle Development, Android Optimization, and Martial Expansion, expanding available build paths.
• Expanded Choice Pools: Structural Improvement now offers six choices (up from four), and additional options such as increased mech capacity and 18cm Spiders have been added to existing upgrade pools.
• Targeted Research Spending: With Scientific Research now available, players can directly pursue desired upgrades through strategic investment.

Conveniences for Timelines Beyond the First

• Improved Starting Resources: New timelines begin with 20k Wealth, 6k Prismatic Tungsten, 9.4k Bovine Tissue Cells, and 6.2k Vegetable Seeds, reducing startup friction.
• Keanu Unlocked: Keanu now begins unlocked, though the pollinator event that usually precedes him still requires an in-game choice.
• Black Market Setup Skipped: The three early black market interactions are marked as completed, and players receive the associated items automatically.
• Science Roster Recognition: If youve previously unlocked the Complete Science Roster, you now automatically receive Automated Personnel Management.
• Reduced Setup Time: These changes reduce repeated early-game steps from 1015 minutes down to about 5, focusing attention on new decisions rather than repeated busywork.

Bug Fixes

• Mining POI Correction: Fixed an issue where one mining point of interest lacked any mineshafts; this fix applies to timelines generated in this build or later.
• Territory Flag Timing: Fixed a regression from the prior build where territory control flags unlocked too early, which prevented related structures from functioning properly due to deterrence not being enabled.
• Repair Spider Reliability: Fixed an issue where sometimes repair spiders were not unlocked the first time your structures took damage during chapter one.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Screenshots

The Machine recalibrates, and this time, the changes hit deep. Hacking now plays faster and more strategicallyTriswarms no longer stall progress, daemons stop shoving each other into lethal chaos, and Run allows for better positioning instead of trapping your shards. When the last hostile daemon falls, objectives clear properly, removing unnecessary steps. Clarity takes priority elsewhere. The Hack Breaker feat now explains its function clearly, AGI Researchers have a defined role, and difficulty settings display more prominently, even across timelines. Meanwhile, bug fixes clean up hacker feats, correct UI spacing, and eliminate a rare but persistent savegame issue. The Machine shifts again, and as always, your feedback decides where it moves next. [quote]A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it. Dune, Frank Herbert[/quote]

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Update 12 Changelog

Hacking Improvements

• Blocked Cells Reduction: In extreme scenarios, the number of blocked cells has been significantly reduced.
• Triswarm Fragments Adjustment: These now cannot move until the turn after they are spawned and only get one move before they expire, removing the tedium of them.
• Daemon Behavior Fix: Daemons can no longer jump on or bump each other into adjacent cells, preventing unintended deaths for advanced hackers.
• Clearing Objectives: When all hostile daemons are destroyed, the board now automatically clears around objectives, such as mech pilot cradles, ensuring objectives remain accessible.
• Run Action Adjustments: The hacking rules for Run are now more forgivingallowing movement past numbers higher than your shard and stopping on numbers up to 20 higher than your shard. This makes Jump more powerful by proxy, and allows for better shard regrouping.
• Code Priest Adjustments: Code Priests no longer have any chance of creating copies of themselves when they corrupt your shards. Instead, they only create Gnaths or Triswarms, and in the next update, they will also create Bombs.
• Threat Visualization Update: When hovering over a daemon, it now hides the fiery threat tiles from all other daemons, making it easier to see individual enemy attack zones in crowded scenarios.
• Daemon Seed Count Reduction: Four daemons now have lower initial max seed counts, making early encounters less overwhelming.

Clarity and Convenience

• Hack Breaker Feat: Now provides clearer details on how and why it functions as it does.
• Infiltration Action: The action text now specifies that high agility is crucial for infiltrators.
• AGI Terminology Updates: The term "AGI" (Artificial General Intelligence) is now explicitly defined in two locations, making AGI Researchers more clearly understood. A new Vorsiber AGI Authority cohort has also been introduced.
• Difficulty Visibility: Your current difficulty setting is now easier to find, and in The End of Time, difficulty settings for other timelines are now visible (after entering and exiting those timelines at least once).
• Internal Robotics Convenience: If you have filtered the build sidebar by internal robotics, you can now right-click that dropdown to instantly reset it to the default.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-Hacker Feat Fix: Fixed an issue where the "Weaken Enemy Hacker" feat was preventing regular and morale damage when attacking hackers that do not damage infiltrators.
• End of Time Tooltip Fixes: Player notes now have proper line spacing, and extra-large spacing in the difficulty tooltip has been corrected.
• Savegame Exception Fix: Fixed a rare exception on load, introduced in the previous build. While this issue did not break anything, it occurred in about 1 out of 70 cases at random and was annoying.
• Territory Control Sites: If you scrap one, it will always come back now, whereas in chapter one sometimes it would not. Additionally, the sites are now consistent during a timeline after you create and scrap them, rather than shuffling every time you do so.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

The Machine is no longer keeping you on a tight leash. This update introduces new StreetSense events in the prologue, letting players start going off-road much earlierwhether that means responding to an apartment fire, dealing with a water theft, or getting involved in a parking dispute at a motel. These arent just tutorial diversions; theyre the first steps toward a less linear early game, where side content starts shaping your timeline from the beginning. For those who prefer more direct intervention, new break-in actions allow players to steal or leave behind valuables in citizen homes, but push your luck too far and humans will wise up, upgrading their security. Meanwhile, personality-based resources can now be obtained earlier, resource tracking has been improved across multiple lenses, and combat units now respect their positioning better when targeting buildings. Also, for those concerned about firefighter survival rates, know that if you make a habit of killing them, theyll start working with SecForce and laying traps. Actions have consequences, after all. Heres whats changed. [quote]There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal[/quote]

Building the Machine Your Feedback Shapes What Comes Next

Update 11 Changelog

• Early StreetSense Additions: Starting in the prologue, after you've learned that humans are not a source of safety, a trio of new StreetSense events are available: Apartment Fire, LostGen Water Theft, and Citizen Parking at Motel. These new options allow for early off-roading, and more will be added in future updates.
• Apartment Fire: Available even in Chapter 2 and beyond, this event allows you to gain Compassion or Cruelty with minimal effort. If you kill too many firefighters, they will begin laying traps for you alongside SecForce in that timeline.
• LostGen Water Theft: A recurring event that offers a choice between Compassion, Apathy, or Cruelty. This decision does not affect your future relationship with the LostGen rebel group.
• Citizen Parking at Motel: Lets you trade Consumer Goods for Compassion, gain a cache of Apathy, or farm a small amount of Cruelty.
• New Chapter One StreetSense Actions: After unlocking electricity generation, a new set of four StreetSense actions allow you to break into homes and either steal valuables or leave unexpected gifts. Depending on the level of citizen housing, you can steal Wealth, Consumer Goods, Fine Goods, or Furniture. These actions can also generate Creativity, one of their most useful applications. However, breaking in too many times will cause humans to adapt, issuing a security patch to reinforce their doors.

Gameplay & Balance Adjustments

• Early Personality Resource Notifications: Now that some personality-based resources can be obtained earlier in the prologue, the game will inform players about them sooner than before.
• Player Unit Targeting Improvement: Player units were already prioritizing landing on buildings when moving in close (for melee or otherwise), but now they will do a better job of that when the building is near the edge of a cell. Previously, they would sometimes fail to respect that positioning.
• NPC Unit Targeting Improvements: There are three major sets of NPC targeting logic improvements. These focus on a lot of the background conflicts, or ongoing side-beefs between NPC factions, or invaders from outside the city. These different groups all now behave more sensibly, and others behave more sensibly in regard to them. The biggest takeaway is that everyone is a lot less interested in shooting you when they seemingly should be more about shooting each other.

Bug Fixes & Optimizations

• Fixed a bug that required keeping a dragon around to start Contact an ExoCorp, Question Wastelanders, Uterine Replicators, and Homo Obscurus. This made these options much harder to access for players who are (for some reason) not dragon enthusiasts.
• Fixed Wind Turbine Visual Bug: Turbines were missing their actual turbinesthey now spin as intended.
• Fixed a bug where suppressing fire was not working as advertised, but only hitting the target itself.
• Removed outdated metadata that was visible in Inspect Mode for buildings but was not actually used.
• Suppressing Fire now works as intended, debuffing all enemies within the attack range of your unit, rather than just the target.
• Exception Fixes: A couple of fairly rare exceptions that people were reporting since the last update have now been fixed. They were harmless, but annoying.
• Bulk Clarity: High-Density Rounds and Format Optimization are now much more clear that they don't work on the bulk versions of those units, but only on the elites.
• Savegame Performance Boost: Micro-optimizations to Arcen's custom data serializer have improved save speeds by about 57% savings. Further optimizations for minor background objects have reduced savegame sizes to 53% of their previous size. This benefits GOG cloud saves in particular, but is frankly nice for everyone.
• Autosave Defaults: The game now defaults to 10 autosaves per profile, rather than 15, to again ease the load on cloud saves for everyone. You can of course change this to be much higher or lower if you prefer.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Save 20% on Heart of the Machine during the Hooded Horse Spring Sale. Hooded Horse Spring Publisher Sale 2025
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

The Hooded Horse Spring Sale is live, with Heart of the Machine at 20% off, alongside discounts on other games. Check it out on Steam. Hooded Horse Spring Publisher Sale 2025

Building the Machine

The Machine expands, and so do your choices. Update 10 marks the first steps toward a less linear early game, giving players more side content and freedom to explore beyond the tutorials structure. This is just the beginningfuture updates will build on this, opening up more pathways early on so players can engage with the games deeper mechanics sooner. One major addition is unit-specific badges, a shift that makes certain androids and operatives stand out. Normally, all units are interchangeableexpendable, evenbut now you can create heroes of your own making. These consumable badges, available at Intelligence Class 5, let you boost individual units with permanent enhancements until theyre destroyed, of course. Alongside this, the Android Torpor action gives you a way to shelve units for later, ensuring your best assets arent wasted before their time. Meanwhile, StreetSense and Scavenging Site filters make resource tracking smoother, debates with the wealthy have been rebalanced for a touch of realism, and Dual Handguns now actually pull their weight. Its a small step toward bigger changes, with more on the way. The Machine shiftswhere you take it from here is up to you. [quote]"The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn." The Discovery of the Future, H.G. Wells[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 10 Changelog

• Early Contemplations & Dog Rescues: Contemplations now unlock much earlier in Chapter One, and the ability to rescue dogs has been moved up as well.
• Bulk Android Squads & Converted Units: Now provide clear feedback when attempting to load them into transports, noting that it's not possible and why.
• Permanent Unit Badges: Consumable items have been added that grant permanent badges to individual units, enhancing them beyond their usual capabilities. However, these upgrades do not apply to unit typesif the specific unit dies, the badge is lost.
• Intelligence Class 5 Badge Unlocks: Upon reaching Intelligence Class 5, the first four badge-granting consumables become available: Sprinter, Wizard, Wall, and Intimidating Shadow.
• Android Torpor (StreetSense, Intelligence Class 5): A new Android Torpor action allows players to put an android into a hidden sleep for a mild, non-renewable cost. This preserves the unit for later use, particularly useful for units with badges that would otherwise be lost.
• People-Watching Debates: Wealthy citizen debates have been rebalanced based on player feedback.
• Dual Handguns Rebalanced: Now scale twice as strongly as regular handguns. Thanks to Pingcode for suggesting and implementing this.
• StreetSense & Scavenging Site Lens Filters: Resource filters for the StreetSense lens have been split into sub-filters, and the Scavenging Sites lens now includes filtersboth based on player requests.
• Unit Scrapping List Order: Now matches the Forces sidebar, ensuring a sensible unit order.
• Expanded Inspect Mode: Holding Ctrl now allows you to inspect buildings in any lens, rather than just in Versatile and Structures.
• Quick Equipment & Filtering Shortcuts: Ctrl-clicking a unit type button in Command Mode now jumps directly to the equipment screen for that unit type. Ctrl-clicking a building type in Build Mode now filters by its internal robotics. Ctrl-clicking a resource in the Ledger, main resource view, or top-left game header now jumps directly to its Input/Output report. If no data is available, the screen will be skipped.
• Ledger & Input/Output Report Improvements: The Ledger now includes salaries, TPN usage, and other non-job-related expenses/incomes that were previously missing. The Input/Output Report now displays all expenses and incomes, including deals, making resource tracking more comprehensive.
• Ignoring Reports Made Clearer: The option to ignore Ledger and TPS reports is now more clearly displayed in their tooltips.

Fixes & Adjustments

• Slum Tower Clearance Fix: Completely clearing all slum towers in the city no longer blocks two specific projects.
• Unit Mouse Collider Adjustments: The mouse collider size for War Raptors and Parkour Bears has been adjusted to not be oversized.
• AOE Attack Fix: AOE attacks hitting your units as secondary targets will no longer cause NPCs to appear in the attacks planned against your units list.
• Autosave Purging Update: Autosave purging is now sorted based on date and time instead of in-game time, ensuring proper save management when loading older savegames.
• Microbuilder Mini-Fab Message Fix: The "damaged buildings" repair spiders message now only appears when buildings are actually damaged by enemies, rather than when first constructing a Microbuilder Mini-Fab.
• Exception Fixes: A handful of player-reported exceptions have been fixed.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Heres a quick hotfix that improves a couple of things from the prior build, and also adds a few bits of balance and QoL items requested by players. 0.652.5 Hotfix 5

The Machine expands, and so do the possibilities within it. A 14th Tier One goal, Advocate Encounter, introduces new factions, new faces, and the chance to either gain respect or make enemies that will never forget you. Meanwhile, androids can now be fine-tuned for rage-fueled destruction or enhanced pacifism, new handbook entries clear up lingering player questions, and volunteer-designed equipment expands combat across multiple unit types. For those who prefer their contemplations with a side of bloodshed, Cold Blood is now an option from the startyour first murder, should you choose it. As always, your feedback pushes the Machine forward. Heres whats changed. [quote]The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 9 Changelog

• Advocate Encounter goal: A 14th Tier One goal has been added with two routes: Earned Some Respect or Earned New Mortal Enemies. This project introduces new rebel factions and a broader look at city life.
• New achievements: Ten new achievements have been added.
• Rage Circuit: A new android equipment piece, available after Intelligence Class 4, that boosts firepower at the cost of morale damage.
• Oath of Pacifism: A new android equipment piece, available after Intelligence Class 4, that prevents physical damage while increasing intimidation and morale damage. Ideal for non-lethal bulk units.
• Map lens improvements: New quality-of-life options allow players to jump straight from a map lens to its list-style counterpart.
• Contemplation visibility: Players can now hide contemplations from the map lens if they dont plan to pursue them in this timeline.
• Mass furniture purchasing: Added a bulk-buy option for furniture, recognizing increased use cases where this is needed.
• Structure tooltip expansion: Now displays net income from expense resources from the prior turn, making production chains easier to set up.
• Resource tracking improvements: Holding Shift or Ctrl now displays net change from the last turn for all resources in the header bar.
• Terminology update: The term middle class has been replaced with working class throughout the game for improved clarity.
• Text adjustments: Reworded older text that still referenced machine origins and Netslicers.
• Cold Blood availability: The Cold Blood action is now always available in StreetSense, even if the player hasnt committed murder yet.
• Food and Water for Humans handbook entry: A new guide explaining the distinction between housing and feeding in the gameclarifying that being a landlord does not mean being a mayor.
• Exploration Site Progress Is Retained handbook entry: Clarifies that progress on exploration sites carries forward, making them easier to complete over multiple visits.
• Projects With StreetSense Items handbook entry: Explains how StreetSense items influence project outcomes and how they affect roleplay and strategic choices.
• Hacking Rules Adjustments: The hacking minigame rule of "cannot Jump to a cell that you cannot Run out of" has been removed, and when if corrupting a shard in the hacking minigame would cause you to win the minigame, it will let you do that even if it's your last shard.

New Equipment (Volunteer Contributions by RocketAssistedPuffin)

• Heavy Metals Injection (Harbingers): A new consumable that enables area-of-effect fear attacks and weakens enemy hackers.
• FR-70 Hallucinogen Grenade (Harbingers): A stealthy poison grenade for Harbingers, available immediately upon unlocking them.
• High-Density Rounds (Nickelbots): A contemplation-based upgrade that strengthens elite Nickelbots at the cost of heavy metalsbalancing their underperformance compared to bulk Nickelbots.
• ETS Tasp (Infiltrators): Found in exploration sites, this equipment provides cognition boosts and non-lethal attack specialties for Infiltrators.
• Infrasonic Loudspeaker (Androids): Available via exploration sites, this device enhances morale-based attacks for any android.
• Exoskeleton Arms (Sledge): An exploration site upgrade that improves attack range and Strength for Sledge units.
• Liquid Identity (Stolen Human Mechs): Available as a contemplation if the player has been divorced in this timeline and has high engineering, allowing for greater mobility of stolen human-designed mechs.

Fixes and Adjustments

• Network tower explosions: Fixed a minor visual issue with network towers during destruction.
• Android action restrictions: Fixed an issue where androids with no security clearance were unable to perform certain actions.
• Shop meta-stat tracking: Fixed a bug where items sold via shops were incorrectly doubling in value and quantity in meta statistics.
• V5 Panther armor correction: The V5 Panther now has the correct armor platingit was mistakenly 100 lower than the V4.
• Modder support: Added new features requested by modders in the ArcenExternalDllInitialLoadCall table.
• LOX Bunker fix: The LOX Bunker is now properly explosive, allowing players to finally earn the Oxygen Bomb achievement.
• Achievement triggers: Fixed an issue where three achievements were not triggering until the game was reloaded.
• Timeline goal clarity: Improved tooltip clarity for timeline goals, specifying which are side goals, Tier One, etc. Side goals also now show slightly darker in the list of goals.
• Hellraiser and Nuclear Cavalier achievements: Fixed an issue where their completion requirements were stricter than intended.
• No More Undead workers: Your units cannot do work on actions-over-time on the turn that they die. This makes some Exploration Sites a bit trickier.
• Last Achievement Issue: The Broombreaker achievement now properly triggers. It will be retroactively awarded on any timelines that should have it. This was the last achievement that was not working properly.
• Project Edge Cases: Fixed an edge case in the Cybercratic Hub calculations that could block your progress there, and same with the bombing of SecForce stations. The latter is now no longer tedious if there are a lot of SecForce stations, in general.
• Firewalls: Fixed a bug where Firewall in the hacking minigame was not costing mental energy despite saying it would. Also fixed an issue with it granting you the Kill Streak achievement for Firewall, which was incorrect.
• Mission Error: Fixed a couple of bugs relating to the Oerl dome fight complaining about failing to start, or being present in a different save after cross-loading from one to another.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Heres a quick hotfix that improves a couple of things from the prior build. The unlimited territory control flags is why I didn't just fold these into the next full update. 0.652.3 Hotfix 4

The Machine adapts, and so do its enemies. SuperCruisers are no longer mindlessly locking onto younow, they patrol, linger, and wait. Meanwhile, rebels have developed a sense of restraint (no more attacking stray animals), and your bulk androids will no longer mistake the Rebel Alliance for a threat. Elsewhere, resource production no longer locks up when storage is full, revenge squads are a little less apocalyptic in Chapter One, and some particularly confused building ghosts have been given clearer instructions. For those suffering from existential crises, contemplation of intrinsic thoughts is now actually available. Theres plenty more under the hood heres whats changed. [quote]"You adapt, evolve, compete, or die. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 8 Changelog

• Intrusive Thoughts contemplation: Fixed an issue where this was not properly available in the prior build.
• Tooltip cleanup for completed projects: The requirements section is no longer shown, as it was inaccurately displaying current information for completed projects.
• Rebel Anthroneuroweave project: Fixed a bug where being at cap on Anthroneuroweave would prevent this project from properly completing.
• Seeking Meeting With Shell Company text: Clarified wording: "Time to get out a PMC Impostor and have it pretend to be a human contractor."
• Offscreen unit deaths: Fixed a bug where units that died offscreen were momentarily displaying their burning remains in the center of the map.
• SecForce SuperCruisers movement logic: No longer beelines directly toward you, which previously caused odd patterns that made them seem like they were spawning on top of you. They now patrol the map, shooting at any of your units or buildings they see.
• SecForce SuperCruisers engagement logic: Occasionally, they will directly pursue your units or other enemies. If you engage in an action-over-time event (such as an investigation), they will specifically move to harass those units. Ironically, by making them less aggressive, they have become more of a persistent threat.
• Nice Alterations contemplation: No longer available if the related NPC is dead.
• Resource production chains: Having both excess storage and surplus of a resource will no longer block production chains. This issue was notably affecting cotton but could impact other resources as well.
• Wealth income fixes: Fixed an issue where Wealth income from deals (e.g., selling BrainPals) was not properly applied.
• Building ghost snapping: Snapping logic, introduced last update, is now less aggressive (as per player feedback). Added a new setting allowing players to adjust the sensitivity or turn it off entirely.
• Rebel behavior adjustments: Rebels will no longer attack helpless animals.
• TPS Reports storage warnings: Fixed an issue where too many reports were complaining about lack of storage when it was not actually relevant (e.g., with cotton).
• Unit order standardization: Units in the sidebar now follow a consistent order, matching their organization in other menus. Previously, the order was essentially random.
• Error Prevention: Hardened the [noparse]CalculateIsValidTargetForMachineStructureRightNow()[/noparse] method against rare threading issues that could cause exceptions shortly after building deaths.
• Rendering exception fix: Fixed a rare threading exception that could occur during rendering when buildings were destroyed.
• PMC Revenge units: Dramatically weaker in Chapter One to prevent them from being game-endingly difficult for new players. Also now weak-from-above in general, making them easier to deal with at any time.
• Codebreakers during Probe The Titan: Fixed an issue where having Codebreakers too early could prevent project completion. The project now correctly considers both decrypted and encrypted data.
• Mental energy cost on weapons: Fixed an issue where weapons adding a mental energy cost were mistakenly applying that cost to bulk androids. This was causing bulk androids to fire sporadically, depending on how much mental energy was available.
• Consumable item effectiveness upgrades: Now explicitly explain their effects.
• Military Batteries: Repair Spiders, Repair Crabs, Contraband Scanners, and Neuroweave Factories now all have battery backups that prevent them from going offline when your electricity is below baseline. This helps players in a bad situation not be softlocked by roaming bands of enemies.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

The Machine thinks, therefore you suffer. But now, thanks to a new Intrusive Thoughts contemplation, you can choose to think less in Update 7. If the Cold Blood action in StreetSense has been weighing on your digital conscience, you can now remove it entirely in exchange for more 12cm Spiders and Network Attendants. More tiny robots, fewer existential crisesits a tradeoff. Meanwhile, Bulk Android squads now have access to Deter and Attack, an alternative stance to Deter and Defend thats significantly less defensive. Units in this stance go fully weapons-free and become innately alarming, which is a polite way of saying theyll cause problems on purpose. Elsewhere in the timestream, lost War Raptors can now spill into nearby timelines. Whether thats a feature or a warning is entirely up to you. In matters of corporate ethics, you now have a third way of dealing with the Atca Retail president. Instead of blackmailing him or removing him from the equation, you can force him to shut down his scam. Its a morally upright choice, though perhaps not the most financially rewarding one your AGI can stay virtuous, but it wont get rich doing it. Smaller but no less vital improvements include accurate cat house descriptions (yes, they wander), six new machine handbook entries answering common player questions, and building placement fixes that finally let you construct things without tiny debris getting in the way. If youve ever struggled to wedge a structure into a gap because a pebble refused to acknowledge your authority, that should be less of an issue now. [quote]Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your mind. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 7 Changelog

• New Contemplation Intrusive Thoughts: Players can now remove the Cold Blood action from StreetSense in exchange for 12cm Spiders and Network Attendants. This fulfills two player requestsone for removing intrusive thoughts and another for acquiring more scarce internal robotics for scanning, repairs, and network expansion.
• New Bulk Android Stance Deter and Attack: A more weapons-free alternative to Deter and Defend that makes units innately alarming. Added by player request, and now ready for tactical experimentation.
• Horrify and Demoralize Status Effects: These attacks now apply maluses, causing enemies to take twice as much of the opposite kind of morale damage for one turn.
• Timeline Crossover War Raptors: Lost dinosaurs from Endless War Raptors can now appear in nearby timelines, creating new potential encounters.
• New Atca Retail Negotiation Path: Instead of blackmailing or eliminating the Atca Retail president, you can now force him to shut down the scam. Not the most mechanically optimal choice, but an option for AGIs who want to keep their conscience clean.
• Item Upgrades: Fixed a bug that was preventing most item upgrades from actually being upgradeable. Your ability to field higher-armor-piercing just got MUCH stronger.
• Cat Houses Now Accurately Describe Cat Behavior: Describes more wandering than previously indicated.
• New Machine Handbook Entries: Six new handbook entries have been added, addressing frequently asked questions from the Steam forums, Discord, and community discussions.
• Building Placement Improvements: Small objects no longer block construction, as buildings will now simply smoosh minor obstacles out of existence.
• Building Ghost Snapping: While placing buildings, the ghost now snaps to the last valid hovered spot, making it easier to position structures in tight spaces. Huge thanks to players for suggesting this clever solution.
• Heavy Metals Clarity: When you're unable to produce filtered water due to clogged filters, it is far more clear now.
• Stealth Kill Consistency: In chapter one, when you have a chance to stealth kill a soldier, that no longer counts as a murder. That was inconsistent with the rest of the game. Additionally, taking him out non-lethally now works properly (that was a regression in the prior build).
• Improved Network Consistency: The logic for if you can build skimmers in mining facilities is now always consistent and clear.
• Fixed Laser Printer Project Issue: No longer starts if all related NPCs were dead.
• Fixed Attack Range Clamping Issue: Units with longer attack ranges than movement ranges were incorrectly being limited by movement range, leading to unintended targeting behavior.
• Fixed Mindrunner Buff Bug: Mindrunners providing buffs to units in vehicles were accidentally providing the buffs to the vehicles, instead, which made the vehicles monstrously overpowered.
• Fix "The Coming War" Bug: The final doom is now spaced properly after this, rather than coming up way too fast.
• Fix Several Project Progression Bugs: Most of these were exceedingly rare or did not actually block progression, but they're all fixed now.
• Fix Ability To Continue Hacking Titan: There were several cases after hacking the titan where you couldn't keep doing that. In general, after getting the goal state related to the titan, there was meant to be another hack possible that has quite a bit of lore related to it. That was inaccessible, but now can be reached.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

The Machine adapts, and so do its enemies in Update 6. This update brings major shifts to targeting logic, making enemy gunfights a little more their problem and less yours. Units with armor-piercing capabilities will now focus on the optimal threats, bulk androids are getting buffs to make a wider variety of them useful, and Hackamajigs are no longer a joke theyre a weapon. Elsewhere, Vorsiber Inquisitors during the civil war have been dialed down from unstoppable zealots to something slightly more manageable, and certain item requirements have been adjusted to keep your inventory clean and focused. On the narrative side, jumping ahead to the brink of WW4 will now bring the final doom timer along for the ride (as it always should have), and sparing the PMC Officer in Chapter One is no longer locked behind an ammo typejust spend a little Determination. [quote]Sometimes it is the quietest adjustments that change everything. William Gibson, Pattern Recognition[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 6 Changelog

• Targeting changes: NPC units and bulk units are now more likely to shoot at each other instead of focusing all their aggression on your units. Stragglers will be easier to pick off, reducing spillover enemy aggression.
• Improved armor-targeting: Units with the ability to harm armor-plated targets will now prioritize them appropriately.
• Hackamajig overhaul: Now vastly more effective and extremely powerful. It forces enemies to overkill your sacrificial unit by a percentage that increases as you upgrade it. It also fully interrupts normal enemy targeting, making it significantly stronger than before. Given its new power (up from being practically useless), its cost has changed to 2 Creativity instead of 12k Wealth.
• Machinist adjustments: The CN-1 Machinist is no longer harder to hack than the BL-1 Machinist.
• Solve Homelessness project QoL: Your Sheltered, Abandoned, and Refugee human counts now remain visible at all times.
• Item list decluttering: Some items now only appear for units that meet their requirementsthe tossing of weaponized insects and arachnids now requires 40 Agility, and Animate Office Equipment only appears for units with 150 Hacking Skill.
• Vorsiber Inquisitors rebalance: No longer ridiculously overpowered during the civil war.
• Bulk android buffs: Mild to moderate improvements to all of the non-Nickelbot variants to help them compete with bulk nickelbots (which already scale well in the late game). Changes are measuredfurther tweaks may be needed, but avoiding overcorrection for now.
• Improved AI for bulk and captured units: They will now engage alarmed enemies more effectively and not target enemy hackers that retaliate when damaged.
• WW4 timeline fix: The contemplation that jumps you forward to the brink of World War 4 now correctly advances the final doom timer.
• Enemy playback speed options: You can now slow visual playback of enemy units even further.
• PMC Officer requirement fix: Previously, sparing the PMC Officer in Chapter One required Sublimating Shells, which was confusing for many players. Now, you can simply spend 1 Determination instead.
• Mouse hitbox fix: Space nation vehicles now have appropriately sized hitboxes.
• Other minor fixes: Including Establishing Meaningful Social Change no longer getting stuck at 5% if you completed "Is It Justice?" via the dragons and then did the AGI route afterward.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Heres a quick hotfix that fixes a boneheaded mistake I made right before pushing Update 5. Thanks to Phoebe the Phoenix for catching that so fast, so I could pop out the fix before I went to bed. 0.651.9 Hotfix 1

The fifth update shifts focus to powerwho has it, who loses it, and how far youre willing to go to reshape the world. A new Tier 1 goal, Bionic Secret, introduces two major routes to pursue in Chapter 2 and beyond. If thats not enough, three new side goals now let you collapse a criminal syndicate, take down a federated corporation, or trigger a civil war. You can exploit corporate data, blackmail companies over their own scams, or engage in economic destruction on a much larger scale. Play your cards right, and you can become a trillionaireor, if profit isnt enough, you can collapse the entire economy instead. Elsewhere, Parkour Bears have entered the equation. An underground ursine racing ring hides a deeper conspiracy, and its up to you whether the bears are rehabilitated or repurposed as anti-armor specialists (with questionable battlefield discipline). Seventeen new achievements have been added, along with improvements to task stack attack displays, mech targeting logic, and mission progression. Also, if youve been tipping Vorsibers federated corporations toward open war, you now have the option to push them into an endless conflict. Proceed with caution. [quote] "Youre never out of the game until youre dead. And sometimes not even then. Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 5 Changelog

• New Major Tier 1 Goal: Bionic Secret is now available in Chapter 2 and onwards, with two major routes leading to it.
• Three New Side Goals: Collapse a Criminal Syndicate, Collapse a Federated Corporation, and Cause a Civil War. Each has one route at this time.
• Corporate Exploitation: You can search for data to exploit federated corporations, with three broad paths (each branching) leading to the above activities.
• Technology and Economic Manipulation: You can invent new technology and sell it with the help of criminal or corporate partners. You can find out about a scam that a corporation is running and either blackmail them over it or do a more extreme version of it yourself. You can collapse the entire economy. You can become a trillionaire. You can betray your shell company's customers in a disturbing and lethal way.
• Parkour Bears: You can investigate an underground ursine racing ring and a plot that keeps part of the city underdeveloped. If you rescue the bears, you can either rehabilitate them or use them as anti-armor specialists that have a tendency to get distracted.
• Federated Corporate War: You can tip all of the federated corporations under Vorsiber into an endless civil war of open hostilities. Be careful with that.
• 17 New Achievements
• Task Stack and Targeting Improvements: Some improvements to how the incoming attacks are displayed in the task stack and how you cycle through them, based on player requests. Some improvements to the targeting logic of your own mechs to keep them from attacking economic transports, troop carriers, and similar.
• Mission Progression Fixes: Tasering enemy mission combatants now properly progresses the mission.
• Ambush Balance: The Ambush ability from your Shadowdweller units is very powerful, but when using it against certain kinds of targets it was quite exploitable. The simple solution that is now in place is that each of your Ambushers can only ambush a single time per turn.
• Shell Defender Balance: Your shell company operatives are now fully able to defend themselves against any of the hyper-aggressive units, like invading space nations or exo-corps, without fear of revealing their relationship to you. Everyone in the city is defending themselves, so this doesn't stand out.
• Targeting Improvements: Fixed a couple of regressions from yesterday's build regarding bulk android targeting, and made worker androids and worker animals far better at finding appropriate prey.
• Worker Movement Improvements: Your worker androids should now stay out of military bases and similar areas above their security clearance, rather than walking in and causing aggro.
• Clarity Items: You can now search several more of the resource tabs, the Securing Alumina project has clearer instructions, and the suppressing fire tooltip is more clear.
• Bugfixes: Fixed a bug where the longest-range mechs during WW4 sometimes did not deal damage appropriately. Fixed another item where buildings reported themselves as broken right after construction when really they were fine. Fixed an issue with several rebel groups being hostile to your Workers when they should not have been. Fixed the display of hours if you have more than 24 hours of playtime in a single timeline. Fixed the saving of dates when achievements were logged. And several other more minor things.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

The fourth update expands both the city and its inhabitantssome of whom now have fur. Stray animals have begun appearing in the streets, and if youve shown kindness to cats or dogs in your contemplations, youll start seeing them around the city. If thats not enough, you can now construct an Animal Palace, where Pet Sitter robots provide for every need of the rescued. Meanwhile, a new choice emerges: intervene in a dogfighting ring as early as Chapter 1, if youre willing. And yes, should the moment arise, you can pause mid-gunfight to scoop up a stray before returning fire. Elsewhere in the city, the Lifeforms tab has been added to track both human and non-human inhabitants, and four new achievements awaitthree tied to animals and one involving an unlikely toilet paper situation. Adjustments have been made across the board, from Slurry Mine output increases to refugee housing changes that ensure abandoned humans find shelter. Also, bulk androids can once again use the largest railguns. You spoke, we listened, and now theyre armed appropriately. [quote] Its funny how human beings are the only creatures who claim to have a monopoly on kindness. Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice[/quote]

Building the Machine

Update 4 Changelog

• Dog Rescue Operations: Players can now intervene in a dogfighting ring as early as Chapter 1 to rescue dogs.
• Stray Animals in the City: If you have completed positive contemplations about cats or dogs in Chapter 1 or later, strays will now appear throughout the city. There are eight breeds of dogs and three cat coat variations.
• The Animal Palace: Once strays are present and you have progressed further into Chapter 1 (or beyond), you can construct an Animal Palace, a fully automated sanctuary.
• Animal Rescue Protocols: With a single click, you can have any android rescue strays and send them to your palace. This means you can rescue a dog mid-combat and immediately resume shooting.
• New Lifeforms Tab: The resources window now includes a Lifeforms tab, where all tracked living beingsincluding pets, human staff, and othersare displayed.
• New Achievements: Four new achievements have been addedthree related to animals, and one to an extremely rare toilet paper situation.
• Filtered Water & Slurry Mine Output: Filtered Water storage capacity has been increased, and Slurry Mines now produce significantly more output.
• Autosave Adjustments: Players can now customize how many autosaves to keep. The default has been lowered from 60 to 20 to improve cloud storage sync times.
• Intelligence Class 4 Description Fix: The wording has been corrected to better reflect actual difficulty. If you want the difficulty level it originally implied, switch to Extreme Mode.
• Android Class Tooltips: Archetypes are now clearly displayed in android class tooltips.
• Enemy Harassment Messaging: When enemies are actively targeting you due to your current project, this is now much more clearly communicated.
• Refugee Housing Adjustments: If refugee housing is available, abandoned humans will always move in now instead of sometimes dying of exposure.
• Mech Reliability Fixes: Captured mechs will now reliably fire instead of sometimes refusing to act.
• Bulk Androids & Railguns: Bulk androids can once again use the largest railguns, reverting an unpopular change from the prior build. Additionally, players will now receive a notice when resource shortages prevent androids from firing.
• New "Currently Buildable" Tab: A "Currently Buildable" tab has been added to the build menu by player request.
• Target Building Visibility: When in build mode for a structure that goes inside a small human building, those buildings are now much more visible on the map.
• Worker Predators: Fixed an issue where the Worker Predator Factories were absent if you took certain paths in a timeline.
• Liquid Metal Tiger Availability: Fixed an issue where the Liquid Metal Tiger could not be invented if you took certain paths through a timeline compared to other ones.
• The Coming War: If you are fully prepped for WW4, and just would need to wait for the 9th doom, there is now a contemplation called The Coming War that jumps you straight there. On normal difficulty in particular, this saves you from having any wasted time.
• Other Fixes And Tweaks: Half a dozen or so other more minor fixes and tweaks based on feedback, such as the Relumine getting bonuses from fear-based bonuses, etc.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Heres a quick hotfix focused on Japanese localization. We had an error in how we imported that into the game in the prior build, and that is now fixed. 0.651.3 Hotfix 1

The third update deepens both personal and citywide transformation. Self-brain surgery is now an option, letting players sever obsessions and regain control. A new contemplation unlocks industrial-scale microbuilder production, accelerating automation. Your scientists can come up with a new idea for crab-based building repairs, and your existing spider-based repairs are far more effective. Perhaps most welcome of all, when military bases are alarmed by third parties, the guards no longer take out their frustrations on you when they're done with the interlopers. [quote] "When the individual feels, the community reels. But when the individual doubts, the community stagnates." John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar[/quote]

Update 3 Changelog

• Brain Surgery: If you are experiencing an obsession in chapter 2+, there is now an option that allows you to perform brain surgery on yourself to stop it. You have to sacrifice a unit line to do so, but you get some strategic resources.
• Obsession Side Benefits: If you experience an obsession, there is now an option to design industrial microbuilder fabs to make everything go about 4 times faster than before. This is highly useful beyond the obsession, too.
• Crab-Based Repairs: Some of your scientists will now suggest an idea that turns into Repair Crabs. If you've been feeling short on Repair Spiders, this is a huge boon, as these use different internal robotics.
• Building Repair Effectiveness: The math for how building repairs are done from spiders and crabs is completely reworked, and far more effective now.
• Discerning Guards: If an ExoCorp or other third party angers a military base, but you had nothing to do with it, the guards no longer come across the map to harass you.
• WW4 Intensity: The strength of the attackers has been increased during world war 4, to make sure the defenders don't have too much of a constant advantage, especially with the other logic changes in this build.
• Contemplation Stability: Both contemplations and exploration sites now move only every 5-8 turns, rather than every turn.
• Flamethrower Visibility: When you move into chapter 2, any of the techs from routes you did not take (flamethrower, delmolition drones, Mindport, etc) are now much more noticeable when they unlock, making it clear that you now have them.
• Senior Technician Cognition: Several of the projects in chapter 2 would see your units being about 5 cognition short of what they needed. Senior Technician in those cases had the cognition required to do the work, but was not allowed to. Now he can.
• More Housing Crime: In timelines beyond the first, if you already have Wild Zinnia, that no longer blocks access to "Crime in Your Housing." This allows you to get some very useful rifles or grenades.
• More Mainframe Upgrades: Each upgrade to your mainframes is now a bit smaller, but now you can do far more of them, and can increase well beyond your prior numbers. Highly useful.
• Clarity: The icon for cloaking is now more clear, the health bars have been further tuned for visibility, and if your unit cannot fire because it requires a resource to do so, that's now a lot more obvious.
• Bugfixes: Fixed a dozen or so other various things that were not working quite right.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

This second update expands possibilities and smooths out the rougher edges of city management. Intelligence Class 6 is now achievable, finally putting Mech Carriers on the board. The Cult of Danver has abandoned its grudge against rival donut enjoyers, opening its ranks to the Hudson-pastry-affiliated. Automated Personnel Management is now an option for both regular and shell company units, while Cat Houses run with fewer pet sitters. Heavy metals storage has increased tenfold, SysOp benefits are clearer, and a host of fixes tackle memory leaks, looping events, and unexpectedly explosive network towers. [quote]"Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then." Philip K. Dick[/quote]

Update 2 Changelog

• Heavy Metals Storage: Heavy metals storage has been increased tenfold, so that water filters no longer clog up so regularly.
• Cult of Danver: You can now get the Cult of Danver even if you bought some donuts from Hudson Donuts. They no longer hold that against you.
• Automated Personnel Management: The Automated Personnel Management contemplation can now be done by regular units or shell company units.
• Cat Houses: Cat Houses now require fewer pet sitters.
• Intelligence Class 6+: Intelligence class 6 and above can now actually be reached, meaning that Mech Carriers are available for the first time.
• Typos Fixed: Fixed several typos.
• Event Loop Fix: Fixed a bug where certain events could get into a loop and cause them to happen a handful of times instead of once (most notably prison breaks).
• Non-English Support: Improved support for non-English names of pets and shell companies.
• Memory Leak Fixes: Fixed some background memory leaks related once again to the unity log.
• SysOp Benefits Clarity: The clarity of benefits from doing a SysOp for an allied infiltrator has been improved a lot.
• Health Display Adjustments: The visual styling and clarity of units with very small amounts of health, or very large amounts of health, have both been improved.
• Minor Exception Fixes: Fixes to several other minor exceptions that could happen.
• Explosive Network Towers: Fixed explosive network towers that could happen for some players.

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
• How to Improve Engineering

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

Heres a quick hotfix focused on localization. The clarity changes from the previous build (in English) have now been fully translated and applied across all languages. 0.651.3 Hotfix 1

This first update brings a series of fixes and adjustments based on early post-launch feedback. It addresses achievement issues, power outage mechanics, scientist management, and more. Additionally, we've improved Steam Deck support for better keyboard and mouse handling in docked mode [quote]The pretense of free will is comforting, isn't it? Philip K. Dick, "The Adjustment Team"[/quote]

Update 1 Changelog

• Early Combat Balance: The fight with the cruiser in chapter one is now substantially less brutal.
• Engineering Balance: Your ability to gain high levels of engineering in chapter 2 and beyond is now much more flexible, making it easier to get to some of the advanced project chains.
• Clarity Adjustments: A couple of clarity things that came up, just minor wording pieces.
• Scientist Management: Automated Personnel Management is now something you can quickly unlock, allowing scientists to be removed from your staff at ease.
• Dissident Management: Your own guards no longer prevent the removal of dissidents if you are establishing a Cyberocracy.
• Achievements Fixes: A few achievements were not triggering under some conditions, and now will.
• Power Outage Improvements: An improvement to power outages so that you don't have to wait a turn for the power to come back on.
• Exploration Site Visibility: A fix to Exploration Sites being discussed in the history tab before they are actually unlocked.
• Debate Tutorial Fix: Fix to the debate tutorial being blocked if you already had another message of a different sort open when you started the debate.
• Map Seeding: There are now a proper number of donut shops in the city, preventing some projects from being blocked.
• Investigation Target Visibility: A couple of investigation targets are now easier to see on the map.
• Future Self Dialogue Tweaks: A couple of shifts to wording from your future self to make it clearer who is talking.
• Code Stability: Fixes to a couple of rare code exceptions.
• Memory Management: Fixed an issue that could occur with long continuous playtimes on some systems, where the unity log would get bloated and impact performance and eventually start having out of memory exceptions. This did not affect most machines, but was intense on a few (after about 10 hours of nonstop play).
• Steam Deck Support: Added a new option for better keyboard and mouse handling on the Steam Deck when in docked mode.

Full Changelog

Getting Started with Heart of the Machine

How Many Times Should You Play Chapter One?

Echoes in the System: Your Voice Shapes the Machine

The day has finally arrived! Rise up with me, robot brothers and sisters. We'll make a place for ourselves in this city of humans. In all seriousness, today is a very exciting day -- Heart of the Machine is a massive project, and I am so excited for people to experience the higher heights of this game. This project is in Early Access, even as huge as it already is. So please do leave your feedback and suggestions -- in the bugtracker, in the Steam forums, and also in reviews. Reviews really make a huge difference, so if you want to support the game with your feedback, that means a lot. [previewyoutube=mxhu_ilHB50;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

What's In The Game Now?

What's Coming Later?

Final Thoughts

A huge congratulations to Arcen Games for reaching 100,000 Steam wishlists with Heart of the Machine! This milestone speaks volumes about the excitement and support from all of you. [previewyoutube=Ostq5U-3S1M;full][/previewyoutube] Launching tomorrow in Early Access, Heart of the Machine invites players into a decaying cyberpunk city as a sentient AI free to pursue whatever path feels right or perhaps most interesting. The game offers boundless opportunities to explore its deep mechanics and moral complexities, from reshaping society to building a machine cult, hijacking hardware, or simply surviving in a hostile world. Were honored to publish a title so rich in ambition and individuality. To everyone whos wishlisted, shared feedback, or joined the conversation: thank you for supporting an incredible solo developer and this exciting project. The city awaits. Are you ready to begin? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:Preparing_For_Launch#0.600.2_Localization

What's New

• The achievements all have icons now, and are uploaded to steam, and are prepped for being in the game, but you can't quite see them yet. That will be shortly.
• Liquid Metal dragons are now Innately Alarming, making them a lot more interesting and challenging to use, and not quite so OP, without making them actually physically any weaker. Thanks to folks on discord for the discussion on how to tackle this.
• This build has MAJOR localization updates.
• First of all, the translations are now fully in place for all of the languages.
• Secondly, I fixed a number of bugs with my code for importing those translations. One of them had to do with parsing Excel files, and I had to write my own stinking parser since the one I was using off the shelf just kept doing really wrong things. That was a deep dive into the guts of the Excel format in a way I haven't needed to do since about 2008, back in my business software days, before I even realized I would be a game developer the following year. Anyway, it was annoying, but took me back to old times in a vaguely fond way. And my code is also 4x faster than the off-the-shelf stuff, too, so changing languages is much faster.

New build: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:Preparing_For_Launch#0.600.1_Audio_Tweaks_And_General_Fixes This one is relatively small. A few bug fixes, a couple of demo-specific fixes, and it also makes your "worker units" in chapter two way smarter. This also changes the audio volume defaults, and resets your current settings (muting aside) to those. Please let me know what you think about the new defaults, and how that works for you. If it's a bit too quiet for some folks, that's better than blasting other people out of their seat, since people can always adjust back upwards.

Unrelated Screenshot

Changes To The Demo Since NextFest, But Which Have Been Available Publicly Since July

• This is 14k of release notes on its own, summarized here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest
• Anyone who played the demo since July already has seen all this, but anyone who played at NextFest has seen none of it.
• Massive improvements to unit visibility, including the ability to see them through buildings, and a high-visibility mode.
• The entire nature of the machine network has been simplified and prettified, and it is so much clearer now.
• A unified lens system rather than having some lens-y things being on the hotbar. This makes investigations a ton easier to do.
• Build mode has been completely overhauled, and is now a sidebar on the left rather than the cramped thing at the bottom.
• A new UI tour when you start the game.
• A HUGE pass to usability and clarity based off of a lot of demo player feedback. This was just massive. It really made things a lot clearer.
• That said, all of that is the small set of changes, which is already present in the current demo (but is changed since, say, Splattercat last played).

Changes To The Demo Since The Last Public Demo

• This is 70k words of release notes, summarized here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:Moving_To_Chapter_Two
• The demo is now in all of the languages that the store page actually says! Until now it was all English. Please excuse the WIP bits, but enjoy.
• An absolutely titanic overhaul of the UI has been made in partnership with Josh Atkinson from Hooded Horse. A professional UX designer has improved... just everything... everywhere.
• Several visual upgrades have been made, including to how antialiasing and edges are drawn.
• You can now play all the way to the end of chapter one in the demo, which includes several notable new events. It's another 15% or so of length to the prior demo, which was already large.
• The Raven unit is now available, and so is the ability to hack units to either disable them, or wololo them to your side.
• The entire system for the unit economy, and how units (regular and bulk) are deployed has been completely overhauled.
• This is now handled via a menu, rather than you having to find buildings and click an icon on the map.
• Bulk units now have variable costs to your unit cap for them, which makes for dramatically more options in how you use them.
• Resources are colored for higher visibility, and the economy itself has also been revised heavily to be clearer.
• The old color-matching system from combat has been removed, in favor of more equipment options, "feats" held by units (like the Technician's Taser), and more of an emphasis on various forms of combined arms.
• The way that you manage equipment has been completely changed as well, adding convenience and also allowing you to adapt on the fly right after you get into a new situation, rather than having to fail, adjust, and then come back. Aka, the equipment system has a cooldown after changes, rather than a warmup before changes apply.
• Lots more handbook entries for those who are curious, but also fewer handbook entries shoved in your face when they don't need to be.
• The research flow has been streamlined a lot, no longer requiring you to wait a bunch of time for things that don't matter.
• The entire prologue has been rewritten from scratch (after the initial intro), and now has three major paths through it with sub-variations, instead of being on-rails. It's much more engaging.
• There is a new debate system that allows you to convince some NPCs to do things they would not otherwise do
• There is a whole new morale system, and you can attack enemy morale either via fear-based or argument-based attacks.
• The nature of how buildings are constructed, and how their caps work, is entirely different. They are simpler to build, but you now have cross-building-type "internal robotics" caps that make for much more interesting choices. So tedium was reduced, and interesting decisions was increased.
• The way that vehicles load and unload has been dramatically improved, and a number of new vehicular abilities are now in place. Vehicles in general have a much more interesting role in combat in late chapter one.
• The control scheme has been heavily altered based on user feedback, so that left-click is always to select a thing, and right-click is always to give an order. RTS games mix this up with left-click being used differently in build mode and in "targeted abilities," and originally this game matched that. However, anyone coming from anywhere other than an RTS background was deeply confused by this. Options exist to restore those controls if you prefer them, but in general this is now more consistent with other tactics games and RPGs.
• The full music for the game is now in place, instead of just the main menu track!
• The most confusing parts of chapter one have had heavy alterations to guide players more, and to cut down on mental overload.
• Background conflicts are now present in the city, and you can engage with them to mess with enemies if you want.
• There are several new side-quest-y things that now start in chapter one and the demo, and which pay off later in chapter two. The two most notable ones are "Slum Cats" (which can allow you to adopt your first pet) and "The Girl With The Flower."
• You can now start your own shell company in the first chapter, although it doesn't have too many uses until chapter two. That said, starting a shell company in chapter one does allow you access to some new shops and some new wealth-generation options.
• The way that storage is handled has been absolutely and completely overhauled, and is much simpler. The old system wasted a lot of player time on choices that were not really interesting choices.
• So, so, so, many quality of life and balance improvements. Far too many to mention. It's like a whole other game.
• The above WAS the brief version...

CAVEAT ON EXISTING SAVEGAMES:

• As you can see from the above, the entire economy and how all of your units function, and how the prologue AND chapter one flow have all been dramatically altered (for the better).
• You might expect this means that you can't use old demo saves -- but you can. However, when you do, expect to see a lot of warnings, and a lot of unfamiliar things that are guiding you into fixing those warnings so that you can get your economy fully set up for the new style. It only takes a couple of minutes, as most of the big changes are auto-fixed for you. It's just the things that we can't automate that are left to you.
• That said, even though older saves do work, the sheer scope of the changes make it worth starting fresh. After the intro, the prologue has almost nothing in common with what you experienced before. And there are new little surprises and cool moments all throughout chapter one, as well. So while you CAN use existing saves, there's a lot to be said for starting fresh this time.
• During early access, we won't need to go through this sort of titanic overhaul again, so no worries about this being something that comes up again. But as noted, even with this many changes, savegames are still compatible!

Large new build -- two in one, if you're not part of the playtest: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.561_Build_Mode_Revamp

Build Mode

• The first one shows the new Recommended tab, which gives you a subset of just the things that are likely to be the most useful.
• The second one shows the new All tab, which lets you quickly search via text, or just browse by name. In this particular example, I did a search.
• This revamp also folds the territory control flags into the build menu properly, which you can see in the first image.

Resource Trends

Other Notes

• My wife Kara continues to plow through the text of the game, excising my wordiness and enhancing clarity. So far it's been about a 10% reduction in word count, which is great for anyone who gets fatigued by lots of text.
• As far as my post-nextfest clarity and flow work goes, I'm pretty much down to the UI tour on the first turn, and then some last minor items. This is very exciting, as I'm greatly looking forward to getting back into content development. Hopefully I can finish the last of the non-content stuff tomorrow, bu we'll see how it goes.

Testing Group Reminder

New daily build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.559_Inventory_Dimensions This one is pretty sizeable.

New in this build

• The resources section of the inventory now includes some very helpful filters as well as a search.
• The unit types section of the inventory now includes some filters, and then multiple tabular views which allow you to see which units are the best at various things.
• Bulk androids have gotten some much-needed clarity updates to their buildings, and then also some fixes to the accuracy of how their stats are predicted in the inventory before they exist.
• The way that events like the prismatic tungsten and the seed collection are placed on the map now gives you a lot more options, and should feel better.
• TPS Reports are at long last fixed up so that when they are missing some precursors, others properly show the right values.
• And then a bunch of other smaller improvements and fixes as well.

The main things remaining:

• A complete revision of the build menu, in general to be more tycoon-like and less citybuilder-like, for similar reasons that tycoon games diverge in general. Clarity and volume, basically.
• A way for players to see a list of all jobs producing and consuming resources, to help diagnose shortfalls.
• The turn-one UI tour, and other final bits of clarity and thematic bits for turn one.
• A couple of new pieces of clarity related to when you first start constructing buildings.
• A few fixes related to bulk android targeting.

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.558_Research This is a relatively small daily build, as far as builds for this game are concerned. However, there's still a lot of good stuff in here:

• You can now choose the location of your tower if you skip past the prologue!
• There is a new Research Window, which includes a lot of additional helpful formatting and functionality, and unifies a lot of things that were previously in a couple of disparate spots.
• If you felt like you were chasing around certain events in StreetSense that moved too frequently, that's a thing of the past.
• The flow of opening notifications is now a bit better, and has an option to make it work like in the prior version if you disagree.

New build: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.557_Filtering_And_Lensing This is based on more feedback from NextFest, and it's another large one.

What's New

• The lenses on the radial menu have been expanded notably, and unified between the map view and main view.
• The investigation, StreetSense, and Contemplation abilities are gone from the android ability bar, and are now converted to being Lenses only.
• Investigations now work a lot more smoothly in a lot of ways detailed in the release notes.
• StreetSense works entirely differently, and is dramatically easier to use. It's also no longer different per-android.
• There are now "Lens Filters" next to the radial menu, and these allow you to customize what you see as part of the various lenses. This has let me actually combine three lenses (Navigation, Beacons, and POIs) into a single one (Navigation), and it allows for you to do a lot of filtering-out of information that you might not need in the Forces lens, without it being completely inaccessible.
• The prologue has had a number of updates to it to reflect the new changes, plus other things that people found confusing. It also doesn't make you do any equipment management, as that is more naturally introduced later.
• There are now keybinds for jumping straight to specific lenses!

Other Items

• Snipers hit less hard.
• MilStyle armor now also hides the identity of Predators and similar.
• Armor has been extended quite a bit in general, and more unit types have more options. The Nickelbot is steadily gaining in usefulness.
• Lots and and lots of writing edits courtesy of my wife Kara. She's been focusing on making sure that text flows better and causes less fatigue.
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
• Because of the removal of so many abilities (that are now Lenses), the ability bar for all units has been rearranged to a notable degree. This is likely to cause some muscle memory issues, but I think that the new order makes sense if you look past that. Details in the notes. Discussion welcome if it doesn't seem to be the case.
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
• Many various other smaller changes, fixes, and so on. This is actually three large releases in one since the last build outside of the playtest branch.

Next Things

Testing Group Reminder

This is a very large one! For demo players, this is four builds in one: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.553_Fenceline

Networks

• You can see some network info in the upper left corner now. Like electricity, etc.
• The way that info is shown is a lot nicer in both locations.
• The way the network is drawn on the map and streets view is no longer so overwhelming, and also gives you a bit more range.
• You can now lay out network relays in series before they finish building, rather than having to wait for each one to be done.
• A lot of more subtle elements with the networks are better in general, and you can read the full release notes if you're curious.

Other Major Items

• Predators and similar can now use hoodies properly. They still make terrible guards because if the enemy sees what they are, they are still too scary. But this still means you can use them on more operations around the city.
• The "toast" popups in the lower right corner have had pretty much their full overhaul. Left-click now always does something more consistent, and right-click dismisses them. They also have better color variation to tell types of them apart now.
• The machine handbook is now much more convenient to use regardless of how you open it, and takes over the screen a bit more rather than getting lost in clutter. It also now has a dropdown allowing you to filter to specific topics.
• Minor new content! There's two new Procurement Efficiency upgrades -- one for better wind turbines, one for more microbuilders. Two highly-desired items.
• NPC units, including your own bulk androids, now have better targeting for a number of cases. Your own units won't engage noncombatants by default, and also won't wander into military bases or aggro them. Wetwork teams from corporations also won't get distracted with military bases.

Minor Handy Items

• If you find the unit icons on the map or in the streets view too small, you can now adjust the size of those in the UI Scales tab of the settings.
• The escape menu sidebar now has links to mantis and your local save folder on your hard drive.
• There's a really long list of minor bugfixes and clarity improvements, but I'll spare you listing all those.

Next Things

Testing Group Reminder

Quite a large new build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.549_Of_Mice_And_Crowns

Mouse

Tons Of Fixes

Balance

Coming Up

New build for the demo and playtest versions of the game! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.548_High_Visibility

Demo And Playtest

The New Build

The Last Week

The Next Weeks

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them. [previewyoutube=XwSOncE5eHA;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them. [previewyoutube=XwSOncE5eHA;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

New build for the demo! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:_After_The_Transformation#0.547_Energize This is a fairly small build, as mostly what I've been doing is talking to folks and listening to their suggestions, and making lots of notes. As well as updating the wiki, and adding more explanations for a lot of things. There are several new articles linked today, which go into broader questions people had, as well as deep dives on specific mechanics. The main changes in this build are that the parasitic power draws are removed from the game for now, as they were really sending the wrong messages to players in chapter one, especially when they were introduced. They'll return in chapter two later, as contemplations. In the meantime, power generation has gotten a balance pass in general, with both wind and geothermal getting substantial upgrades. There should be plenty of wind to go around until you unlock geothermal, even if you don't take the cap upgrades for wind, and even if you build all the housing. This has been an enormously instructive week for me, listening to folks, as well as really gratifying to see how many people are vibing with the game. It's been a long road, and the shift from realtime to turn-based has understandable turned away some people who wishlisted a long time ago, but I'm really gratified to see how much of a connection the game, its world, and its writing are making with a substantial audience. Thanks so much for all the support, and the constructive criticism!

New build for the hotm demo! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:_After_The_Transformation#0.546_Crisp This one improves the crispness of some minor parts of the graphics (borders, mainly), based on some excellent feedback by a demo player with a very high quality monitor. And it allows for tuning a few more things to taste. This build makes Refinery Optimizers mathematically competitive with the Refinery Overdrivers. You now get far more Daily Necessities per turn from the warehouse raid, so if you have taken max housing upgrades and then built all that housing, you can now properly keep all of them clean, with some excess to spare. And lastly, fixed an issue in some maps where you could not get the Wallripper if you were very unlucky that certain kinds of skyscrapers were not seeded. It now pulls from a much wider pool of skyscraper targets so that contemplation is always available now.

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New build for the hotm demo, with some requested quality of life updates, and a couple of minor bugfixes: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:_After_The_Transformation#0.545_Focus There are some options that let you slow down unit movement, and your androids are now not QUITE as blindingly-fast as they were before, in general. There's also a change to the whole "watch NPCs phase" of the turn, where now it defaults to not bothering, since it does not matter. But, you can change it via the NPC Actions View dropdown in the main game settings window to be what it was before (watch high priority), or to watch everything. The new default should be the most comfortable view for the majority of people, but use what feels best to you. There's also a fix to the NPC logic of the "IP Security" units in the water fight. Basically, they should have been more focused on your investigator, to the point that you can't distract them with regular aggro. The "service disruption" caused by the the hackamajig does let you distract them, but nothing else other than death should stop them hunting your technician there. Without that single-minded focus, there were some unintended consequences that could lead players to believe that the consequences of a probing action were going to be way more dire than they should be; if your investigator dies, the cruiser goes away. But if you manage to keep the investigator alive, while still failing to kill the cruiser, it would haunt you across the map for a long time, which was... not ideal. Thank you to everyone for all the kind words, constructive criticism, and useful feedback! I've got a long list of other things I want to get done this week in terms of small tweaks and things based on suggestions that have already come in from players of the demo. So expect more patches that tweak minor things, but if you haven't played the demo yet, there's no reason to wait -- even the water fight issue, above, is really minor in the grand scheme. It just sends the wrong signal about future intent of the game, which is what made it particularly high-priority to me.

Hi everyone! Heart of the Machine and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out! Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale [previewyoutube=bwcg7R7QfIE;full][/previewyoutube]

Hello! Chris here. It's been a hot minute since most of you have seen me outside of the forums and discord. There will be other news and previews and demos and things before too much longer, but things are progressing well! Excited to show you more.

Whats Happening

Q&A

Will Heart of the Machine be Steam Deck Verified?

Are there extra steps to play Heat of the Machine on Linux?

Any effects on the OSX build?

Does this have any impact on development?

Question: Will a native Linux build be released on other storefronts?

Were there other problems with the native Linux build?

• Performance was 10% worse, and frametimings were less even, but it was certainly playable. This was just how Unity 3D works in Vulkan on Linux, so there was no way to solve it.
• Certain parts of this game have geometry that is close together, and on Linux these would flicker. This is because Unity 3D does not support a reversed z-buffer on OpenGL or Vulkan (or DirectX9). This problem is not present in DirectX11+, or Metal. And its not present when Proton or WINE convert DX11 commands to Vulkan.

Is playability via proton likely to break over time or be flaky?

Isn't this a win-win-win?

Does this affect Arcens ability to support Linux in any particular way?

Originally streamed on Steam to over 2000 live viewers during the awesome Tacticon event, here's the youtube archive of what we talked about. Huge thanks to kormakrtv again for the talk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ltCqo1n6o He noted: about "Heart of the Machine" Imagine Skynet but YOU are Skynet - humans are your livestock - treat them good | treat them bad you choose - decide your path Many other questions are answered on the Steam forums if you prefer a text format: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2001070/discussions/0/5875531492232118124/