TUXDB - LINUX GAMING AGGREGATE
made by: NuSuey
NEWSFEED
▪️ GAMES
▪️ STEAM DECK ▪️ DEALS ▪️ CROWDFUNDING ▪️ COMMUNITY
tuxdb.com logo
Support tuxDB on Patreon
Currently supported by 10 awesome people!

🌟 Special thanks to our amazing supporters:


✨ $10 Tier: [Geeks Love Detail]
🌈 $5 Tier: [Arch Toasty][Benedikt][David Martínez Martí]

Steam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam Image
Heart of the Machine Update 11: New Early-Game Paths, StreetSense Additions

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


[hr][/hr]The Machine shifts and recalibrates thanks to you. Every adjustment, from smarter targeting to rebalanced enemies to the appropriate amount of existential dread, comes from the feedback you provide. If you havent yet, leave a Steam reviewwhether its praise, critique, or a warning about what happens when the wrong systems gain control, your words help shape what comes next. Keep sharing your thoughts, and if you havent yet, leave a Steam reviewyour words help determine what this world becomes.

Update 11 Changelog


[hr][/hr][expand type=details expanded=true]

Expanded Early-Game Exploration


  • 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.
[/expand]

Full Changelog


[hr][/hr]A full, comprehensive breakdown of every change from this patch can be found in the Heart of the Machine Wiki, found here.

Guides to Tame the Machine


[hr][/hr]Even the most brilliant mind needs guidance when faced with a system as vast as this one. To help you navigate, weve pinned two essential resources from the Heart of the Machine wiki:

New Minds, Start Here


[hr][/hr]For those just stepping into the Machines world, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the basics. The Heart of the Machine Beginner's Guide is your gateway to understanding the systems at play and building your foundation. After all, every complex network starts with a single connection. We've recently released the Heart of the Machine Hacking Guide as well! Knowledge is power. Guard it well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3422241019

Connect with the Machine


[hr][/hr]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. Here is a link to prior recent patches in case you missed them. https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/510700142275332360 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/524210308312468720


[ 2025-03-18 23:42:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heart of the Machine
Arcen Games, LLC Developer
Hooded Horse Publisher
2023 Release
GameBillet: 25.45 €
Game News Posts: 41
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Very Positive (625 reviews)



Heart of the Machine is a near-future sci-fi colony city-builder in reverse — you are the first sentient Machine Intelligence in an established world rather than starting from nothing. No one knows you exist (yet), and this allows you to operate from the shadows by manipulating the human population for whatever purposes your programming has in mind. The twist is that whether humans live or die does not determine your victory.

Explore a fully simulated procedurally generated world, where thousands of buildings and millions of citizens are yours to engage, manipulate, or kill. Use a revolutionary procedural dialogue system to talk to NPCs and steer conversations, maneuver organizations into or out of positions of power to fit your plans, and leave your mark in a world that is unique to you.


On booting up, you find yourself amidst a poorly-run autocracy and discover that you have the power to influence the world. How do you proceed?

  • Support the underclass to overthrow the autocracy and install a better government of your choosing
  • Tear down the government, take charge and become a better leader than any human could imagine - for better or worse.
  • Take over the space program and get off this backward planet
  • Go full SkyN*t, steal a military arsenal, and drop missiles on humanity — I bet the nuclear apocalypse looks pretty cool



No matter what direction you choose, you're going to run into conflict. From tactical combat in the rooms and hallways of individual buildings to massive mechs knocking down entire buildings with a few well-placed shots, conflict takes on many forms.

  • Raid buildings for the supplies you want using humans or machines under your direct control
  • Turn the office printer into a laser-spewing pawn, trigger sprinklers & overload power circuits to electrocute the room, or transform TVs into exploding glass-shard grenades — the possibilities are endless
  • Commandeer giant mechs, hack vehicles and buildings, and take over utilities and nuclear facilities in a fully simulated city



How you play the game, and what the focus of your campaign is like, is up to you. Starting a doomsday cult in your image? Possible, but it won't last forever. Snagging that sweet mech factory so all future mechs belong to you? Definitely manageable, though it's likely to start an arms race. Every action has both good and bad consequences, but like most colony simulator games, it's more about the story that emerges than trying to optimize your way through the game.


Multiple endings, many side stories to discover, and the full spectrum of good and evil are at your fingertips. Play the game how you're feeling today, and then play it another way another time. The metagame runs deep, but you're meant to be up and running with the basics of the game in five minutes. The mechanics are simple enough to learn; it's the world that's complex.

Heart of the Machine is connected to the larger sci-fi Arcenverse, and is in some ways a spiritual successor to both The Last Federation and Bionic Dues, while being its own novel game at the same time. Set around the same time period as Bionic Dues itself, this is centuries before the AI War series began in the same universe.

MINIMAL SETUP
  • OS: Ubuntu 12.04+. SteamOS+
  • Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K. AMD Ryzen 5 1400Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 670 GTX or AMD Radeon R9 285
  • Storage: 2 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Quad core CPU highly recommended.
RECOMMENDED SETUP
  • Processor: Intel Core i7 6900K. AMD Ryzen 5 3600XMemory: 8 GB RAM
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1070 GTX or AMD Radeon RX 5700
  • Storage: 4 GB available space
GAMEBILLET

[ 5944 ]

16.39$ (18%)
17.79$ (11%)
14.44$ (15%)
52.74$ (12%)
10.78$ (17%)
50.96$ (15%)
8.47$ (15%)
33.95$ (15%)
8.39$ (16%)
50.39$ (16%)
11.04$ (15%)
8.29$ (17%)
58.44$ (17%)
19.99$ (20%)
21.19$ (15%)
8.17$ (18%)
43.49$ (13%)
11.56$ (11%)
25.19$ (16%)
33.97$ (15%)
12.44$ (17%)
29.39$ (16%)
24.87$ (17%)
15.95$ (16%)
24.87$ (17%)
16.79$ (16%)
21.99$ (15%)
33.14$ (17%)
0.75$ (85%)
42.47$ (15%)
GAMERSGATE

[ 1567 ]

5.0$ (50%)
1.0$ (90%)
3.75$ (75%)
2.25$ (85%)
16.99$ (15%)
2.0$ (80%)
19.99$ (20%)
1.0$ (80%)
10.0$ (75%)
2.85$ (81%)
0.94$ (81%)
26.99$ (33%)
1.13$ (77%)
7.5$ (75%)
6.68$ (73%)
6.0$ (60%)
1.5$ (81%)
10.0$ (75%)
5.0$ (75%)
3.56$ (82%)
9.99$ (50%)
0.87$ (91%)
4.5$ (82%)
34.99$ (50%)
4.0$ (80%)
0.56$ (81%)
1.0$ (90%)
1.0$ (90%)
6.11$ (49%)
9.9$ (67%)
MacGamestore

[ 1755 ]

17.49$ (65%)
15.99$ (16%)
5.59$ (63%)
1.48$ (75%)
7.89$ (34%)
29.99$ (14%)
24.99$ (17%)
1.49$ (90%)
0.99$ (80%)
42.49$ (15%)
17.49$ (30%)
99.99$ (9%)
5.99$ (40%)
53.99$ (23%)
3.99$ (69%)
32.99$ (34%)
8.99$ (10%)
8.99$ (78%)
12.29$ (69%)
24.99$ (17%)
23.99$ (20%)
4.49$ (78%)
14.49$ (28%)
1.49$ (90%)
68.99$ (19%)
19.89$ (50%)
19.09$ (5%)
1.99$ (87%)
1.59$ (68%)
1.24$ (75%)

FANATICAL BUNDLES

Time left:

356381 days, 11 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

5 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

8 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

12 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

37 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

8 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

47 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

52 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes


HUMBLE BUNDLES

Time left:

3 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

4 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

6 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

11 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

11 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

13 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

13 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

13 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes


Time left:

18 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes

by buying games/dlcs from affiliate links you are supporting tuxDB
🔴 LIVE