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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.
Heart of the Machine
Arcen Games, LLCDeveloper
Hooded HorsePublisher
2023Release
🎹🖱️ Keyboard + Mouse
Very Positive (1292 reviews)
Update 58: Watch Out For Space Supremacists

I had not meant for this to be such a large release, but here we are. A lot of this is stuff that is directly from player feedback, so thank you to everyone who has been leaving it. It really helps a lot!\n\nMy main focus for the next week or so is still the last of the (for now) Tier 3 goals, Cybercratic Ambitions. That\'s coming along well, but isn\'t ready for testing yet even on the beta branch. I\'ve decided that I need more time for the Stars Beyond Reach route, and more chances to test that, so I\'m pushing that back to be post-1.0. It does feel more like post-game content, anyway. That will likely be in a 1.1 update, or something along those lines.\n\nAnyway, my focus is on making sure that the actual 1.0 is polished, fun, hits all the right notes, etc, etc. This release is reflective of that, really. I always have way more ideas I could work on, and things that I\'m excited about, but frankly it doesn\'t have any bearing on the \"complete experience.\" They\'re more like additional stories after the initial complete experience. There\'s still a lot of stuff coming up over the next few weeks!\n\nIf 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.\n

\n[expand type=details expanded=false]\n

Update 58 Changelog

\n

Clarity

\n
  • Good Lord, Warn Me About That!: If you try to delete a timeline, there\'s now a message asking if you\'re sure, and telling you not to worry about negative crossovers.[/*]
  • Meltdowns Are Pretty Hostile: Tampering with nuclear power plants now shows up under the Hostile Actions section of the StreetSense filter. Because... ah... yeah, obvious, probably.[/*]
  • How To Avoid Accidental Murder: Added the following text to \"Secure A Cybercratic Haven:\" If you want to be sure Predators don\'t murder anyone, then visit the Workers tab in Command Mode and disable Worker Predators.[/*]
  • Chapter 4 Rules-Lawyering: The description for chapter 4 has been updated to note that you can\'t attempt Tier 3 Goals until you\'re in chapter 4, since that\'s now the rule.[/*]
  • Who Hates You?: For any bulk or worker units that belong to you, and converted troops, you can now see what cohorts they have angered. If they have angered an allied POI guard, then the allied POI guard is justified in attacking them, and now you can actually tell when that\'s the case.[/*]

Balance

\n
  • Need More Armor!: Space Nations battleships and titans have been increased from 4200 armor to 6400, and 6600 armor piercing.[/*]
  • I\'m A Totally Different Mech Now, What Do You Mean I Shot You?: When you capture an unit and add it to your converted troops, any cohorts it had angered are cleared away.[/*]

Interstellar Incident

\n
  • Blow Up The Spaceport And Find Out: The fences don\'t count, and the small things like mech parts factories also don\'t. But if you hit anything actually core to the spaceport, then you\'re sure to meet some Space Supremacists. If you damaged the spaceport in this way in the past, then expect Space Supremacists out of nowhere.[/*]
  • Get Tricked Again: If you\'ve met someone tricky, and you\'ve found some interesting data hidden in a certain T1 goal after doing a certain T2 goal, then a whole other way to meet Space Supremacists comes up. This gives a lot of Daring, even on normal difficulty, so it\'s worth doing.[/*]
  • English Only For About Two Weeks: This section is only going to show up if you\'re playing the game in English until the current localization pass is finished. Apologies for that.[/*]

More Uses For Hatred

\n
  • Those Idiot ExoCorps: If you have three hatred of Vorsiber, there is now an \"International Misdirection\" pressure point that allows you to nullify dooms 2, 3, and 5 of international scrutiny. It costs 60 creativity to actually do the nullification, and you can only nullify a single doom in this hatred-fueled way in a given timeline.[/*]
  • Take That, Space Nations: If you have three hatred of Vorsiber, there is now a \"Space Nation Misdirection\" pressure point that allows you to nullify doom 5 of vorsiber\'s wrath. It costs 60 creativity to actually do the nullification, and you can only nullify a single doom in this hatred-fueled way in a given timeline.[/*]
  • Unspecified Scandals: If you have three hatred of Vorsiber, there is now a \"Scandalous Distraction\" pressure point that allows you to nullify dooms 3 and 8 of vorsiber\'s wrath. It costs 60 creativity to actually do the nullification, and you can only nullify a single doom in this hatred-fueled way in a given timeline.[/*]
  • English Only For About Two Weeks: This section is only going to show up if you\'re playing the game in English until the current localization pass is finished. Apologies for that.[/*]

Other Doom Cancellations

\n
  • Rust The Prison Mechs: If you have the Rust outbreak happening during the prison drive, and the humans don\'t yet have filters, then it either prevents it from starting, or cuts it short.[/*]
  • But What If There\'s No Prisons Left?: If you have completed For The Sake Of Those Bound prior to the prisoner drive doom from Vorsiber\'s Wrath, then that doom is skipped entirely. If you complete it during that doom, then the doom gets canceled.[/*]
  • Feeding Everyone: Once you have food independence in your cyberocracy, AND are actually providing food, then if there is a famine doom going on, that gets canceled. Note that this is beta-only right now.[/*]

Bugfixes

\n
  • Stop Beckoning So Early: The End Of Time Beckons is no longer available until chapter 3, in case you somehow get to only having The Revelation visible without being intelligence class 4. The new \"Consider Starting A New Timeline\" alert now only shows if you are intelligence class 4, to avoid confusion there as well.[/*]
  • Bootstrapped Modern Mind: A couple of paragraphs have been removed from Bootstrapped Mind, as they refer to something that no longer exists.[/*]
  • Misery Loves Restrictions: Fixed an issue where easier combat and a bunch of other simplified-complexity options were available on Misery when they should not have been. This was specifically already disallowed on Extreme, but wasn\'t functioning properly on Misery.[/*]
  • Chapter One Stall(s): Fixed a major issue where if you were using the Simplified Economy and playing the non-fire-based path of the game, then there would come a point where some NPCs would not spawn to talk to you unless you saved and then reloaded a save. This could lead to you being out of things to do in chapter one. Also would happen on the full economy in the no-landlord (fire-based) path.[/*]
  • No Nukes For You!: Fixed an issue where if you were playing a stealth build, then the Homunculus Rocket Factory, Atomic Transmuter, and Nuclear ICBM Factory would all be unavailable after you researched them.[/*]
  • You Had One Shot At Enriching Uranium: If your technician died while developing the uranium enrichment process, then it was not properly allowing you to try again.[/*]
  • Seriously, People Are Still Alive: The game has been adjusted to not allow the \"Population Zero\" achievement to trigger until the game is at least 10 seconds fresh from loading, rather than three. I\'m couldn\'t actually duplicate the problem this time, so hopefully this solves it for the people who could.[/*]
  • Be Brave, Reinforcements!: Fixed an issue where if third parties killed all of the guards at a POI, then that would cause the POI to not get reinforcements for quite some time. This was a change introduced in Update 38, back in October. It really should only apply when your own units have been the ones to clear the POI, and so that\'s how it works now.[/*]
  • Be Smart, Reinforcements!: Fixed an issue where an older system for keeping reinforcements carriers from clumping up too much on each other was actually blocking them from doing the reinforcements once they got there. That didn\'t play well with the changes from Update 38, so those are now two separate setups.[/*]
  • Stop Hitting Yourself: Designate Coordinated Attack should no longer be able to accidentally target one of your own allies, or indeed one of your own units.[/*]
  • What Chapter Is It!?: Fixed an issue where on the victory progress screen, the chapter you were currently in was showing as incomplete. It now shows as \"current,\" to save on confusion.[/*]
  • Piss Off, Ghosts: There was a rare issue where \"phantom\" buildings could appear in the wrong item category, and thus not be interactive, but still block your buildings. These now self-correct when being placed, and also self-delete if you move your cursor over them when trying to build over them, and also self-delete on savegame load.[/*]
  • Hacking Your Allies!?: Hacking allied player mechs now properly captures them, rather than having them still belong to the ally and yet sort of also be yours. This is retroactively fixed on existing saves.[/*]
  • Well, They Were Traitors, Too: Fixed an issue where some allied POI guards were still too aggressive in wanting to kill some of your units.[/*]
  • One Serving Per Customer: Fixed an issue that could give you doubled dark matter particles for one turn.[/*]
  • Piss Off, Kids In My Basement: If you ever did the \"Impressive Dragon!\" contemplation and met the lost kids, then the \"trapped kid\" contemplation won\'t show up.[/*]
  • Uhh, You Should Shoot Those Guys: Fixed an issue where the Anti-AI Ops for rebels were set up a bit wrong, and so your bulk units wouldn\'t realize they were supposed to shoot those aggressors.[/*]
\n[/expand]

Full notes here .\n\n

Connect with the Machine

[hr][/hr]

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

[ 2026-01-03 02:20:04 CET ] [Original Post]

Minimum 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.
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Recommended Setup

    • Processor: Intel Core i7 6900K. AMD Ryzen 5 3600XMemory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1070 GTX or AMD Radeon RX 5700
    • Storage: 4 GB available space
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