Posted on: February 1, 2025

Early-Access-Bewertung

WingedKagouti

Spiele: 331 Rezensionen: 3

A story driven game of exploration

Arcen has never made titles that conform to traditional genres. While Heart of the Machine may initially seem like a strategic city builder, it is just as much a visual novel, where your choices in dialogue have a major impact on what goes on. And the stories are the heart of the game, whether you're trying to set yourself up as a "benevolent" ruler or you're trying to lure people into VR pods that drain their mental capacity, the stories you choose help set the tone of the city. Many things have already changed since the Early Access launch, and many more changes are in the works. The developer is very open to feedback, and has changed a lot of systems that turned out to not work (or just be tedious) in practice. This is on top of a steady stream of new content, which can be extended via mods. The developer has also been working with the early modders, adding new entry points in the code for them to use, as well as bug fixing the mod tools that don't work as they should. Who isn't this for? 1: People looking for a traditional city builder or strategy game. Most of the city is already built and you won't supplant the established corporations, you're also not going to take control over the entire city whether by force or subterfuge. At least not yet, we only have the first stage of most content, future stages are in development. 2: People looking to hide from the city/authorities. The developer wants players to directly interact with the city and not hide away. The story is written in such a way that hiding your existence is impossible, but you can (try to) hide how you're influencing things. 3: People afraid of failure. The game rewards experimenting with what you can do, even after what appears to be a failure. Sometimes doing the "wrong" thing might lead you to new content.

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Posted on: February 14, 2025

Early-Access-Bewertung

Fey_spirit

Spiele: 402 Rezensionen: 1

Smart AI you are not

Honestly, can't help but to think of old Endgame: Singularity with similar concept of player being new AI despite mechanical differences. There you do jobs on internet for money to buy server access, research how hide self and build bases, create fake ID and androids, push tech to beyond human, all to escape and not be destroyed by humans. This one is supposed to have much more freedom on what to do, but doesn't feel like it. First going more pacifist AI, help homeless humans. Feels like just feelgood busywork. No use for them but to lock them into VR pods to use their brains to enhance own mind. Shell company where you get to hire scientist of all fields also feel as waste of time. Pay money to do nothing, not providing any research except for specific plot lines. Next time going skynet by not caring and killing people in way, but plot moves you back to taking care of humans to put them in VR pods. Or try extract brains to use as computers, but there is many soldiers to fight and brains degrade later, while for VR pods you research all about life support of users. For that matter, game mechanics have limits on how many droids and building of specific types you can build. Limits which can sometimes be hard to increase for some categories as you cant perform real research. Go machine army, find you have limit on how many commands per turn you can give, increased temporarily trough acts of random cold blooded murder (HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK!) or later trough building. Have 10+ strong army, can order only 3... Supposedly you get smarter as you go trough stages of intelligence, but new items and upgrades are tied to limited number of plot lines which give research points as reward. You don't get them over time from hired scientists, built research labs, sending mercenary and hacker androids into military bases and labs as you wish. Only as part of limited plots to find. Benefit is getting access to timelines to affect runs like some roguelike game.

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Posted on: June 1, 2025

Early-Access-Bewertung

FaszParaszt7734

Bestätigter Besitzer

Spiele: 2 Rezensionen: 1

game so good i actualy bought it

i pirated this game because it looked interesting, ended up enjoying it so much i paid for it

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Posted on: March 20, 2025

Early-Access-Bewertung

infoparty

Bestätigter Besitzer

Spiele: Rezensionen: 21

11/10 would buy donuts again

There are things here that don't normally appeal to me, but in Heart of the Machine, I find them habit forming. I initially struggled with a gamebreaking bug (fixed) and an inability to log in to the Mantis bug tracker (community helped me overcome this). The developer has been incredibly welcoming of discussion/speculation and entirely willing to feed my craving for spoilers (within reason.) He's even fixed all the important bugs I've reported (and a bunch of other bugs besides.) Normally I don't really like roguelike games, but from the moment to reach a reset point, you're giving the choice (a) restart "the timeline" or (b) attempt one more goal. Between the choice of whether to reset or continue, the hidden easter eggs that are revealed based on the choices you make, and the sense of progression between timelines-- I find myself consistently trying to complete one more thing before I take a break. The game mechanics reward risks and exploration of different decisions, making even the "failures" an interesting learning experience, often revealing something about the game world or unlocking some new technology. The turn based system gives you the opportunity to contemplate your choices, and the mechanic that accurately predicts your enemies actions gives you a sense of power and control in a constantly threatening and unstable environment.

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Posted on: February 14, 2025

Early-Access-Bewertung

alekhemyst

Bestätigter Besitzer

Spiele: 318 Rezensionen: 2

A new Arcen Gem

Arcen games are each an unique niche gem. I am especially fond of AI wars. This new game turns the table around, and you now play an emerging distributed AI that just wants to... to do what exactly? The game reminds me of syndicate, with an added rich mix of borrowed events and reference from beloved sci-fi books and movies. It's clear the author puts much love in this game. The setting, when it unravels, is intriguing. And I'm curious to see how it will evolve during the next iterations. The game loop is already pretty good, especially for a game in early access. The game is already solid, and can only go better.

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