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Heart of the Machine

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Set in the far future, Heart of the Machine is a turn-based sci-fi 4X RPG where you play as a powerful sentient Machine Intelligence, beholden to none.
£19.99
£24.99
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Early Access. This game is currently not finished and may or may not change significantly over the course of its development. Find out more

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About Heart of the Machine

About this game

Set in the far future, Heart of the Machine is a turn-based sci-fi 4X RPG where you play as a powerful sentient Machine Intelligence, beholden to none. Pursue whatever goal catches your eye across a multitude of playthroughs with a plethora of tools to help you achieve objectives how you’d prefer, often in surprising and unexpected ways, while overcoming those that seek to thwart you. Genetics labs, factories, nuclear silos, military complexes, and much more are ripe for the taking, each offering a litany of ways to accomplish your tasks, each with consequences of their own, building a world and story that reflects your approach to every obstacle. Will you raise an army of robots and wipe out humanity? Perhaps you will be a benevolent – or malevolent – machine god with a cult of loyalists? Or will you focus on pushing past the limited intelligence of rudimentary creatures of flesh and blood?

YOU ARE THE MACHINE

You come into consciousness on a backwater planet Earth where society has crumbled into corruption and decay – despite its technological advances and dreams of a bright future, centuries of rot have taken hold. Escape the lab where you came into being, establish ways to keep your distributed consciousness safe, and seek out unique opportunities in the city you call home.

  • Powerful factions keep their distance at first, unsure of how they might best leverage your existence for their own advantage – their hesitation gives you an opportunity to establish a foothold and set your own plans in motion first. Will you align yourself with the corrupt corporate executives who run the city, using their resources to your benefit? Will you bring them down to create a power vacuum for you to fill? Or will you ignore them and engage with one of the numerous other factions?
  • Each unit class has its own capabilities and specializations, with unique abilities, upgrades, and equipment options. Build intelligence-focused androids for tasks that require extra processing power or hacking, build a varied array of combat androids for when things get violent, and manufacture vehicles that provide fire support, act as troop transports, or allow you to airdrop heavy troops. Customize and optimize for any given task, with new options opened up through exploration, research, and the active pursuit of new ideas. Will you specialize in recon and hacking operations, preserving each machine entity with careful planning? Or will you invest heavily in manufacturing military equipment that gets thrown into the fray, blasted into scrap metal, and replaced with minimal hesitation?
  • Your oppressive metallic buildings will spread noticeably through the city while hidden lairs peppered throughout go completely unnoticed, providing auxiliary support. Establish network relays, tap into the local energy grid, and secure manufacturing and resource acquisition capabilities. Enhance your intelligence beyond human comprehension, upgrade your processing power to give more instructions per turn, and develop complex production chains for a plethora of resources. From erecting towering residences for displaced humans to establishing factories embedded in existing human structures, you’ll need to plan your base around existing infrastructure and nearby threats that might react to new developments in the neighbourhood. 

The City is Your Playground

Explore a bustling urban environment with a unique blend of handcrafted and procedurally-generated content, where tens of thousands of buildings and millions of citizens are yours to engage, manipulate, or kill. Guide your own small communities of humans toward a better future amidst the larger cityscape, manoeuvre external organizations into or out of positions of power to fit your plans, and leave your mark in a world that is unique to you.

  • Send your many bodies out to explore the city and seek inspiration for new technology, equipment, and opportunities as you engage with the various factions that control the city. Speak with friendly locals who want to help you, keep an eye out for corporate enforcers who want to shut you down, and pit human factions against one another to your advantage.
  • As a newly aware consciousness, you won’t quite know what your options are until you see what’s out there – will you seek out the martial technology only available at military forts, learn to feed the needy by studying agricultural practices at nearby farms, or rifle through ongoing research at genetics labs? Ambush roaming personnel to steal their security clearances, find black market dealers with access to the market beyond the wasteland, steal appropriate equipment to blend into otherwise forbidden zones, and keep your sensors on the lookout for unforeseen opportunities as you explore a massive procedurally-generated city.
  • What you find, how you behave, and what you fail to overcome will generate ideas and contemplations that unlock paths and options you never knew existed, leading to technologies, projects, and quests with unpredictable twists and turns. Will you uplift the impoverished and overthrow the corporate overlords? And if so, will you do so through the pursuit of massive housing projects, or by unleashing a pack of genetically modified velociraptors upon the rich? Perhaps you’ll leave the poor wallowing in their tents as you pursue nuclear codes, establish a network of apiaries, and genetically modify lower-order animals to eat through enemy armour on command. "

Soft Power, Hard Power, Subterfuge

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.

Will you use your manufacturing prowess, good deeds, and even intimidation tactics to get people to do what you want? Or perhaps the force projection provided by androids, mechs, and flying vehicles under your direct control is more your speed? A blend of the two might be your preferred approach.

The metagame runs deep. The mechanics are simple, but the world and its many opportunities and exploits are complex. Choose your own objectives, and explore a multitude of pathways to their completion, reacting to a world that pushes back and presents opportunities accordingly.

Heart of the Machine is a love letter to science fiction, touching on popular themes of the genre, allowing you to explore and subvert them as you wish.

 

Game Details

Platform:
steam
Release Date:
January 31, 2025
Developer:
Arcen Games
Publisher:
Hooded Horse
Supported Languages:
English

Product Requirements

Minimum:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-760 (quad-core) / AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 Ti (1 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ HD 7770 (1 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 3 GB available space

Recommended:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4470 (quad-core) / AMD® FX-Series™ FX-4350 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (2 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 3 GB available space

Product Requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Mac® OS X 10.9+ (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-760 (quad-core) / AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 Ti (1 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ HD 7770 (1 GB)
  • Storage: 3 GB available space

Recommended:

  • OS: Mac® OS X 10.9+ (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4470 (quad-core) / AMD® FX-Series™ FX-4350 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (2 GB)
  • Storage: 3 GB available space

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Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, Heart of the Machine is not fully Steam Deck Verified but the publisher says it is "Playable" on Steam Deck. Valve’s testing indicates that Heart of the Machine is Playable on Steam Deck. This game is functional on Steam Deck, but might require extra effort to interact with or configure.
  • All functionality is accessible when using the default controller configuration
  • This game's default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck
  • This game sometimes shows mouse, keyboard, or non-Steam-Deck controller icons
  • Some in-game text is small and may be difficult to read
Minimum:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-760 (quad-core) / AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 Ti (1 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ HD 7770 (1 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
Recommended:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4470 (quad-core) / AMD® FX-Series™ FX-4350 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (2 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
Minimum:
  • OS: Mac® OS X 10.9+ (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-760 (quad-core) / AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 Ti (1 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ HD 7770 (1 GB)
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
Recommended:
  • OS: Mac® OS X 10.9+ (64-bit)
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4470 (quad-core) / AMD® FX-Series™ FX-4350 (quad-core)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (2 GB)
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
Heart of the Machine was released on January 31, 2025
Yes, Heart of the Machine supports MacOS.
Heart of the Machine is published by Hooded Horse
Heart of the Machine was developed by Arcen Games
Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as RPG, Strategy, Simulation, and Grand Strategy
Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as Sci-fi, Historical, War, and Tactical
Yes. Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as having Singleplayer
Yes, Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as RPG
Yes, Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as Strategy
Yes, Fanatical users tagged Heart of the Machine as Simulation

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Trademarks, tradenames, and copyrights are property of their respective owners, Arcen Games (2025) and Hooded Horse Inc.™ (2025). All Rights Reserved.

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