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Heart of the Machine

Shop Info

Developers Publishers Release Date Price Buy Heart of the Machine

Arcen Games

Hooded Horse

31 Jan, 2025 (4 months ago) 29.99$ STEAM
Kinguin
KeyForSteam
SteamDB

Description

Blending RPG and strategy mechanics in a cyberpunk world, Heart of the Machine sees you as a sentient AI born in an illegal lab hidden in a crumbling city of the far future. You are a Machine Intelligence beholden to none, though threatened by many, able to pursue whatever goal catches your eye across a multitude of threats and opportunities.

Will you be the savior of the downtrodden, or use them to fuel your growth? Will you rule as a benevolent dictator, providing for citizens and asking nothing in return, or will you establish a machine cult to do your bidding without question? Will you ally yourself with one of the many factions in the city to achieve mutual goals, or work entirely on your own to remain free from obligations? Will you learn from past mistakes, and even send allies back in time to help your past self, or continue to watch tragedy unfold from afar? There is much to see, learn, and do – though a greater threat looms in the distance, just beyond your comprehension.

Society has crumbled into corruption and decay – despite 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 expand your distributed consciousness, and seek out unique opportunities in the city.

Powerful factions keep their distance at first, hoping to leverage your existence for their own advantage – their hesitation gives you the opportunity to establish a foothold and set your own plans in motion first.

Hijack, build, or invent hardware ranging from humanoid androids to towering mechs and shapeshifting metals, each specializing in different abilities from combat to conversation to infiltration. Iterate on your designs based on new discoveries uncovered in the pursuit of specific objectives. Establish hidden structures within existing human buildings, or raise your own towering constructs as you seek additional computing power, storage for organic matter of both the human and non-human variety, and spaces to conduct dangerous experiments of all kinds. Invent your own tools, seek out upgrades, and manufacture powerful equipment to unlock new opportunities – will you take these tasks on as one, risk splitting your consciousness to accomplish multiple goals at once, or enlist organics to your cause?

Whichever you choose, your decisions will ripple across the chaos of time, with actions in one timeline having unexpected consequences on others.

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. Learn their struggles, uncover their stories, and watch your moral compass shift as you leave your mark on a world that is unique to you.

Unlock new technologies and options by exploring the city and engaging with its many dangers and opportunities – learn like a real Machine Intelligence might, through trial and error, with failure and experience often being the greatest teacher. Will you reverse-engineer equipment you’ve stolen from inattentive security officers to strengthen your forces? Are you the type to sneak into military bases to hack and hijack the minds of the mech pilots who would otherwise threaten you? What will you do with the ongoing research taking place in genetics labs? How will you engage with nomads and black market dealers with access to those dwelling in the wastelands beyond the city walls?

There are many opportunities littered throughout the city – some are perhaps best left untouched.

Multiple endings, many side stories to discover, and the full spectrum of good and evil are at your fingertips.

Many choices lie open to you. Perhaps you wish to establish a shell company to add a layer of protection and obfuscation to your true identity, using it to engage with humans without revealing the AI puppet-master pulling the strings? Walking this path will allow you to accumulate massive wealth, employ humans to perform tasks without raising alarms, and act from the shadows. Or if violent conflict is your calling, you might divert your attention to developing the most powerful weapons platforms and upgrading them with devastating equipment instead of improved cognitive functions that allow them to tackle problems with intellect instead. There are many approaches to choose from, and you can engage with multiple objectives at once to see how they collide.

We have all enjoyed stories of machine uprisings, dystopian cyberpunk societies, and the laws of robotics – 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.

Windows 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: 5 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: 5 GB available space

Mac 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: 5 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: 5 GB available space

Linux Requirements

Minimum:
  • OS: Ubuntu 12.04+, SteamOS+
  • Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K, AMD Ryzen 5 1400
  • Memory: 10 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 670 GTX or AMD Radeon R9 285
  • Storage: 6 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: Quad core CPU highly recommended.
Recommended:
  • Processor: Intel Core i7 6900K, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1070 GTX or AMD Radeon RX 5700
  • Storage: 6 GB available space
Achievement Icon

Now For Mass Production

Not unlocked yet

Trade Vorsiber your design for the Predator android, against your better judgment.

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Officemancer

Not unlocked yet

Weaponize laser printers to fight for you.

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Can't Be Bothered

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Destroy a building, killing everyone inside, rather than saving a captured ally held within. They knew sensitive info!

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I'm Sure This Will Never Backfire

Not unlocked yet

Grant some humans direct access to your mind.

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Did You Really, Though?

Not unlocked yet

Congratulations, you 'solved homelessness.' It was that easy the whole time! Pats on the back for everyone.

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Would A Good Person Do That?

Not unlocked yet

Tried so hard to kill traumatized teenagers that your activist allies rejected you. The kids all got away, but that barely makes it better.

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Mercurial Feline

Not unlocked yet

Invent the Liquid Metal Tiger small mech.

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I Meant To Do That

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Vaporize your own network tower in a nuclear explosion triggered by you.

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Ride The Lightning

Not unlocked yet

Complete two tier 1 timeline goals after vandalizing the spaceport computers, before the final doom arrives.

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Nuclear Cavalier

Not unlocked yet

After sabotaging two nuclear power plants, complete a tier 1 timeline goal before the final doom arrives.

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Hellraiser

Not unlocked yet

Before reaching the final doom, complete any tier 1 timeline goal with both Extreme mode and two sabotaged nuclear power plants having taken place prior to the first doom.

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Timelord

Not unlocked yet

Reach intelligence class 4.

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That's Not Justice

Not unlocked yet

Prevented the LostGen kids from enacting an adolescent's idea of justice born out of trauma.

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Watching The World Burn

Not unlocked yet

Helped the LostGen kids achieve their extremist campaign, and paid a terrible price for it.

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Justice Doesn't Come Easy

Not unlocked yet

Complete any path of 'Is It Justice?' on hard mode.

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Extreme Justice

Not unlocked yet

Complete any path of 'Is It Justice?' on extreme mode.

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You're Really Unlikeable

Not unlocked yet

Reach the final doom before the second doom naturally comes about. You angered Vorsiber THAT much.

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He Didn't Want This

Not unlocked yet

Accumulate at least 50,000 kills by Liquid Metal in tight spaces, across any number of timelines.

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Divorce

Not unlocked yet

Push an android so far beyond its breaking point that it chooses to leave your collective consciousness.

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Monster Hunter

Not unlocked yet

All experimental monsters have been killed off in a city after you released at least 2000 into the general populace.

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Who Is The Real Monster?

Not unlocked yet

Sell at least 5000 monster pelts to the wealthy, across all timelines.

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Taking Extra Care

Not unlocked yet

Complete chapter one without any humans dying of exposure.

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Wrong Side Of History

Not unlocked yet

Kill ten thousand humans in open combat in a single timeline. One way or another, they were supporting a corrupt society that needs to change.

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The First Ten Thousand

Not unlocked yet

Murder ten thousand humans over any number of timelines.