Heart of the Machine

I feel lied to. I thought this was a clunky but neat rogue AI game with a few routes to play before I reached the end of the refund window. Instead, in truth there are no routes, just this muddy river of things to do, which then loses all meaning when you are introduced to the game's rougelike mechanics. It's like you're Doctor Strange and you're forced to play through every single timeline to find and ensure the one timeline where things don't reach a bad end. And then when I tried to use a save file to take a different shot at said mechanic, I found that all my saves contained the original attempt, which seems way too specific to be a bug. I've seen bad game design, I've seen scummy game design, but this is something way, WAY more atrocious. It would never occur to me not to trust my save files to lead me to where I made them but here we are. I'll be honest, I didn't finish the game, I don't even know what percentage of it I'm through because that's how nebulous this game is. I've ...

A 4X game (kinda) where you play as Skynet / The Matrix. Build structures in a procedurally generated city. Recruit units to attack, repair, hack, and perform a large variety of missions. Most missions have a decision on whether to be nice or mean to humans, and unlock new upgrades. A huge variety of resources are collected. Continually upgrade your robots, vehicles, and mechs and get new designs. Fend off attacks from foes with different agendas. Kill children looking for clean water. The game can be overwhelming, but the first chapters act as a guided tutorial with specific objectives to fulfill. Works great on my Steam Deck (control tips are even Deck-specific) once I increased the UI size to 1.3

Kept me amused most of the day, guiding an AI as it works its way through gaining sentience, rising in power, increasing control of the city its living in. Had vibes of syndicate wars/satellite reign.

This game reminds me of the DOS ara of games. There were more experiments and less boiler plate games. Sure you had like 20 versions of Pacman and Tetris but there always was some new game with new mechanics available. This is one of those games. It reminds me a little bit of Stellaris, since there are storys to uncover while playing. In opposition to Stellaris this game lets you choose freely if you want to be challenged or not. From my point of view, choice is good. If you like dystopian cyberpunk and Stellaris storytelling, you will like this game. Technically it runs perfectly fine It has some UI bugs but nothing gamebreaking

The dev asked for honest reviews, so here I go. I might come back to flesh out the review later, but here are my overall thoughts so far. Note: I'm in Chapter 3 [spoiler]on my first timeline[/spoiler] so far, around 350 turns in. I think "story/narrative-based RPG" is the most apt overall description of the game's genre. You progress because you want to see what comes next. You very regularly make choices that reflect your personality and which have narrative consequences, which you may not fully know yet when you made the choice. There are multiple routes to multiple endings. The game simply has more gameplay than most others of the same genre. Yes it's also turn-based tactics, turn-based strategy (I hesitate to say "4X"), and logistics management, and has puzzle minigames. Those can be fun too. People have praised the originality and vision of this game, and I don't disagree. I'm enjoying the game for what it is, and the broadness of its scope and storylines. It's ambitious abou...

Surprisingly entertaining quirky strategy game game which meshes all sorts of genres together into a scifi choice driven exploration story where you choose whether or not you save cats and dogs while turning people into biological CPU for handy extra step on your path to higher computation power.. if you feel like it. All in a dystopian city which serves as your exploration and playing ground.

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Okay, this review is for anyone else who's a dumb caveman like me. I don't get it. I really really don't get it. Is this a management game? A strategy game? A tactics game? An immersive sim? What it most feels like is a visual novel. Yes there's some gameplay, but overall it seems entirely secondary to just going through a tree of quest steps. Maybe when you get further in there's more game to it...but I can't see that from here. And as things stand, it's just bewildering and unrewarding. Do I have to force myself to play? Right now, I doubt that I will. I adore Arcen Games, but I just don't get this one at all.

[h1] Summary [/h1] This is a strategy game that just gets everything it does right. The ambient sound and music are great. The story draws you in and makes it feel like it's your story. The setting is creative and unique. The game gives you many choices and strategies to choose from. This is that one more turn game that'll damage your ability to make responsible decisions regarding sleep and house work. The developer works hard, it's in early access and already feels more epic than many finished games. This is where to spend your money. [h1] Strategy/Story [/h1] This is a turn based strategy game that reminds me somewhat of UFO: Alien Invasion and older Xcom games with a bit of 4x thrown in. You have different individual units that you can decide how to equip, they have different strengths, and you can improve their equipment. Your options for units grow as the game goes on. This on its own is nice. What makes it special is how the story drives your strategy, and how much i...

Woke up as a Sentient Ai, Murdered some one for the rush... Then i went to Therapy. Then i made a deal to start feeding the underclasses Canned human flesh and then i hacked a building size mech and used it to fight off a evil PMC that was trying to kidnap my humans.. and i havent even got through the TUTORIAL yet....Game of the year