Raise an army of robots to rule by force, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore a constellation of alternative paths – players must strive to find their place amidst a crumbling society in desperate need of saving (from itself). Whether you rally the underclasses to fight against corporate tyranny, create shell companies and engage in corporate espionage, or just experiment on people to further your goals, the possibilities are endless.

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 besides 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?

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.

Deciding to let humanity enjoy the holiday season in full before welcoming everyone’s new robot overlords, as Hooded Horse and Arcen Games announced that Heart Of The Machine is now available through early access (Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store) at $29.99 / £24.99 / €29.99 / ¥3,980, and will remain so for about 12 months.

So what is this game? What is in that mysterious chapter two and beyond? Put simply, this is a new time-bending genre blending tactics, strategy, and narrative. The prologue and first chapter are available in a public demo, and they teach you everything you need to know about how to play.

Chapter two is when the freedom kicks in, and the narrative elements are also now able to go into overdrive since we're out of the tutorial zone. During chapter three, you become a full time lord, able to send information and in some cases units backwards or forwards in time to yourself.

This launch version of the game is huge. It includes 12 main goal-states for chapter two and onward, and 2 side goals. Many of those have multiple routes to them. It will take the average player something like 15-20 hours to reach chapter 3 if you're starting from the prologue, and that's when all the time travel shenanigans start. There is a Hard Mode and an Extreme Mode, and both of those live up to the name. Those won't be for everyone, but there's dozens of hours of content even without cranking up the difficulty.

Blending elements from many genres, there’s no easy comparison. Independent simulations are tied to specific narratives and provide dramatically different vibes in different parts of the game (that you may or may not find). I'm excited to see your reactions to some of the crazier storylines!

Early Access is going to see a lot of updates with even more content, but please don't feel like you need to wait for narrative reasons. The additional content will focus on adding more paths and new stories behind existing ones, without undoing things you've already experienced.

Even if you aren't in a place where you want to get the game yet, you still have a chance to help shape the narratives by participating in the community; your support is always appreciated, but is not required in order to make suggestions! Some very awesome moments in the launch build were playtester ideas, and others came from people who had not even played the game!

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 that 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 neighborhood.

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, maneuver 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 that want to help you, keep an eye out for corporate enforcers that 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 armor on command?

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 coming to PC (Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store) in 2026.