Over the next week or so, we will focus on optimizing and resolving these issues:

1. Heroes and Treasures from the Season Handbook are forcibly given to players, offering no choice. As players own more and more Heroes and Treasures, it becomes increasingly difficult to select specific ones.
To address this, we will implement a two-step optimization:
a. Introduce a disabling feature. For each owned Hero and Treasure in the collection/gallery, a disable toggle can be set. Disabled content will not appear in your in-game choices. However, we will set a minimum required number of non-disabled Heroes and Treasures respectively; anything exceeding this minimum can be freely disabled.
b. Remove Royale Chests from the Season Handbook. We will add Royale Crystals, equivalent in value to the Royale Chests, to the existing handbook rewards. Heroes and Treasures that would have been in Royale Chests will be available for purchase with Royale Crystals at the start of the new season, allowing players to choose freely.

2. Optimization for overly strong Treasure combos. We will focus on analyzing and optimizing some long-criticized Treasures, including refresh-type combos, in terms of overall strength values, maximum obtainable quantity, and appearance stage.

3. The issue of repeatedly reviving the same player too many times in a Tournament. Players who have already been revived will need to wait for a certain number of tournament instances to pass before they can be revived again.

4. Regarding the Haste playstyle, we just made an optimization adjustment this week. We will continue to closely monitor, analyze, and optimize any remaining issues.

We sincerely apologize for the long delay in addressing some of these issues that have been frequently criticized by everyone. We will do our utmost to ensure these optimizations and new season content are launched simultaneously at the start of the new season in July.

Four substantial updates in one week, this week! Next week will be slower, as I'll be working on new late-game goal paths, and that takes a lot of time. That said, there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon over the next couple of weeks, including another feature update tomorrow.

Update 20 includes a lot of long-time player requests -- and some more from the last few days. The game has always supported borderless windowed, but now it does so in a manner that does not minimize when you click out of it. There's now a dedicated screen to seeing how much neural expansion you get from each source in a timeline. Several elements that were confusing to new players have been clarified. A couple of the weaker weapons have gotten buffs to ensure they remain interesting.

If you’ve been playing Heart of the Machine and feel it’s earned a review, that'd be great. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. The difference between “Mostly Positive” and “Mixed” doesn’t just reflect perception; it can influence momentum, visibility, and whether a player even considers clicking through. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.

Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard, and your feedback helps shape future patches, allowing me to make the game even better for you.

Thanks for reading and for playing.

[expand type=details expanded=false]

• True Borderless Windowed Mode: The game has been adjusted to be visible in the background if you switch away from it using OS hotkeys, or clicking to an adjacent monitor.

• Clarity For Vorsiber Collaborators: If you are a Vorsiber Collaborator start, it now makes sure that you have the midsize microbuilder fabs from the very start of that point, and also makes sure that you are instructed to build those rather than the mini-fabs. This was biting some new players who were using this exit from the prologue.
  
• Flamethrower Math: When holding shift to see the expanded tooltip, Flamethrower now shows the math of how it gets to the amount of morale damage it will inflict.
  
• Quick Electrical View: Clicking the electricity display in the resource header now takes you directly into the input/output list for electricity.
  
• New Neural Expansion View: In the input/output screen of the Resources window, if you have unlocked seeing your intelligence class, Neural Expansion is now the second option in the menu, under Electricity. This shows you the details of where all of your neural expansion is coming from in the current timeline (it also shows contributions form other timelines in one lump amount, for reference).

• Firestarter: he AG-31 Relumine shotgun now has a new Firestarter feat attached to it, which sets targets on fire if they are vulnerable to that. The strength of the fire damage is 2.5x of what a Flamethrower does, but only applies to a single target rather than a group.
  
• High-Density Rounds Utility: These have been rebalanced so that they have less of a range penalty, give a little bit less of a damage boost, and give a powerfully-scaling armor-piercing boost.
  
• Shotgun Ambushes: The TS-11 Light Shotgun now gives a 3x Ambush feat (which does stack with other sources of Ambush), making it actually an interesting weapon for those that can use it. The TS-29 Shotgun, which is already quite useful, has been given a 1.5x Ambush value to make sure that it remains competitive in the spectrum of other weapons around the game.
  
• Precision Flamethrowing: Flamethrowers by non-shell-company operatives no longer hit units targeting your shell company, and vice-versa. This is much more in keeping with the nature of how the shell companies are meant to function combat-wise.
  
• More Targets Vulnerable To Fire: The following units were not considered Flammable for purposes of being able to be set on fire by flamethrowers or Firestarter, but now are: Vorsiber Soldier, Vorsiber Inquisitor, SecForce Negotiator, Citizen Advocate (both kinds), and PMC Troopers. Originally, the idea was that their armor protected them, but this was very unclear and gave the wrong impression, such as that perhaps the Fearless perk was blocking them from being set on fire. It also didn't feel right for balance in general.
  
• Nickelbot Engineering Balance: "Nickelbots Are The Worst" now only requires a Nickelbot with 116 engineering skill, rather than 140, making this a bit better balanced for early chapter two.
  
• Drone Cores: The Avionics Core has been split into that plus also a Drone Core. In chapter one, it was really easy to get into a spot where you could block yourself with building too many drone factories and then being unable to build the aerospace hangar.

• Pathfinding Exception Fix: Hardened some of the npc pathfinding methods against having exceptions when a building has just recently been destroyed when they are trying to pathfind around.
  
• The Return Of Stealth Vehicles: Fixed a regression in Update 19 where I accidentally removed the ability to cloak from the Iris, Spectre, and Wraith vehicles. That has now been restored.

[/expand]
Full notes here.

---

Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:

💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.

Hey everyone!

I want to start off by apologizing to players who have been having issues with our game. We never expected our game to reach this kind of audience so soon, and to those who have been having game breaking bugs and issues with playing our game, we sincerely apologize. We will continue to work to update and improve the game so that hopefully as many people as possible can experience our game.


Along with the list of changes, we have improved lighting performance speed a significant amount more. The game should not run much better than it did on launch. We are continuing to optimize the game in any way that we can.


Here is a list of changes.

• Fixed a visual bug in the main menu regarding VSync
  
• Fixed a visual bug in the main menu regarding the password back button
  
• Added a back button to the waiting screen when you create a game so you can back out.
  
• Fixed an issue where ping was not properly displayed on matches in the match search menu
  
• We fixed an issue with players having to Alt+f4 to create or join more games.
  
• We added more audio to puzzles for some feedback, as well as fixed some issue with playing certain audio files
  
• Fixed an issue where alarms sounds in rooms were not being affected by audio sliders
  
• Fixed an issue where audio sliders would reset everytime you pulled up the settings in game

Possible Fixes

• We believe we have fixed the tutorial, after several play tests we believe we successfully diagnosed and fixed the problem.
  
• We believe we have fixed an issue with some puzzle solutions not showing up at all for the pilot.

If anyone experiences any of these issues, please give us feedback anywhere you can to allow us to get right back onto diagnosing any further issues.

Issues we are aware of

• We are aware of an issue with the sonar not showing Charlie (the monster)
  
• We are aware of the difficulty potentially being too harsh on players. We are play testing and actively finding better values to use.
  
• We are aware of some issues with interacting with certain objects not particularly doing anything or doing the interaction twice. We are actively diagnosing this issue

Features I will look to add soon

• Anti-Aliasing settings
  
• Tool tips, to help players understand their objective a bit better
  
• other accessibility features
  
• Properly loading and saving your graphical settings. Right now it doesn't do that.

We appreciate and value all of your feedback, and we are incredibly grateful that you have played our game. You motivate us to keep working everyday to make it better for you.

Here is our discord, click here

As always,
Tech Director Ben

Fixed a few bugs and tweaked some relics.

Fixes
Fixed an issue where only certain enemies to spawn on the first level
Fixed an issue with the 'Wealth Fist' relic to follow the player longer than it should
Made improvements to the Guard's Blocking. This should reduce situations where the player gets hit even though it felt like they should have blocked an attack

Changes
Reduced the base damage of 'Mightning'
Increased the base damage of 'Jar of Souls'

Added help for added content.
Changed to display a message when relocating characters at bases.
Added a function to check the searchable area in the investigation room.
Reset the status of added enemies slightly lower.
Other minor improvements to the specifications of the added content.

3.0 maps includes a variety of areas surrounding the western landmass of Invimona. There are a number of updates and additions to the game highlighted in the update log at the bottom of this post.

Of note is you'll now have access to your Lazure Petal Boat and pack-boro companion. These areas feature some more unique encounters and challenges both on and off sea!

We'll be updating these new maps over the next week with some additions and fixes we have in mind but wanted to get it out there for additional players to check out. We are now primarily focusing on finishing the Rally 'War Book Abilities', which rounds off the Rally and new abilities added from 2.0. This will allow upgrading your party's brawling abilities and contextual triggers for synchronized attacks with companions. We'll have more details and showcase of this soon, but these will provide a noticeable bump to the party's power scale for the mid/late game and work within the existing systems.

As for the next maps, beyond the early access grid availability we're narrowing in on the ending content and maps. There are a few options that could work for what the 4.0 maps will be for early access, and we'll be considering how to roll those out soon. Our primary goal at the moment is completing the quest connections to finish the game, and then we'll work in the ordering of the remaining mid-game maps for testing.

We have some patches underway that are going to be rolling out over the weekend/next week, but please let us know if you get a chance to check things out! If not we'll have an in-depth showcase of all this next week.

Thanks again everyone for all the support during early access. Banquet for Fools is becoming quite sizable at this point for just the two of us and with your help it's become a lot easier, more enjoyable and has allowed us to stay on schedule. Thank you for being a part of this, and for all the suggestions - I know we can have peculiar taste in some of these designs and we appreciate everyone who's given suggestions in-line with them.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
<3
Hannah and Joseph

🌊 🌊 🌊 Update log for 3.0 🌊 🌊 🌊

🐙New Skill training from other Lazure guards:


🐙Naming your pack-boro:


🐙Shopping on the go:


🐙Protecting a merchant. Guard duties🙄:


🐙Boro! Carry all this crap


⛵Previous notes for 3.0 on Testing Branch post:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/3172700/discussions/0/594025164830734486/

• 10 new maps added for 3.0
  
• boat ability actions
  
• pack boro companion available
  
• 8 pack boros available in maps to pick from with different stats
  
• Various new enemy types
  
• Map exit functionality now doesn't interfere or overlap with any HUD layout. Bars hug the edges of the screen, or you can hotkey exit when close enough.

• Fixed bug where edges of screen could show incorrect art during camera zooms
  
• Fixed bug where 30 Vsync was not working correctly in Settings menu
  
• Lazure uniform Yeti has blood mask
  
• Fixed dobra death size issue

• Fixed issue in Abandoned Farm where Padurii children did not always spawn correctly after hearing their giggles then saving and loading
  
• Fixed bug where enemies could gain health while stunned
  
• Updated animations for crow, boro and acorn summons
  
• Updated text when grabbing frog from log to be more specific
  
• Updated dodge functionality so you if press dodge during song, you'll dodge as soon as character's song is complete
  
• Fixed bug where chanter dialogue in rozafir exits out if you don’t have enough emeralds to train
  
• Fixed bug where Reeve ends informant quest early
  
• Fixed skill increase switch between lockpicking and sneaking that is granted at the end of the Rozafir storekeep quest
  
• Fixed bug where map exit icons could disappear after resting
  
• Fixed bug with one of the Varuchov head models where circlet wasn’t visible
  
• Fixed issue with ghost rotation animations popping
  
• Fixed bug where resting in West Ruins could cause game to freeze
  
• Fixed issue where hostage key drop wasn't dropping from Robber Baron in West Ruins
  
• Fixed bug in Abandoned Farm where exit to shop remained after camp went away

• Fixed bug with pressing escape while rally menu open causing HUD to appear when it shouldn't
  
• Fixed issue that could sometimes occur where you couldn't click the exit button on the map menu with left click manually after clicking multiple times quickly
  
• Fixed issue where ghost bodies stayed behind when dead
  
• Fixed some inventory issues that could occur after dragging an item into the inventory that didn’t fit
  
• Fixed bug where you could drag peddler objects onto ground slot
  
• Updated effects/inventory items to show seconds in game seconds/mins/hours, not in real time
  
• Updated scene change map exit visuals so that they are no longer hidden behind UI

Hello everyone! I'm writing a quick announcement to let you know that Maid For My Master has been released!



Maid For My Master is a cute BxG visual novel about a young man who falls in love with a robot maid. The story is very light-hearted, and it was partially inspired by Chobits.

The story contains a little bit of drama, but it does have a happy ending, and it doesn't contain any especially upsetting content. I think this would be a good story to read if you want something sweet and hopeful to cheer you up!

There is an adult patch for the game available on Steam, but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. Feel free to download the patch or not; it's up to you.



You can find the VN here if you want to read it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3364490

As always, thank you for supporting me while I release so many projects. I hope you enjoy Maid For My Master if you do choose to check it out, and you have a good time with Holly!

- ebi x

Hello everyone! I'm writing a quick announcement to let you know that Maid For My Master has been released!



Maid For My Master is a cute BxG visual novel about a young man who falls in love with a robot maid. The story is very light-hearted, and it was partially inspired by Chobits.

The story contains a little bit of drama, but it does have a happy ending, and it doesn't contain any especially upsetting content. I think this would be a good story to read if you want something sweet and hopeful to cheer you up!

There is an adult patch for the game available on Steam, but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. Feel free to download the patch or not; it's up to you.



You can find the VN here if you want to read it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3364490

As always, thank you for supporting me while I release so many projects. I hope you enjoy Maid For My Master if you do choose to check it out, and you have a good time with Holly!

- ebi x

Hello everyone! I'm writing a quick announcement to let you know that Maid For My Master has been released!



Maid For My Master is a cute BxG visual novel about a young man who falls in love with a robot maid. The story is very light-hearted, and it was partially inspired by Chobits.

The story contains a little bit of drama, but it does have a happy ending, and it doesn't contain any especially upsetting content. I think this would be a good story to read if you want something sweet and hopeful to cheer you up!

There is an adult patch for the game available on Steam, but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. Feel free to download the patch or not; it's up to you.



You can find the VN here if you want to read it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3364490

As always, thank you for supporting me while I release so many projects. I hope you enjoy Maid For My Master if you do choose to check it out, and you have a good time with Holly!

- ebi x

Hello everyone! I'm writing a quick announcement to let you know that Maid For My Master has been released!



Maid For My Master is a cute BxG visual novel about a young man who falls in love with a robot maid. The story is very light-hearted, and it was partially inspired by Chobits.

The story contains a little bit of drama, but it does have a happy ending, and it doesn't contain any especially upsetting content. I think this would be a good story to read if you want something sweet and hopeful to cheer you up!

There is an adult patch for the game available on Steam, but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. Feel free to download the patch or not; it's up to you.



You can find the VN here if you want to read it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3364490

As always, thank you for supporting me while I release so many projects. I hope you enjoy Maid For My Master if you do choose to check it out, and you have a good time with Holly!

- ebi x