Hello everyone!

I'm finally able to share the launch news:

Treasure 'n Trio is launching on October 9th!

Thank you all so much for your patience.

See you in the game soon!

Hello SUPERVIVERs!

Today we’re covering upcoming iterations to the Breach map, a brief follow-up on our resident dunkers, and some thoughts on item balance. Onto it!

For our 1.0 launch, we made some big shifts to the Breach - spreading out landmasses, adding more abyss and wind tunnels, and creating Skysharks as a new form of long-distance traversal. Our goal with these changes was to give the map more variety - so fighting in different zones gives you unique combat situations to react to. Something we’ve been hearing more in the last few weeks is that several areas of the new map are still feeling pretty “samey”. We’re looking to make some adjustments to address this feedback.

To make sure we’re improving the right areas, we connected with some of our veteran players, folks who have put hundreds of hours into SUPERVIVE. Their notes helped us narrow in on specific spots on the map that could benefit the most from an additional level design pass.

One of the biggest points we heard was that the map feels too chopped up, with too many small islands breaking up the flow of play. This often caused endgames to collapse into the same few tight spots, with the abyss forcing everyone together. Another theme was that abyss fights themselves, though more plentiful, felt one-note. We’re tackling that by reintroducing more variety in abyss spaces, with a mix of tighter crossings and wider gaps to keep combat and movement interesting throughout the map.

A few example areas we’re updating next patch:

• Adding an additional mid-sized island in the large abyss between Ion Acres and Veingrove

  • There was a single island here previously, but was feeling more like an outpost for a single team to hold rather than a contestable space. We hope a second island may make this more skirmishable. 

• Adding a wind ring to help north/south access into Kobayashi’s

• Extending Endshrine landmass north to avoid large gap of abyss

• Connecting Northern and Eastern landmasses with bridges to give an alternate traversal path between these sections

• Adding dock elements below the train tracks south of Prisma Falls, including grind rails and spike pillars

  • This replaces the large empty space with a wider combat playground that isn’t just the train tracks themselves

There are quite a few changes in this style in 1.03. Take a look next week and let us know if there are any areas you feel like we’ve missed!

We’ve made some balance changes to Armory items over the last couple patches, and we have some more of these in 1.03. This patch we’re focused on a few wider goals.

1. Making healing/utility item options more appealing

While there’s nothing wrong with players gravitating their builds towards aggression, when we’re seeing Protectors and Controllers choosing offensive items en masse, it’s an indicator that we need to make sure the defensive options we have are hitting the mark. We’re going to do a pass on our more defensive Relics and Grips to make sure they’re compelling alternatives to going face every game.

2. Active Item Consistency

After looking at the data around active items, it’s clear that some are too strong, or that the active effect is available too frequently. We’ll be looking to bring these options more in line with the median, in some cases with cooldown increases, or changes to their outputs. This also means looking at the actives which are feeling neglected or unpopular, and seeing if it’s a matter of the cooldown being too long, or if the effect itself isn’t sticking to players. We’re not looking to make popular items unviable, more to reduce the gap between item tiers to let players express different playstyles without feeling like they’re forced into a single competitive build. 

Unrelated to balance specifically, but we’re also shipping some VFX updates to Paladin’s Primer and Wildfire Drive to make their effects and ranges more clear. Wanted to share them because they look cool :3

Last patch we shipped a new set of combat changes around dunking abilities. We’ve been keeping an eye on Hunters affected by these adjustments to make sure we’re not seeing any major impacts to their strength or play patterns. At the moment, we’re planning on giving Kingpin some QoL buffs, and are looking into adjusting Emergency Platform more towards creating holdable terrain in the abyss rather than just existing as “anti-dunking” tech.

And though we probably won’t be able to ship the fixes until a later patch, we’re also cataloguing the most frequently player-reported bugs and looking to do another focused sprint to burn that list down. Appreciate everyone who documents these incidents in discord, on our player support website, or social media. Especially those of you who provide video. You’re the real heroes. 

See you for 1.03 next week!

~ the ViV team

Here is our second teaser for CastleMiner Z : Resurrection, and you will get a peek at the dragon.

If you haven't already please wishlist the game. Thank you for all the support do far.

Second build of this week. Might be my last one for the week, as I'm going to start focusing on the larger content updates now. But there was more I wanted to accomplish in terms of requests from players than I could fit into Update 28.

This update also has a large number of visual updates to various structures that you can build. This wasn't even on my list of things to do this week, but I guess I just kind of had a bolt of inspiration on it, so here we are.

Once I finish with these two, then I'm going to resume working on the next big content update, so that may be another bit of a break between builds unless you play on the beta branch. The content updates that are coming up are all beefy ones, so their spacing is going to be a bit further apart (3 weeks on average, probably) compared to what I did earlier in the year.

If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. 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. 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 contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.

Thanks for reading and for playing.

• Many Structures Updated: In all, 31 structures now look differently than they used to, providing more visual variety and flavor.
• Many New Visuals Added: There are 21 new actual visual structure styles divided between them. Broadly this means that some structures have the same visual styling (everything being completely unique was never the goal there), but it makes it so that there's a lot less repetition.

• Quicker Contemplation Arrival: Whenever you finish constructing a building, it now immediately checks if there's anything based on that (contemplations or streetsense) that it should trigger sooner than later. This makes it so that you can get geothermal on the same turn that you finish constructing your wind power, rather than it needing to wait until later.
• Debate Tooltip Clarity: During debates, the short tooltip now has colored icons for the categories that it is in. A orange-gold for the ones that match something you're trying to hit, and a dim purple for ones that don't match. There is already an on-tile display of these same icons when they match, but now it's in two places so it's easier not to miss that info.
• More Audio Options: There is a new "Major Event Musical Stingers" option in the Audio tab of settings: Lasting 10-50 seconds on major events such as dooms, chapter changes, etc. Turning off the rest of the music leaves these on.
• "Stop The Poisoning" QOL: Improved Stop The Poisoning so that if you click it in the task stack, it now cycles through the targets.
• Better Automated Personnel Management: Previously, there was a delay with automated personnel management's hiring and firing. It would only adjust the numbers during turn change, which could make it seem like it wasn't doing anything if you just had new buildings come online, or just got rid of old ones. It now makes adjustments in realtime with your changes, and notes hiring and layoffs into the statistics tooltip for that type of worker, too. If you are very poor, with less than 10k wealth, then it will not attempt to hire new workers until the turn change, but it will lay them off. And it will properly hire them during the turn change as it used to (but they may then leave if you can't fulfill their salary needs).
• Restarting Certain Lapsed Deals: If your deal for toilet paper or donuts or similar is broken, and you can get to a screen that would let you restart that deal, then it now allows you to properly restart the deal.

• Handbook Correction: The handbook entry for "Vandalize Spaceport Computers" is now properly noting that it must be done in the first 20 turns, rather than saying it can be done in the first 50 turns. Please note that for languages other than English, this will not be updated until a future build.
Fixes When Replaying The Prologue: If you replayed the prologue and then got into chapter 3+ on a new timeline, then some flags were not being properly tripped until you saved and reloaded. Fixed. Similarly, if went all the way back on a new timeline, or went back to chapter one only and then got back into chapter 3, the same thing was an issue and is now fixed. This was causing stuff like LostGen Water Theft to not appear in a timely fashion when you reached chapter 3+, but it probably didn't affect much else. This also did not affect completely new profiles.[/*]
• Faster StreetSense and Contemplation Arrival: When you get to a more advanced chapter from replaying something in a new timeline, it now triggers StreetSense and Contemplations to update more quickly. Previously, some things would only appear after you ended a turn or reloaded a savegame.
• Help Button In Debates: The help button in the debate window finally works properly. That's been non-functional since prior to the game entering early access, and I never could find my error with it until now. I didn't put a huge effort into it. It turned out to just be two lines of code that were doing the opposite of what was intended.
• Chapter 3 Failsafe: If you somehow got more than one timeline without ever triggering chapter 3 to start, then it now will automatically move you into chapter 3.
• Armored Executive Permissions: Armored Executives are now properly able to do the various streetsense and contemplation items that require shell company operatives. It was a mistake that they could not.
• Improper Rust Spreading: Fixed three spots where The Rust would not spread to human targets properly if you had gotten a cure for yourself.
• Improved Wind Turbines After Rust Cure: Once you have the cure for The Rust, your own wind turbines will not be able to infect themselves, and any infection on them will be removed (they will still act as a spreader, though, which lets you use them aggressively if you wish).
• Auto-Scrapping Fix: When you are building new structures of the sort that auto-scraps themselves if you are over limit, it now looks for ones that have been disconnected from the network and scraps those prior to the nice new ones you're building. This was maybe the third instance of this kind of confusing edge case, which would lead to your stuff disappearing as soon as you built it.
• Stealth Storage Fix: Fixed an issue in Update 28 where stealth storage facilities were being scrapped on load, which was not intended. Their underlying type was updated, and now it will automatically transition over types if it is valid to do so (as it is here), rather than deleting the structure.
• Donut Shop Counting: Fixed an issue where the number of donut shops was counting down instead of counting up properly during Stop The Poisoning.
• Text Fix: Fixed an issue where the wrong text string was being used for the target building type in Stop The Poisoning, especially notable in languages other than English.
• Network Range Extender Consistency: Fixed an issue where network range extenders would be only range 45 until they were fully built, and then would be 55. They are now 55 at all times. This was a legacy piece of data based on part of the number being on the structure and part of it being on the job, which hasn't been relevant for a year and a half.
• Aggression Toward Meeting-Seekers: Fixed three separate cases where different NPCs units who are seeking meetings with you would be wrongly targeted for death by your bulk or worker units.
• Shop Prior Activity Counting Fix: Fixed an issue with shops where if you bought from them, it was making the times you've done them in other timelines count down. This was a new issue in Update 28. Now it doesn't increase at all, since it's telling you about other timelines, not this one (and in other timelines, it will show you how many other timelines you made a choice in, not how many times you made that choice in each other timeline -- legacy data aside).
• Repeat Action Fix: If a building is no longer a valid location to take a project-specific action, it no longer lets you take the action a second time if the StreetSense item has not yet cleared. There was a great use case of this during Bitter Medicine, but frankly there were some other spots where this was likely to come up as well. All of them should be fixed now, but the Bitter Medicine one definitely is.
• Vitamin Water For Nomads Fix: Fixed an issue where the Vitamin Water For Nomads project was not properly completing if you had two vitamin infusers working and were at full cap. It was mistakenly only going to complete properly if you had three vitamin infusers, which is one more than you need for this scenario.
• Secondary Network Tower Independence: Previously, "secondary network towers" from a grey goo scenario were not providing network connectivity unless they were in range of another network tower or repeater or similar. This was unintended, as they are meant to all be independent network sources that cut across gaps as needed. The normal clustering of them means that this doesn't happen often at all, but from now on if it does happen, it will work properly.

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.

• Lowered demo file size (without loss to content!)

• Added player and enemy damage numbers pop-up

• Reduced player respawn time

• Improved crafting anvil UI

• Improved Level End Screen UI

• Improved Perk Level Up screen

• Improved keyboard/gamepad controls during tutorial explanations

• Improved harvest node VFX