We are excited to announce that we are nearing the completion of the first four songs of the game.

Music in games elevates the experience. Each melody adds an additional layer to the story being told. What art and game mechanics cannot express, music fills in.

We are excited to share the beautiful score that will accompany the release of Chapter 1. Stay tuned.

And if you haven't wishlisted The Sorcerer's Sword yet, I invite you to please do so.

This build includes the first half, roughly, of Civil Spycraft. I wasn't intending to release that in parts, but it turns out it works well that way. The beta branch (English only) includes 95% of the second act of Civil Spycraft if you want to see that. This build looks small based on the release notes, but there's a large amount of gameplay and story in here.

You may notice I'm slowing down a bit lately with the releases, but that's actually because I'm working on really large pieces of content. Expect that to continue for another 4 weeks or so. I'm wrapping up the last of Civil Spycraft, and then diving headfirst into a bunch of Tier 3 goals for the first time. That's all very exciting, but it makes it harder to do smaller intermediate releases. You'll see about one per week during this period, and you'll also notice that I'm a lot less responsive to feature requests or bugs that aren't severe.

After this sprint, I'm going to be back onto feature requests, lesser bugs, and so forth. Sometimes these things come in waves!

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.

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• "Attempt To Restore Order" During The Civil War: Later this will be noted as starting Civil Spycraft, but for now it does not have that label since you can only get through act one. Regardless, you can go far enough with this that you make some surprisingly major changes to the city, involve your cult, and can end the civil war.
• "Two Branches: The first act of Civil Spycraft has two completely independent branches that involve two different fedcorps. They are mechanically distinct, give you some two separate angles on the story, and also have their own separate major useful buffs/jobs that come out of them.
• Two New Achievements: I'm not saying much because of spoilers, really.
• Mysteries Unresolved: The first act of Civil Spycraft does kind of deepen a few mysteries, and act two (on the beta branch now, or will be more widely available in 2ish weeks) ties those up.

• Make A Shell Company: If you somehow get to the Organometallic Form project (for creating mimics) without ever having created a shell company, there is now an Establish Shell Company project that pops up with guidance on that.
• Resource Cost Clarity: Improved the readability of StreetSense project actions when they cost one or more resources.
• Aftermath Text For Goals: There have been notable updates to the post-goal summary screen. It now shows what resources you gained from that goal, and which paths of the goal you completed. In English, it also then has aftermath text for every goal except for the "Pressuring The City" side goal (which doesn't need aftermath text). This is something that will be coming to other languages in about two weeks. You can then click through from this first screen with this new info to see the same mix of stats and possible achievements that you would see in the past. In both of these screens, the header also now shows the name of the goal that you completed, and lets you see its tooltip simply by hovering that header.

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Full notes here.

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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.

New position for male-female couples

Hello,

After I finished chapter 2's base structure, I was using a service to playtest it.

Many issues arouse, and I am working to fix them.

In addition, as I mentioned, I am adding new talents and improving existing talent/equipment and content of chapter 2 as well.

I have also fixed a lot of issues that have always exist in the Demo as well.

Some quality of life improvements such as:

• Pointing on enemy health bar will show the HP in numbers.

• Map names appear in mini map

• Weapons now show the attack and damage values for your specific stats.

• Showing vacant equipment slots names.

• Sort button for your inventory

Quite a few bug fixes in Chapter 2, that also affect chapter 1.

One of the major bug fixes, is the smoothness of the walking.

The player would walk a few tiles straight, but there was often a small "stall" between tiles.

This was not a performance issue, it was a logical bug.

I have put a fix to this issue in Demo 2.1.1, and now both monitor and VR should play a lot smoother and feel better.

A few audio bugs were fixed as well, where the audio was not set down even when you did set down it in the options.

Sadly VR is not yet Supported on Linux.

This is an issue with Unity, I will see what I can do to make it work.

I have update the Linux Demo with the latest Demo fixes as well.

Linux build is 1.14.

There is good progress and I am hoping to start working on chapter 3.

As always, if you have any feedback, comment or suggestions, you can comment here or in the discussions.

Thanks you,

Ofer.

• Save and Load of Collectables and Timer

• Leaderboards fixed.

Small window on start that should explain better how to play the game:

From the silent veil of the night… steps Mortred — The Elf Assassin.
Swift. Precise. Deadlier than the cold that follows her strikes.

With Crippling Blade, she launches an icy dagger that slows her prey — the first warning that escape is no longer possible.
Her Ghost Shift bends space itself, pulling her instantly toward her target, arriving before they can even draw breath.
Fueled by instinct and skill, Lethal Intent turns every attack into a gamble of deadly precision, each strike carrying the chance to end the fight in a heartbeat.

And when the perfect moment arrives… she invokes Fatal Precision.
Her next attack becomes unstoppable — no dodge, no deflection, no escape.
Only silence… followed by the whisper of steel.

Mortred — The Elf Assassin.
Death has never moved so fast.

Stay Epic. Stay Brave.

• added decisions tab - the decisions are special actions providing extra possibilities. They are the first step to adding scripting and historical events to the game. For now there are only several default decisions

• added rivers - they are only visual addon for now and they don't impact economy or military, however it may change in the future. Currently there are only some rivers of Europe in the game and several from the the other continents

• upgraded AI - since now the artificial intelligence should be more aggressive and work in a slightly different way. Player can now set the level of aggressiveness of the AI

• the mechanics of investments, puppeting other countries and intelligence have been changed a little and should be now more useful

• fixed some balance issues and bugs, changed prices of some buildings and law modifiers, fixed some map imperfections

This update is NOT compatible with older saves!

Hope you enjoy!

I think I post these out to no one, but hey ho.

Currently running final tests, getting leader boards up and running and ensuring everything is functional.

Hoping to be out before December.

Thanks

Jamie

We're still reviewing all your feedback and have stabilized this version. We've also added several QoL improvements so you can spend less time walking in the Sanctuary and more time enjoying the game.

What's new in this update:

- Fixed a critical loading bug on the first game launch
- Maeve has been slightly strengthened
- Leaderboard update: now more precise, showing both your Guardian and your Resonance level
- Various minor bug fixes
- Added a teleporter in the Revive room – available only when no active quest is in the Sanctuary. Use it to reach the Aqueduct instantly
- Added destroyable vases in neutral rooms – break them to collect shellfish!
- Optimized sound performance
- Localization fixes
- General performance optimizations

\["Flowers Beneath A Starless Sky" is a prologue story for the game, written in the same style as the lore you'll be discovering in-game. [/i]The previous chapter can be found here.][/p]

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“Serenna.”

The voice is gruff and filled with familiar disdain. Waiting at the village gate is a figure backed by the glow of a crackling brazier, a bulky crimson cloak draped around her shoulders in a way that conceals her scowl. She leans ever so slightly against a staff clenched in her hand.

“Tell me: What do you see in the sky?”

“Nothing at all. Same as always, I’m afraid,” I reply. I offer a smile and carry on my way. “But you can count on me to keep looking, Delphine, don’t you worry.”

She grabs my arm; I flinch.

“You will address me as sage,” she hisses. I can feel her glare “You have earned no other right. And since it seems you have not gone blind, perhaps you could explain what you were doing beyond the walls past moonfall.”

“Paying my respects.” I keep my tone flat and pry my arm free. She moves to block my path before I can take more than a step.

“To that old fool? Still?” she scoffs, menace rising in her voice. “You would risk our safety to honor a feckless waste of a man? He’s long gone, and lucky to even have the decency of a grave. Let go already.”

“I would think a sage would know better than to speak ill of the dead,” I say. “But then, you’ve never been as wise in the ways of the spirits as he was.”

She laughs, bitter and hateful.

“Insolent little brat. You speak of spirits but you don’t even hear the howling all around us!” she says. She sweeps her staff out toward the darkness beyond the gate. “The world is dead and rotting, Serenna, and the wolves are closing in. Any spirits out there have either long forsaken us, or would tear us apart the moment we held their gaze. We are fighting for survival, there is no room for childish fantasy, for this desperate hope that a corpse can heal!” 

She slams her staff into the dirt.

“We have rules for a reason. You cannot travel in the dark without drawing attention to yourself—and in doing so, bring that attention back here. The fact that you cannot grasp this, that you continue to risk all of our safety for your useless errands, leaves little wonder why you were found amongst smoldering ruins. Time only continues to prove that bringing you here was my predecessor's greatest mistake.”

I take a breath. My gaze remains level.

“Is that all?”

Her eyes narrow further, and she leans in close.

“You will not return to that grave. You will not leave these walls without permission. And you will show me respect,” she says. “It is only by the grace of the one you call mother that you have not already been cast out into the dark, but even her sway has limits. Understood?”

“Of course, my sage,” I answer. 

I can feel her eyes watching me all the way back to my home.