For those following the project (currently 0 steamsalty), here’s a quick update on where development stands. I’m currently focused on building out the card system, tightening the core mechanics, and getting the first playable demo ready for internal testing. Once the in-house test is wrapped up and things feel stable, I’ll start turning that build into a demo you can try yourselves.

Right now the main push is refining and expanding the more impactful cards to add extra variety and give you more ways to spark chaos during matches.

I appreciate everyone keeping an eye on the project. As things progress, I’ll continue sharing updates, footage, and notes from testing. If you haven’t added the game to your Steam wishlist yet, it helps a lot and ensures you won’t miss future updates. Cheers grAPEhics

• Fixed a major glitch in level 2 (Athington - The Shadow of Death -) where sometimes, when shutting down or restarting the game after talking to one refugee, the refugee counter showed "Zero Refugees Found." This problem also caused another issue. If the player did find the third refugee, they were unable to reach them.

• Fixed a rare bug that would get you stuck in the initial weapon select if the game thought you had applied upgrades applied on the wrong item

• Fixed a UI bug that displayed Fencing Construction’s +1 magazine size after its turbocharge, making it seem like the magazine increase was part of the turbocharge rather than the base upgrade

• Devastator grenades now bounce off Bruiser’s shield

• Fixed an issue where completing main objectives counted for backlog tasks that required side objective completions

• Fixed an issue where upgrade popups always said ‘new’ even if you had already discovered the upgrade

• Fixed an incorrect translation in Brazilian Portuguese for mission modifiers that make normal damage apply an element to you

• Hovering over the player level in your inventory shows how it’s calculated

• Upgrades that can be turbocharged now show a prompt letting you know that you can hold E to view turbocharged stats

• Adjusted the volume of some sounds that were too quiet or loud

• The Praetorian War Eye can be described as "Oddly Merciful" no longer. It now spawns a Tier 3 Exo-War ship instead of a Tier 1.
  
• Panopticon AI Type: Slightly decrease the number of eyes spawned. Done at the request of Tadrinth.

• Nerf how many ships the Hateful AI gets.
  
• Give the Armada some new claimables on the map that will produce more resources.
  
• Lower Armada metal costs a bit.
  
• Give the Kilrathi ships more tractor beams and more damage to ships in tractor beams.
  
• Buff Terran Sabre creation.
  
• Terran and Kilrathi can build a new powerful defensive structure. In return, they get fewer swarm launchers. Locusts are still wildly OP, but if you want to really spec into them you'll need to get the Starbases you can find on the map.
  
• Make Warleaders more effective engineers.
  
• Update the AI type that gets Armada Ships with a lot more ships.
  
• Locusts should no longer contribute to counterattacks.

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.

• "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.

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.

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.