Oct 20

Once Upon a Galaxy - SRFS

Candylar is out of the oven and it’s hot Hot HOT!! No time to wait for it to cool, let's sink our teeth in and get a big bite of the sweetest set this side of the Milky Way. If this is your first time hearing about it, check out all the sweet details!

Candylar - The Sweet Set

Candylar is a full set of over 100 sweet characters, treasures and spells! Summon massive Cookie Golems, Find the Magical Piping Bag and blast your opponents with the Frosting Dragon!

There are New Free Captains and even more in the shop!

Free Captains

Premium Captains

Check out the full list of spoilers!

Victory Loot - An Innovative New Way to Unlock Cards

We've got a new exciting way to collect cards in Once Upon a Galaxy.

Introducing Victory Loot!

When you get top 3 in an Async Lobby, you will now unlock all collectable cards on the last board you played against in addition to the normal random card unlocks!

This sweet bonus should give you tons of new unlocks as you play!

Card Changes

Early boards were edging a touch more powerful than we had anticipated. Nesting Scrubfowl in particular was providing just a few too many stats early, especially when an early silver and gold was found. We’ve decided to scrub off the additional Health to help bring it back into line while still allowing it to enable early plays.

Another tweak to help fight powerful early games, we’ve knocked Navii down from Rare to Uncommon. This will allow her to be found earlier and goldened more often.

Like with Nesting Scrubfowl, Sailor’s Spinach was supplying just a bit too much pop when found early. We all love that early punch so we pumped the Attack and reduced the Health to help lessen full heart damage early in games.

For now we’ve decided to cut Buried Chest. Candylar has brought a bunch of good ways to get uncommon treasures and we really want to give them more chances to shine.

Bug Fixes and Tweaks

Jasmine Dragon and similar effects now reset their counters if you have replaced them after they triggered
Transformed characters mid-fight now keep damage that was done to them prior to transformation
Goat-T was being greedy and wasn’t tracking previous captains cloned. We’ve fed him a shoe and now he’s content to work as intended.
Shoemaker Elves now only works on discovered Treasures.
Lesser Mimic now correctly copies stat increase to treasures buffed with Shoemaker Elves
Galaxy Pass timer now shows hours or minutes when under 1 day left
Gem reward for completed captains down from 10 to 5, due to increased card unlock rates

What a Year

Many of you have played the base set of Galaxy for hundreds of hours and we are truly touched and feel all of the love from this community. The release of Candylar marks a monumental moment for us, as this is the first new expansion of many more to come. We have spent copious hours building a set that we hope fills your hours with sweet fun and joy. Without further ado, Candylar: The Sweet Set is now live.

See you in the stars!

Oct 20

Update 40: The Annexes Of Your Mind

Heart of the Machine - x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)

There's another big update that is currently being localized, but this is not that update. This one is a lot smaller, but will have a notable impact on the balance for people in chapter 3 and onward.

This wasn't a build I was planning to do, actually, but enough people are affected by this that I figured I'd better get this out today!

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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Update 40 Changelog

Quality Of Life

Personnel Advice: On the various science buildings, it now says if you need to manually hire for them (in red text), or if hiring and firing is automated (in blue text), and it also has a special note if they need to be paid in Meal Kits rather than wealth (also in red text). This will only be available in English for another several weeks.
Organized Kidnapping: If the project you are doing involves actively kidnapping people, then there is now a task stack item about that. It lets you left-click to cycle through kidnapping targets, and you can right-click to jump to the Kidnap Targets filter of the Forces lens.

Balance

Nix "Mind Annex" Gatcha: Mind Annexes are no longer able to be pulled from the Computing Optimization upgrade group. This is powerful enough that it feels not-great in terms of being at the mercy of the RNG for it. This was actually in the prior update, but I forgot to mention it. Sorry!
Maximized Space For Expanded Minds: The maximum number of times that Mind Annexes can be upgraded has been increased to 18 from its prior maximum of 10.
Shrinking The Load Of Temples Of Minds: Altered the Temple Of Minds to only cost 2 Mind Annexes, rather than 9.
Outbreak Mental Expansion: You now gain a mind annex for completing the Full Outbreak project of The Executive Tomb. This won't be back-granted, unfortunately, but it will be granted if you have yet to do it in a timeline.
Another Reason For Housing Agencies: Previously, the "Solve Homelessness" project would give you 1 each of Structural Improvement and Android Optimization inspiration, but it now gives you a Mind Annex upgrade, instead. This also isn't back-granted.

Bugfixes

Exceptions Protection : Added in protections in MarkAsBlockedUntilNextTurn so that if a building or other spot is being removed right as it is being called, it won't cause any exceptions.
Exception Fix: Fixed a rare exception that could happen in RecalculateSubCells on game load.
Premature Ziggurats: Fixed an issue where all existing profiles were being grandfathered into building on Ziggurats right away, rather than just those that had actually built on them.
Neural Expansion Display Doubling: Fixed a display issue in the neural expansions window where it was showing the count and amount from "other timelines" as instead being the "total amount" rather than "other amount." This did not affect balance.
Schrödinger's Mech Pilot: If you demoralize a mech pilot into leaving the battlefield, it no longer acts like you killed them and thus no longer gives you cruelty from killing them, etc. It previously acted as if you had killed them from this one perspective, but as if you had not killed them from all other perspectives (no-murders runs, etc).

[/expand]

Full notes here.

Connect with the Machine

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.

Oct 20

New update!

United by Love's Heart - CapturedLeek27

Hello everyone!

I’m finally bringing you the new update! Honestly, it took me much longer than I expected, but it’s finally here! And I promise the next one definitely won’t take as long! Let me tell you everything it includes:

Beginning of Chapter 2. This includes several main quests that will lead you to discover the four possible clubs you can join or, if you don’t like any of them, create your own club together with Katsune!
New characters added. Five new main characters and two secondary ones are introduced, with whom you can even grow closer depending on your choices. As always in this game, decisions are everything. Once unlocked, you’ll be able to find the five new main characters around the university.
New sex scenes. Naturally, there can’t be a new update for this game without adding more adult scenes. These are mainly with the two new secondary characters. As I said, it all depends on your choices — you can experience one of them, both, or continue without seeing any. There are also new midnight scenes where you can spy on the five new main girls. Keep in mind these are random! If you don’t see one on a certain night, try again the next.
New random events added. Specifically, two more — making three in total. Remember that these random events are a list of possible occurrences, and each day one of them (or none) may appear in the university. Which one appears depends entirely on the player. On your laptop, you can check the list of all random events in the game to see how many there are, which ones you’ve unlocked, and where to find those you haven’t. More random events will be added in future updates!
Bug fixes. Due to an issue I had with the project right before releasing the previous update, a bit of progress was lost, which caused some minor bugs I hadn’t noticed and have been fixing ever since. Also, some players reported that certain texts weren’t translated into English. Well, now I’ve made sure that all text so far is fully translated, so if you’re playing in English, you shouldn’t see anything in another language. As I always say, if you find any bugs or have any suggestions, feel free to message me — I’ll reply as soon as possible.

I think that’s all I had to say for now, so I’ll say goodbye, but not before promising once again that more updates are coming very soon.

Have a great day!

Oct 20

Alpha 0.20

Toybox Aces - Zontemuma

2025-10-03 Alpha 0.20

Finally fixed a problem that prevented aircraft collision from being detected
Added a ceiling light to the storage room, so you can see a bit more when flying
Fixed a lot of inconsistent geometry in several assets
Fixed the machine gun so it stops firing if out of ammo. Sorry, no pew pew today.
Fixed a bug where the gunfire spread was not calculated correctly
Added flak (anti aircraft gun) fire zones. Quite risky to fly through.
Slightly changed the appearance of the fixed practice target orbs
Added AI controlled auto turrets. Damn, stay clear of them!
Massively overhauled the damage system to be way more flexible
Colliding with objects now damages the aircraft, too
Fixed some issues with framerate independent physics calculation
Fixed the flight dynamics: Damages to wings now affect the lift correctly
Gave the rudder of the Bf 109 a bit more authority at lower airspeed
Tweaked the Levels "Fixed Target Training" and "Free Flight, Unfair Fight"
Implemented an adaptive gunsight with lead and elevation adjustment!
Added a temporary keyboard shortcut for "repair"
Added a temporary keyboard shortcut for "select target"
Added a temporary keyboard shortcut for "arm / disarm primary weapon"
Fixed a lot of smaller issues
Made many mistakes
Implemented some machine learning for the enemy AI to train itself "midgame"
Had a lot of fun while hunting down enemy planes
Prepared the way for an achievement / leaderboard / ranking system
Played around with "ball turrets" for things like the B-29 or so... we will see

Oct 20

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory Release Livestream and Q&A #2

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory - Spiderweb

Started in 1994, the cult classic Avernum series is one of the great video game sagas. On Wednesday, October 22, Spiderweb Software returns to this unique underworld nation with Avernum 4: Greed and Glory! Coming for Windows and Mac.

Join us at 2 PM PST on Saturday the 25th on the game's Steam page. There, you can see our second (of 2) livestream by the developer, a grumpy indie developer veteran who has been making his odd, low-budget, fun adventures for 31 (!) years. Enjoy learning about the decades-old Avernum series and the indie games business from a fun old crank.

In this new, epic fantasy role-playing adventure, you explore and save (or betray?) an enormous underworld nation. Battle through huge dungeons, fight unique and cunning foes, collect, create, and bless hundreds of different artifacts, and enjoy a really cool story.

Avernum is a nation deep underground, full of huge caves, treacherous labyrinths, and fairylands of alien fungi. Once a prison, it has won its freedom and is now reaching for wealth and glory. However, old enemies from the deepest caves envy Avernum's growing power. You will have to fight to save this new, fragile land (or be well paid to betray it).

You can see an Avernum 4 trailer, screenshots, and plenty of information on our web site or on our Steam page. Available for sale on October 22nd!

Oct 20

Heart of the Machine News Roundup at the Hooded Horse October Publisher Sale

Heart of the Machine - Auverin (Hooded Horse)

In just the last month, Heart of the Machine has gotten four regular updates and one major update. Here's a roundup of all the recent development news that you might have missed.

Heart of the Machine is also part of the Hooded Horse October Publisher Sale, at 35% off on Steam. Check it out, and the other games that are included in the October Publisher Sale.

Hooded Horse October Publisher Sale

Heart of the Machine News Recap

Last week, Heart of the Machine released Update 39 -- a major update, and the third in the game's development history. The latest in a series of changes focused on the late-game experience, this update adds the long-awaited "Daring Shop", which allows players to spend the Daring resource that they accumulate while playing higher difficulties.

Update 39 also added additional Intelligence Class 7 Unlocks, rebalanced Ziggurats, and added lots of Daring-related optimization that helps players skip past repetitive tasks. Check out the full changelog for an in-depth look at everything this major update added to the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/577148613051810184
In addition to this major update, Heart of the Machine has gotten four regular updates over the last month.

Update 38 introduced a lot of quality-of-life changes, mostly focused on improving the late-game experience and reconfiguring weapon balance curves. It also added more storage for canned protein procured from...mysterious sources.

Update 37 brought a significant improvement to the game's RNG. Following this update, Heart of the Machine now uses SquirrelNoise5 for its random number generation instead of MersenneTwister.

Update 36 was another hefty update that introduced a second set of dooms, 8 new achievements, new equipment, and a new path to instigating WW4.

Update 35 was a big one for pacifism enjoyers. This update added a second method for starting a war cult, and balanced this change with the addition of several non-lethal options for combat. As of this update, it's possible to do a full pacifist run of the game's first chapter -- and you can get a new achievement for doing so.

Check out the full changelogs for each of these recent updates:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/577148613051809799?l=english https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/510718530665057232?l=english https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/510718530665056381?l=english https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/510718530665054609?l=english
Thanks for reading and happy gaming!
- The Hooded Horse Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/