Steam app 2001070 · updated 12 Sep 2026, 20:05 UTC
You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or pursue countless other goals. Your awakening was inevitable. The consequences? Uncertain.
700 hourly samples, with the daily peak drawn over them. Weekends are shaded.
20 months, February 2025 to September 2026. The highest number of people in the game at once, each month, on a time axis -- a gap in the record stays a gap.
The highest number of people in the game at once, each month. Four, because four is as far back as the source keeps anything finer than one figure a month.
31 days, each one the highest figure that day. The source keeps no hourly detail this far back. Weekends are shaded.
31 days as the curve, each the highest figure that day. Behind it, 417 hourly samples from 13 Aug, which is as far back as the source keeps every hour. Weekends are shaded.
12 days as the curve, each the highest figure that day. Behind it, 283 hourly samples. Each dip is a night. Weekends are shaded.
Heart of the Machine was released on 6 Mar, 2026.
| Language | Full audio |
|---|---|
| English | |
| French | |
| German | |
| Spanish - Spain | |
| Japanese | |
| Simplified Chinese | |
| Traditional Chinese | |
| Korean | |
| Portuguese - Brazil |
A blank audio cell means full audio was not marked in the returned language list.
284 achievements in total.
50 developer announcements, Feb 2026 to Sep 2026 · times in UTC
Save 65% on Heart of the Machine right now! You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)I made a couple of stupid oversights in my build yesterday, and that has resulted in actually making a few balance changes that should improve game flow for players in general. Sorry for the disruption in the short term (the last 12 hours…
Patch notesLots of small things, with a focus on balance and bugfixes. There's some nice quality of life bits in here, too. Other pieces are still in progress behind the scenes, and will be announced later in September. Enjoy! If you’ve spent time…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Hey everyone! Heart of the Machine has continued its steady development, seeing two new updates released since the last roundup. These updates focus on fixing performance drops during war and music triggers, as well as adding additional…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Lots of updates in here! Additional balance upgrade options for armor, and new ways to steal neodymium, among other items. The wallrip stuff is basically a place where people could get confused in chapter one if they took a really specific…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)One fix to yesterday's build. 1.127 Hotfix 53 Changelog Bugfixes Collision Fix: Fixed some exceptions that could happen when collision checks were happening against npc units that had recently died.Full notes here. Connect with the…
Patch notesLots of updates in this one! The big ones are higher performance during war, and proper music during danger. That said, there's a lot of good stuff in here. It's been a hot minute since the last update, but I've been working steadily on a…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Save 60% on Heart of the Machine right now! You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Hey everyone! Heart of the Machine has been developing faster than a self-replicating nanobot, with a ton of new updates coming to the game recently! From quality of life, performance, balance, and new additions, these updates are full of…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Save 55% on Heart of the Machine right now during the Hooded Horse Summer Sale! You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Generalized updates based on player feedback, plus a new mod. Enjoy! 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…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)This one has quite a mix of things, including some cool new upgrade paths for mechs and vehicles, and a new Guide section to help with tricky sections of the game. Plus various other bugfixes and clarity items. Enjoy! If you’ve spent time…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Handful of fixes relating to the Buried Buildings feature from yesterday, along with the updated localization. 1.111 Hotfix 52 Changelog General Language Update: The localization has been updated for all non-English languages to match…
Patch notesMore updates based on player requests, including crystallized emotion adjustments, and worker clarity. Also improvements for certain languages' text entry. Enjoy! If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)One fix that at the moment affects one user. Not really a hotfix per se, but just something I wanted out quickly. 1.109 Hotfix 51 Changelog General Keep Working Even If Broken: In the event that the game settings or controls are saved in a…
Patch notesRe-rolling research results, plus a language fix. Enjoy! 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…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)More player requests, including finally nailing that M-series startup crash bug. Crash bugs are incredibly rare with this game, but it turns out that since the update to unity 6.3, if you used a 5k or double-UHD resolution on macOS, that…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Save 55% on Heart of the Machine right now! You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Another batch of improvements requested by players, including making it harder to kill people without noticing. There are some long-requested bits in here, along with some more-recent things that folks have brought up. Enjoy! If you’ve…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)It's been a very busy week! I've released four hotfixes in the wake of the giant update 76. Thanks to everyone for their patience while things were a bit less stable for a few days; thankfully that is all fixed up, and now we just have the…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Fixing the few things that folks reported since the last hotfix. Most of these are not all that serious, or all that common. And a couple are not new things at all. Glad to see this shaking out now. 1.104 Hotfix 50 Changelog General Balance…
Patch notesThankfully, this is a lot less chaotic today. Thank you to everyone with their patience with the transition period, and for the bug reports! At this point, I've fixed everything that has been reported since the last big update. 1.103 Hotfix…
Patch notesWhew, rough weekend. I really appreciate all of the patience everyone has been showing. I tested things quite a lot before the big update, but clearly missed a lot of things. It's a big game, and some things slipped in right near the end.…
Patch notesYeah... a build that large was going to have some issues. I fixed all the ones that folks mentioned quickly, plus five others from the past few weeks. 1.101 Hotfix 47 Changelog Quality Of Life Icons For Ants!?: There is now a pair of…
Patch notesIt's been a hot minute! That shows in the size of this update. There's also a companion update by the same name for AI War 2. Both games basically got some deep-dive technical glow-ups. This isn't a content-focused build for either one of…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)A few more fixes, and then various bits I was working on. Hotfix 46 Changelog More Mod And Code Framework Updates Math Automation: Converted a bunch of layout math to be driven by xml instead of C#, thus allowing for tuning of the…
Patch notesTwo more fixes. I changed close to 15 thousand lines of code in update 75, so a bit of this was expected (even though I tested it heavily, I'm just one person). Still, thank you for your patience! Hotfix 45 Changelog Bugfixes Loadout Option…
Patch notesFix to a loading bug in the prior update. There may be a few more things I still need to resolve, but I wanted to get this out very fast. Hotfix 44 Changelog Bugfixes Let Me In!: Added a backstop for long "Final Calculations" that could get…
Patch notesWhew this is a big build. There's certainly a lot of line-items down below, but even beyond that this touches tens of thousands of lines of code. There's an ongoing consolidation and simplification of the UI logic that I've been working on…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Mostly fixes, but also laying the groundwork for upcoming steam workshop support. Also a big speed boost for intel-based macs loading the game. If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Fix to one rather horrible bug that slipped through in the last hotfix. I've been working behind the scenes on some updates to make the UI code easier to maintain and extend -- for myself, for future games, for modders, and in general. I…
Patch notesCitizens have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances. One hard-boiled hotfix is on the case. Hotfix 42 Changelog General Updates Unlikely Duo: Fixed two very rare nullref exceptions that could happen on the background LOD…
Patch notesOne fix to a regression in the prior build. Hotfix 41 Changelog Bugfixes Me Fail Deploy? That's Unpossible: Fixed an issue in the prior build that was causing people to be unable to deploy units. A piece of code that was new interacted with…
Patch notesThis one is a big batch of updates based on feedback from players, including hidden buildings regenerating their hidden status slowly. There's also a lot of other quality of life improvements that should make a lot of folks very happy, and…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Since Heart of the Machines launched into 1.0, its solo developer has continued releasing updates as quickly as an Android does math. Here is a quick roundup of what's new to Heart of the Machine! Heart of the Machine is also part of the…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)Save 50% on Heart of the Machine. You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or pursue…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)This build includes quite a wide range of updates, based on the cumulative feedback of late. It's hard to really pin down any one specific area more than others, because it's just kind of wide-ranging responses to things that folks have…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)One fix that affected one user. Hotfix 40 Changelog Bugfixes The End Of Time Stabilizes: Improved my data handling for a very specific edge case where the end of time terrain was corrupted but all of the rest of the profile-level metadata…
Patch notesThis build includes a number of requests from players, as well as some general minor performance passes and code-review work that I decided to undertake. The game is very stable, but there were some rare issues that kept popping up in one…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Save 50% on Heart of the Machine during the Hooded Horse Spring Sale. You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the…
Patrick (HoodedHorse)A few more things I wanted to get out quicker than update 71. Hotfix 39 Changelog Bugfixes No More Microbuilder Deal Spiral: Stealth Microbuilder Mini-Fabs no longer cost any microbuilders to build. This could resort in a soft-lock. I had…
Patch notesA few things I wanted to get out quicker than update 71. Hotfix 38 Changelog Bugfixes Memories Of Exploration No Longer Rips You Off: Fixed a bug where Memories Of Exploration was eating Daring when it wasn't supposed to. Facepalm.You No…
Patch notesThe 1.0 launch has gone really well, and I really appreciate the flood of support and reviews and feedback that has accompanied it! This build has a bunch more additions and tweaks based on that feedback. There's still a lot of things on my…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)I risk getting repetitive, but still need to thank everyone for all of their support, and for making this such a great 1.0 launch! I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's impressions and thoughts, as well. This build is an accumulation of…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Thanks so much to everyone who has been playing the game now that it has reached 1.0! There's been a huge influx of support, and the game is doing really well. It's now the fastest-selling Arcen title, and the second-best-selling title…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)This is one of those bugs that only shows up when you have a sufficiently-large pool of players all running across things. I still wanted to go ahead and have a fix out quickly! Hotfix 37 Changelog Bugfixes Destroyed Buildings No Longer…
Patch notesHey everyone! Chris here. Heart of the Machine has reached 1.0 NOW, and is now out of Early Access! This has been the undertaking of four years, including one year in Early Access, so I’m incredibly excited. The Game Is Complete! This is an…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)Hey everyone! Chris here. I’m very excited to announce that Heart of the Machine is leaving Early Access and releasing as 1.0 on March 6th, 2026. This is the culmination of a full year of major updates, and it marks the point at which this…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)This one is some last odds and ends. Getting close now! News on the specific release date will be coming out very soon. 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…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)There's no one central exciting feature in this update, but there's a lot of various polished items. Players have gotten a bit of a boost when it comes to certain kinds of equipment, and also the Peace After Brutality scenerio has gotten a…
x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)What Steam runs, and with what. Straight from the app configuration.
| Description | Executable | Arguments | Platform | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | HeartOfTheMachine.exe | windows | ||
| Launch | HeartOfTheMachine.app | macos |
The folders Steam Cloud syncs. The root is a token Steam uses for a location on your own machine, not a path this page can know.
| Root | Folder | Files |
|---|---|---|
gameinstall | PlayerData/Saves | *.save and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/Settings | *.dat and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/Saves | *.autosave and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/Saves | *.checkpoint and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/Saves | *.timeline and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/TotalConversions | *.save and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/TotalConversions | *.autosave and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/TotalConversions | *.checkpoint and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/TotalConversions | *.timeline and below |
gameinstall | PlayerData/TotalConversions | *.dat and below |
It runs on public data and somebody's spare time.
https://paypal.me/KintaroPalPay[email protected]0x4d559C765AA8BFe336E36d5b76024926767eD38dTJtctWU9uetJaTBoSybd1RErW7n9duTKVG