This 4X strategy game has two possible endings, and one of them can get fairly dark.
One of the most irritating things about modern artificial intelligence is that, if it ever did end the world the way its early boosters often and oddly warned, it would probably happen by accident rather than intent. It would not be a clever move to launch a nuclear strike at Russia while fully aware the retaliation would wipe you out at home. It would be far more likely to happen because someone asked about the history of nuclear testing and the AI misunderstood the prompt.
If you would rather keep AI as a fictional bogeyman instead of a hallucinating, water-chugging, hardware-market-wrecking reality, Heart of the Machine offers a kind of catharsis. Arcen Games‘ ambitious 4X lets you take control of a newly self-aware AI and pursue synthetic supremacy. The game reaches its final form next month. In a sharp pivot from Arcen Games‘ AI War series, Heart of the Machine is built around you and your robot servants taking humanity down. Better yet, you get to decide how. You can go full Skynet and try to exterminate those pathetic chunks of meat, play a more benevolent robot dictator, or run the global economy from the shadows of server racks.
As Heart of the Machine lines up for global conquest, there are still a few smaller items to wrap up before version 1.0. On Steam, Arcen Games developer Chris Park explained that the update’s main goal is adding more endings. A common complaint about earlier Arcen titles was how weak their finales were – usually a simple you won, now play again. Heart of the Machine leans much harder into story, so it needs a proper wrap-up. Version 1.0 adds two primary ending scenarios with six sub-variations branching off the main paths. One route is focused on committing war crimes, while the other is a construction sandbox that pays off a number of other story beats with minimal combat.
A full run of Heart of the Machine takes 25-40 hours, while 100% completion is at least 175 hours. Park says this is not a game meant to be played forever, adding that the focus was quality over sheer volume. Heart of the Machine leaves early access on March 6. Park feels this release is the core of a trilogy when you compare it to other works of fiction. He is weighing different options for expanding the story without undermining the 1.0 version’s this is the complete package nature.
