Update 69: The Seekers

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 changes based on things folks have said and requested in reviews, in the forums, on discord, and in the bugtracker. I didn't get to everything yet, as folks are outpacing me by just a bit, but I got all of the really big things that were actionable.

If you're curious about the unit in the graphic for this update, that's the Spindletrooper with its new visual style.

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 69 Changelog

Quality Of Life

• Making It Easier When Humans Actually Want To Talk To You: "Force Conversation" now lights up and points to NPCs who want to talk to you (the Dialog Available people). Interacting with them while in "Force Conversation" mode also now works, rather than saying "you can't force a conversation with them." This is both more convenient and less-confusing.
• Proper Directions To The Slums: When you are building Slum Deconstruction Hubs, it now draws a line to the nearest cell in a slum district. And it also highlights all of the relevant slum tower buildings (as if you were in the manual slum drone targeting item's view).
• Down In Front!: Added a new "Hide Economic Transports" and "Hide High-Altitude Military Transports" pair of lens filters, which you can toggle freely per lens. They are on by default on Contemplations, Investigations, Navigation, Structures, Exploration Sites, and Analysis. They are off by default on all other lenses. This includes in the regular view, far zoom view, and the map view. It therefore makes your view significantly clearer in the related modes.
• An Easier Time Finding Servants: During the "Find A Robot Servant" project, you can now click the project itself to cycle through the target robots, rather than having to search for them.
• More Visible Visibility: Added a new "Visibility" option to the analysis lens.
• Analysis Keybinds: All of the analysis lenses now have keybinds.

Clarity

• Finding Healthcare: Adjusted the text of the Medical Pavilion to include the word Healthcare, so that if players search for that word, they will still find it.
• More Likely To Realize How Cool Subways Are: Both forms of Arcologies now have the note "Subway access greatly preferred," to help guide players to the concept of subways making room for them.
• More Likely To Realize The Importance Of Arcologies: The Electrical Distribution Center now notes "Strongly suggested for AFTER you have all your Arcologies built."
• More Clarity About What To Do When Your Charges Are Being Kidnapped: When there is a kidnapping in progress during chapter one, it now explicitly says "Hack the kidnapper" as the alert header text, and has an icon that matches the kidnapper's icon, as well as showing as a general to-do color rather than red like an attack warning. This is some general clarity to help people realize the path forward.
• Spindletroopers Are No Longer Albino: Spindletroopers are now drawn in full color, rather than in an inverted silhouette. People kept mistaking the other visual style for temp graphics or some sort of bug, and it was the only unit drawn in that style. I had thought I might do more of that sort of thing back a year or so ago, but obviously that turned out not to be the case!
• Extra Visibility Near The End Of Certain Searches: In "Failure To Thrive" and "Spread The Word," it now starts drawing beacon rings around your targets once your investigation is at least 90% complete. People would sometimes get to 99% complete or so, and not be able to see the final spots.
• Shell Company Directory: There is a new "Shell Company" category for your buildings, which lets you filter to just showing all of them that are related to your shell company.
• Shell Company Reminders: On buildings that are part of your shell company, it now says "Part Of Periodic Baked Goods" or whatever your shell company is named. This makes your shell company name a bit more visible in general, but also is a good reminder of which ones have to be defended by shell company units. This is only in English until the next localization pass is back.

Balance

• Seek And Destroy Less Likely To Self-Destruct: Your units in the "Seek And Destroy" now avoid going into locations with a higher security clearance than they have at the moment. This makes them behave consistently with Worker androids, now.
• It's Just One Trapped Kid, Good Grief: When you are dealing with certain rebels after the "trapped child" contemplation, those rebels now have both the Fearless and Stubborn perks. This removes a lack of clarity around what will happen if you use morale-based attacks against them, by making morale-based attacks impossible. There's another way.
• You Can Properly Disable Servants Rather Than Killing Them: The "Find a Robot Servant" project can now be completed by disabling the target robots, not just by destroying them. It still says to destroy them, but it now honors your choice to be non-lethal if you want.

Bugfixes

• A Very Rare Resolution: Added support for 1000x600 resolution for cases when a desktop resolution is set to that, but the OS is not properly reporting through unity that this is one of the resolutions it supports.
• Compassion, Not Difficulty: Fixed an issue where the "Compassionate Bionics" achievement was categorized under hard mode rather than no-murders routes.
• Security Walls No Longer See Dead People: Adjusted the logic for how Security Walls dispel unrest so that it only matters if everyone is dead on the tile they would be quelling unrest on, rather than the tile they are located on. This prevents odd edge cases where there's Arcologies surrounded by Security Walls that are on adjacent empty tiles that then do nothing.
• Empty Buildings No Longer Experience Unrest: Adjusted the logic for Unrest in general so that if any sneaks onto tiles where everybody nobody lives, then that's canceled right away. This reduces the need for security presence in general on some locations that really didn't need them.
• Can No Longer Talk To Robots About Unrelated Storylines: Fixed an issue in International Scrutiny where you could force conversations during one of the dooms as if it were during an unrelated project.
• No Longer Bother Talking To Your Prey: Fixed an issue in Clearing The Ladder where you could talk to wealthy commuters as if it were during an unrelated project.
• Fix To A Very Specific Case Of Misapplied Time Travel: Corrected a profile-level sequence break with the chapter one establishment of VR locations. If you had established it at any point in the past, previously it was just treating it as immediately-established when you got to the point where maybe it was a good idea if you don't (spoilers). Now it gives you control of when you establish it again.
• Corrected A Deja Vu That Can't Count: Corrected a piece of deja vu that was wrongly claiming there were six paths through the prologue, when there are actually only five. [/expand]Full notes here.

What's New In 1.0

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If you missed the retrospective of what changed from the start of Early Access to the 1.0 release, you can read that here:

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/538879349212841215

Connect with the Machine

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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.