This is the last of the big content builds for 2025, since it's now the holiday for the localization teams. This is an exciting one, because it finally includes the second path through the first chapter. This allows you to opt not to be a landlord, and instead to hire gangs to do arson, make outlandish artifacts and observe the human response, and so on.
This build is also the first one to bring the Complexity customization options to versions beyond English. The delay was just on localization.
Anyway, there's lots more cool stuff coming in January, and there's also going to be beta stuff in the interim, so keep an eye out. There may also be some non-content-focused updates between now and January, but we'll just see. This particular build also includes a fix to a nasty performance bug that I introduced for people who were in Civil Spycraft. So if there's something else like that, then I'll of course release an update sooner than later.
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.
Show details
Update 54 Changelog
The Second Path Through Chapter One
- Choose Fire, Twice: When chapter one gives you an option about "solving it with fire," do so if you want to see this path. That goes into something you've seen before. Afterward, it tries to tempt you back to the other path, but just say "no, I chose fire" and you're on your way.
- Buildings Are All Available In Chapter 2+: Whatever path you take, you get all the buildings and other tools when you are in chapter two and onward. So for existing players, you might see some things that you've never used before, and you're free to use them if you want.
Other Additions
- Furniture Shop: If you've built a furniture factory (this is surprisingly complex), you can now also build a shop to turn that into wealth.
- Cover Me In Slurry: Slurry spiders, slurry mines, and Mycomulchers now produce their full amounts regardless of if there is a lack of storage for them. The extra amount gets removed during the next turn if that is what happens. These have no downside to producing a lot, and this prevents confusing notes in the ledger.
- Late-Game Updates: The way that timelines show colors is different, as is how they're categorized on the sidebar of timelines. Also, the timeline-victory banner is in place. On the beta branch, you can technically reach that via one valid way (which also bumps you into chapter 5). The roll-credits screen is still inwork, but it skips that for now.
Bugfixes
- Hitting A Moving Framerate Target: For all of the internal framerate targets, I now have it aiming for a bit higher than what the player asks for, since things can drag it down a bit. This should average out to be closer to what players actually are asking for.
- I Don't Know That Resource: Fixed an issue where in the simplified economy it could still ask for you to spend certain resources in streetsense locations, such as heavy metals.
- The First Torture Was Accidentally Free: Fixed a bug where if you tried to torture the very first Espia middle manager you met, then it would not properly give you the achievement for torturing managers at all.
- Fixed One Line Of Code That Was Messing With Performance: Fixed a really stupid bug where I left a log message in, and when you had allied military bases in your map, it would hammer your disk. I didn't notice because of my specific high-speed SSD, but it could drop the framerate massively for anyone else if they were in that kind of late-civil-spycraft timeline.
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.