Heart of the Machine

Absolutely amazing RPG, emphasis on the ROLEPLAY. If you want a game with devs that CLEARLY care about the quality of the story they're telling, with emphasis on player freedom, and actually impactful choices, WITHOUT the nightmare difficulty most games with this sort of structure railroad themselves into, play HOTM. Currently staring at the kinship DLC page, waiting for it to drop so i can play it the second it's out.

10/10 Just one more turn, just one more timeline. It's rare for a turn based strategy game to have such an intriguing story whilst still having compelling gameplay, this manages to nail that feeling. Whether you're a mechanics man or a story stan, you'll find yourself unable to put down the game. The Timeline system makes it so you never really feel like you have to start a new game, just spin up a new timeline to see and benefit from different choices. I never reviewed this game when it came out and I regret it, now the expansion is coming out tomorrow I feel like it's my duty to give this game the props it deserves before I spend another 100 hours

As someone who is not generally into 4X or grand strategy games, and in fact started out getting a headache from the overwhelming number of moving parts in this game it grabbed me more than it had any right to. It's surprisingly approachable once you get over the initial introductions to things, and was constantly throwing narrative curveballs that kept me wondering what would happen next. While the gameplay takes place at a fairly high level, all the narrative points are well written, and worth reading.

This is probably a peak of indie design. It is unique and experimental, but also you can tell that the designer knows what he's doing, so there's a lot of craft behind it. In general the game is quite hard to explain, but I would put it like this : it's a strategy game with guided objectives. These guided objectives are like quests in an rpg, and they imply certain levels of branching as they are mutually exclusive. You don't have a general objective as in classical strategy games, and it isn't a sand box or free mode game either, because you're meant to follow these different scripted paths. There are a lot of these paths, however, and this kind of design also allows better narrative depth. So this approach has its limits and positives, there are tradeoffs. If you want a classical or open strategy game then you will probably be dissapointed. The rpg elements effectively put limitations on the strategic aspects, it's hard to think how it could be otherwise. This is one of the more cohesive attempts to blend strategy and rpg gameplay. Some games have attempted it (say the Pathfinder games), but usually it doesn't flow very well, which isn't the case here. In most attempts the respective strategy and rpg systems don't work on the same level - essential one is macro and the other, micro, and both don't really connect. Here it's all macro and micro at the same time. Again, this is hard to explain, you just have to try it for yourself. The game has a learning curve but is generally forgiving and doesn't put a lot of pressure on player from the outset, so it's not that intimidating.

Got to build a torment Source and fill it with the rich while giving everyone else free housing and healthcare 10/10

I'll pre-face this by saying I was a play-tester who bought the game on release due to it being well worth the money. A very unique game that kind of sits alone in its own combination of pieces from other genre's. It is fundamentally a sandbox that you steady explore from a top-down strategy perspective, picking up goals as you play along The appeal is the exploration, gradually figuring things out yourself and approaching tasks however you want to. There will definitely be moments where you left scratching your head, wondering what to do next, but this is by design, keep playing and you'll find something new pretty quickly. You can take multiple approaches, treating the human masses as something to protect, replace or simply destroy if you wish, and sometimes you'll find yourself having to tear apart the peace and quiet you've been building up, that's part of the fun. Also quick shout out to the lead dev for engaging with the community throughout the development, being happy to discuss the game, and implementing constant changes that have been requested.

It feels like one of those old 'text based adventures', but with graphics and turn based battles. The writing is clever and fun, the choices tend to be the extreme ends of the spectrum but that's fine. I'm really enjoying it a lot, it's been a while since I had that "one more turn and I'll stop for today" feeling.

what a definitive RPG moment. This game has a lot genre mixed in but what I want highlight is the narrative and branching story that really entertaining

I've never played a role-playing strategy game where you build structures, manage your military and non-military units, research and find new technologies and eventually conquer if you choose to. I've only played this game across 3 days as of writing this review but every time I've failed pretty badly at only playing for a few hours each time. I spent all day on this game yesterday and I loved every bit of it even if I barely got any drawing done compared to what I wanted.