Two exciting pieces of news today!

First up, AI War 2 has a large new patch: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.599_Sockets_And_Sidekicks

Badger and Zeus have really outdone themselves here, with a bunch of clever ideas.

In particular, there is a new Socket Increaser structure that is possible to find in the galaxy when you have the Sidekicks mod enabled. This then allows for a lot of fun new objectives for sidekicks, necromancers, and similar to go get in order to have more sockets.

The Dark Zenith have also been rebalanced to be more... well, balanced in all respects. A lot of thought from these two went into it, and it was carefully implemented.

There are other more-minor balance changes, comparably, and a bunch of other mod updates. Good times!

It has been just over a year since there were last people outside of Arcen or Hooded Horse able to playtest this game. I had thought many times that testing was just on the horizon, and I must have been an awful tease about that -- it was completely unintentional, apologies. But testing is not just soon, it's NOW.

The first batch of about 30 testers (18 returning and 16 new) got their hands on the game today. The next batch of 15 people will get the game on Monday, and those are already locked in. But there are still some openings on the batch for Thursday, and there will be more waves following on after that every few days.

The reason for the staggered waves is to continually collect fresh first impressions, after people's feedback from the wave before. So don't worry about missing an earlier wave if you want to be a tester; that just means you get a more-polished version to start from in the near future.

The store page is in dire need of a refresh (the visuals and text are a year out of date), but be sure to wishlist it if you haven't already: https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

And if you want to sign up for testing, be sure to stop by our discord! https://discord.gg/arcengames

Cheers,
Chris

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.598_Sidekicks_And_Elderlings

Some bugfixes and balance shifts related to Elderlings, and then some more Sidekick mod updates.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am going to go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 1 week for real this time. We're getting gradually closer! https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5