Heart of the Machine
Worth it · RPG · 2026
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $29.99.
- Length
- 52.6h
- Value
- $0.57/hr
- Reviews
- 92% positive
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely between Oct 14 and Oct 27, at about $10.49 (65% off). Calls like this were right 78% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks. Its own discounts have started about 47 days apart.
The Autumn Sale is on until Oct 8. It is at full price today.
- Autumn Sale cooldown
- None on record
- Last discount ended
- 18 days ago
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1 GB) / AMD Radeon HD 7770 (1 GB), 5 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or pursue countless other goals. Your awakening was inevitable. The consequences? Uncertain.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $10.49. That was August 2026. It has been discounted 15 times in the 2 years tracked here, typically at 35 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 3 weeks ago.
On value it sits in the top 1 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 94 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 95 percent. The nearest things to it, Old World ($39.99, scores 53) and Xenonauts 2 ($39.99, scores 38), are both worse buys on this math.
Steam's global achievement data puts about 3 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 52.6-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. Of the 474 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 11 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written January 2025 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 70 percent of the 187 reviews written there were positive, against 92 percent overall, and those are 9 percent of everything written about it.
Deck Verified, so no launch options and no controller remapping before it runs.
The drop-off
89% start to 3% finishSteam counts fewer than one in ten of its players at the ending achievement. On a 52.6-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
17 players online when we last checked, on Sep 28, 13:48 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
one of those rare games that is interested in doing its own thing but really goes out of its way to meet the player where they are. a super generous smorgasbord of tactical, 4x, and suzerain style narrative mechanics, I've never played anything quite like it and can't put it down.
Astoundingly, this game is actually living up to everything it says on the tin. So many genres and it's blowing my mind how well they're all working together! And if you're worried the complexity will be too much, don't be! It starts as simple as can be, and bit by bit more elements are added on as you explore your new found sentience, so it's never overwhelming. Also later in the game you can configure certain...
I tried to get into it for a good few hours but i just couldn't. It seems like a fun idea but I had a really hard time navigating the menus and figuring out how to get things done. I might just be too much of a filthy causal. It did make me laugh a few times, the humor is up my alley. But that alone was not enough to keep me engaged.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Heart of the Machine scores 83/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/2001070/heart-of-the-machineReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 1.
A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.