Hooded Horse Does it again (Jan 31)

[Stan]

Thank's Hooded Horse. I can hardly wait to check out you new upcoming game. There is no doubt with your track record it will be excellent

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Thank you!

[Stan]

I'm playing one of your game right now
Keep up the great work guys.

[RedPine]

I'm not always in the mood for the AIW series, but when I am, there is simply *nothing* even remotely similar. HotM is even more unique than AIW by an order of magnitude, So I suspect it will fill a similar niche for me.

I'm quite curious as to how good the replayability will be, given that all I've seen from the early demo was just the tutorial. It might take a few updates to hit a critical mass of content, much like AIWC/AIW2, but it should prove to be at least memorable in the meantime.

[Mintdragon]

Since I'm a playtester I'm not allowed to comment on what type of content there is - Chris can do that anyways - but replayablity is quite high. Early Access will have roughly 10 to I think 50 hours, depending on how many timelines you play, how fast you play, how much side content you do, etc

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

I appreciate the kind words! In terms of replayability -- a lot of that depends on if you want to do higher difficulties, and if you're trying to get every goal path.

To get all of the achievements (which includes "extreme mode"), I would be really surprised if people on average get through the current content in less than 50 hours. But throwing numbers out there is just going to get people telling me how wrong I am for how long it took them to do xyz, so grains of salt.

Just to "see everything once" on the normal difficulty, which is not a very difficult mode but is interesting the whole way through without having to be hard, probably takes the average person at least 25 hours right now, but depending on how much they get into things, can take more. If someone really delves into side content and lore and whatnot, tack on another hours. If they read as little as possible... I still think that I can't imagine them doing it faster than 20 hours unless they are using a guide that tells them exactly what to do.

Bear in mind those numbers are me being conservative, because I don't want to overstate things. For a lot of folks who play without using a guide and are not trying to speedrun, you can probably double a lot of the numbers.

Ultimately these are just estimates, and it's hard to say for real. But there is quite a lot to do and see from the start here. In several very real senses, this is the largest Arcen title ever.

By the time EA ends, my goal is that this is even larger by a notable degree.

[Stan]

Great to know because some people luv long games you know

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

For sure! With the AI War titles, a lot of people kind of glibly say "you stop being a novice at 100 hours," and there are loads of people with 300-500 hours or even more. Several with a few thousand.

Initial version of Heart of the Machine is not quit like that. It's long, and it's very interesting, and it's a lot more meaningful and meaty in my opinion. But you stop being a novice within a couple of dozen hours, probably.

Overall the comparison is a bit apples and oranges, though. AI War series is often "here's a random challenge at kind of a general difficulty level, can you do it?" Like endless games of Chess. Heart of the Machine is more directed, while still having randomized elements.

Having 12 major goals, many with multiple routes, is already a big chunk for chapter 2. But post-launch updates will add many more, and they can all interact with each other in various ways, so the growth of "how much time can you spend with it" is kind of an exponential proposition as I add more content.

But in fairness, while I like long games, I also want people to be able to go "I had a blast for 20 hours, that's all I need for now I and I can walk away happy." They won't have seen the entire game in that scenario, but that's okay. I don't want to under-serve group (let's play for a couple dozen hours; or let's play indefinitely).

[Stan]

You guys are cool