Bits

I am The Thing from the Tower

Chaos ex machina
By Sin Vega
A 3D, low-texture-map style city from Heart of the Machine. A building-sized mech looms over a long road, alongside a farm and mid-rise buildings. The other end of the road is exploding.
Good catch, officer! Most people wouldn't notice that argh, aaaah, help it burns help help. We should cascade these insights to the whole team!

More of you need to be playing narrative strategy-RPG Heart Of The Machine. I don't care that you'll enjoy it. I just want to see what you do.

I love this kind of game. Take your wiki and your tiers and your meta and shove it up your tedious spod arse. Heart Of The Machine wants you to explore, to imagine, to play with its premise: that you're an (actual) artificial intelligence, newly sentient, in a far future dystopian city. Now what? What kind of being are you? What should you do about the world?

Don't look it up. Figure out who you are, you goddamn coward. Make a decision. Be someone.

A monochrome, humanoid robot and a human silhoutte stand either side of a text box offering two player responses: "Accept the Nuclear Device", and "Ignore her and scan the facility". Less relevant is the event itself, detailing the human, a manager, offering the player a nuclear bomb and asking them to use it on a third party.
You have been blanked. But have you been "offering a nuclear bomb" blanked?

This is not a game to win or (ugh) "beat", but to play along with its many choose-your-own-adventure style events. Its earliest paths can diverge pretty widely, offering choices in story events like "Ask to see her wares" vs "Murder her for some reason", at least unless you look further into the option to "Start Therapy". There are wonderfully evocative choices like "Befriend The Creatures", "Design Something Horrifying", and upon returning to a repeat event, the new option to "Hit Em With the Bees". During a mysterious encounter with a suit, selecting the option to "Wait for her to speak" was followed by, "She waits as well, but her resolve crumbles after about five hours".

A huge android disguised as a human in heavy orange armour stands opposite a human silhouette. Event is titled "Black Market Tradesman Meetup", offering the options "I Am The Thing From The Tower", "I'm Just Here To Shop", and "Nevermind". The event itself reads "He says he only has one new weapon that he can offer you. And that he's heard strange things about 'the thing from the tower'. He's afraid you're related to that somehow."
"Do not flee, small merchant." "W... why'd you open with that?" "Normal human reasons."

Even beyond explicit events, UI text everywhere implies things about the possibilities that await you, with an enticing absence of context. Like the map overlay "where the manager class lives", the statistics screen listing "Prisons remaining: 28", or panels reading "Upgrade: Abusing Corpos" and "Awareness of Filth. Source of idea: world experience". Or the nondescript building I happened to click on, one of thousands, named "Infested Warehouse". I both want to know and entirely do not.

An unknown unit labelled "Anti-AI Op: taking offensive action against artificial intelligence in the area". Beneath, a row of indicators read: "Stubborn, Structure Cracker, Covered In Bees, Pinned Down By Suppressing Fire, Horrified, Demoralized".
Listen, right, listen. I could have done a lot worse. Like give the bees lase... hmm.

Even its options menu reflects its "find your own path" ethos, with so many ways to rescale the UI properly, and alter the audio too! Look at this: separate options to disable ambient birds, ambient traffic sounds, flyover sounds, delivery craft sounds, battle music during WW4, pl... hang on.

Aerial view of the city, with lots of information, the most prominent an (ugh) 'acheivement' reading "Mruder enough wealthy commuters that they start hiding from you, working from home, and disgusing themselves". A notable side panel reads "Network Tower Down. Wait, What?"
Technically, I didn't murder... no, listen. Listen, right,

My big dumb brutebot has a little icon saying it's "adorable", and "is very strong, and can strip large parts of a building before the landlord shows up". Talking to rich people silently adds to "Hatred of [the Corporation]". A tooltip for one minor decision tells me "simply carrying around this many donuts requires you to make adjustments to improve the physical strength of your androids".

Event box hovering over a purpled-out city, titled "Securing Food". Options on offer are "Provide Hydroponic Greens", "Provide Vat-Grown Meat", "Provide Greens and Meat", and "Provide Canned... Protein". The event itself reads "Hunder is a critical problem for the lower classes. There has to be a better way to handle this."
Humans love protein. Why do you want to deprive them? I am benevolent

I can research "Better BrainPals", unleash the liquid metal anti-god of a cult, or rescue hundreds and hundreds of street dogs. Or maybe stop to think about that one random android I saw described as "A lost part of yourself. Broken and hurting".

Looking down on the slums and skyscrapers of the city, with giant military carriers hovering overhead and several mechs, considerably larger than the buildings. A vehicle construction panel hovers in the corner, displaying something called "Mindport", described as "Innocuous-looking flying barge that specializes in hostage-taking and alterations to human minds".
No YOU'RE going mad with power!!

Nah, screw that. Let's hijack another gargantuan mech and charge it at the prison. Beep boop beep, little piggies.

I am The Thing from the Tower. All shall tremble before my horrifying brainbots and/or find that I've broken into their house and left some stolen furniture to see what would happen.

Tagged with:
Bits / Heart Of The Machine
Sin Vega

Sin Vega

Sin Vega is a temporarily immortal being who writes about games and TV, weeps for the sorrow that resonates in all things, and assassinates people who don't flatpack their cardboard. For maddening reasons, she lives in London.