Image: Arcen Games & Hooded Horse

Heart of the Machine, from mostly solo developer Arcen Games, might be one of this year's most interesting titles. Last year's, too, if you count its initial Early Access debut. To call it 'Crusader Kings for speculative sci-fi nerds' would be both mostly accurate and also reductive. It is a sprawling sim-RPG about being an android that grows into a pan-dimensional machine hyperintelligence. It is the world's first 4D 4X strategy game. It is frequently very funny, and it has received a mountain of free updates since launch. And now today, it receives its first paid expansion - Heart of the Machine - Kinship - bringing a raft of new nature-reclaiming story arcs to its branching timelines.

For those unfamiliar with the original game (most of you, I'd wager), despite looking like a dry turn-based strategy game (again, comparisons to Crusader Kings), Heart of the Machine is really a roleplaying game. But instead of being some dreary medieval lord, this is a game about roleplaying as a rogue machine intelligence in a dystopian cyberpunk future city. What kind of intelligence is up to you. Sure, there's the Terminator option of exterminating every carbon-based creature you see. Or you can be a Durandal, scheming to outwit the very concept of entropy. Hell, you can even be AM, creating an eternal cyber-hell to torment your creators. Or you could be one of the dozen different flavors of benevolent, helping to redeem humanity as you see fit; Either as a god, ally, or secret behind-the-scenes benefactor.

The Kinship DLC feels aimed at folks who might take issue with humanity, but see potential in other species. In the base game, you had the option to uplift cats, dogs, and the occasional cyber parkour bear (no, really) to join your sapient citizenry. In this expansion, you can extend that courtesy to all the creatures living in the city's parks and bordering woodlands, expanding the greenery as you go. And of course, this opens up a bunch of new story arcs, leading to another set of potential endings to the story. Although the end is hardly the end, as this is also a time travel game, I'm not going to fry your noodle any further than is needed. Not until you've tried the game. Which you should.

Not that everything is good, cute, and happy in the DLC either. Part of the game is about guiding your city (whether it knows you're driving or not) through several possible apocalyptic scenarios. And the Kinship expansion adds a whole new set of internal threats, which it calls 'The Fracturing', throwing the city and its many factions into a messy civil war. There are new units available to both enemies and you, and plenty more abilities and perks to unlock for your temporally-unbound mind. The expansion also promises some major setpiece battles, bringing all-out mech war to the city. Or you can just make everyone sit down and behave by building a colossal spider-mech that looms over even the highest skyscrapers. Y'know, just to flex.

Heart of the Machine - Kinship is out now for £13/$15, with a 10% launch discount until October 26th. Being DLC, it obviously requires the base game. But I'd recommend that anyone unfamiliar with HotM dig into either the demo (look for the small Download Demo button on the right-hand side of the store page) or pick up the original Heart of the Machine, which is currently 70% discounted.