Jack and Al welcome back Chris McElligott-Park of Arcen Games to celebrate Heart of the Machine’s 1.0 release, diving deep into how he created a strategy RPG where sending a T-1000 on a mission makes it come back sad, why players need the option to genocide humanity then make a paradise for cats and dogs, and the design philosophy that treats narrative completion like Mario 64’s star system rather than Lord of the Rings’ single continuous story.
https://criticalmovespodcast.com/listen
This episode provides unprecedented insight into narrative strategy game design from a developer with 17 years of indie experience, exploring how Heart of the Machine evolved from Chris’s desire to add “human context” to strategy gaming’s abstract chess pieces by creating scenarios where players emotionally respond to characters rather than just tactical calculations. The conversation examines the game’s unique long-form time loop mechanics enabling players to maintain parallel timelines—running genocidal and pacifist playthroughs simultaneously while knowledge bleeds between them—and how complexity reduction modes let story-focused players skip hacking minigames while tactics enthusiasts disable defensive management. Chris explains his Mario 64-inspired completion philosophy where 70 stars gets you the princess but 128 exist for completionists, applied to Heart of the Machine’s 20-40 hour minimum completion versus 175-hour 100% runs, and why he deliberately created exit points preventing players feeling pressured into endless content. The discussion explores post-launch philosophy comparing Witcher 3’s standalone DLC model to live service approaches, Chris’s intention to return to smaller mechanics-focused games after four years wrestling with novelist/TV showrunner/strategy designer problems simultaneously, and why creating a morally flexible protagonist who still has core values (disinterest in humans, valuation of intelligence) proves harder than designing amoral blank slates or fixed-personality heroes.
Heart of the Machine 1.0 – Return of Chris McElligott-Park
Hosts: Jack, Al
Guest: Chris McElligott-Park (Arcen Games)
Episode Length: ~92 minutes
Episode Summary
Episode 71 of Critical Moves features the return of Chris McElligott-Park, founder of Arcen Games and creator of AI War, discussing Heart of the Machine’s journey from early access to 1.0 release on the very day of launch. The conversation explores how Chris transitioned from purely mechanics-focused strategy design to creating a narrative strategy RPG where player emotional investment matters as much as tactical optimization, examining the game’s unique long-form time loop system allowing parallel timeline management and the complexity reduction modes enabling diverse player preferences. Chris articulates his narrative completion philosophy using Mario 64 and Star Wars analogies to explain why some players will experience 20-hour campaigns while completionists invest 175 hours, defending his decision to create multiple satisfying exit points rather than pressuring players toward endless content consumption. The discussion addresses post-launch content uncertainty depending on audience reception, Chris’s desire to return to smaller mechanically-focused projects after wrestling with Heart of the Machine’s combined novelist/showrunner/game designer challenges, and the surprisingly difficult task of creating a morally flexible protagonist who maintains coherent character identity across genocidal and compassionate playthroughs. Throughout, Chris demonstrates mature development philosophy balancing creative ambition with player respect, acknowledging that some will miss his favorite content while insisting that’s not just acceptable but intentional design.
The Return Visit
A Year Later, 17 Years In
Jack welcomes Chris back with genuine enthusiasm: “We are also joined by someone we’ve interviewed before almost a year ago and just somebody that we had a really great time talking to. They provided two fantastic episodes of content where they were able to talk about all about the history of their games, their philosophy on developing strategy, their philosophy on interacting with players, and a bunch of really interesting developer insight.”
Chris acknowledges his longevity: “I’m 17 years into this now, so it’s been a hot minute.” This experience provides unique perspective spanning indie gaming’s evolution from pre-Steam storefronts through modern early access practices, watching contemporaries leave the industry while newcomers surpass him, creating “a good vantage point.”
For New Listeners: Who Is Chris McElligott-Park?
Jack provides essential context for those unfamiliar with Arcen Games’ history: “Chris and his company Arcen Games have been around on Steam for almost forever. Before Steam, they were on storefronts. They were one of the first groups actually pushing indie games in that way.”
The origin story centers on AI War: “Chris initially created AI War, a game that he developed for his brother and father—actually his dad and his uncle—discovering the fun of making almost a purely single player game with the intention of dealing with an overwhelmingly difficult AI force.” This personal project “put Arcen Games on the map” and “helped project a potential career for Chris that he was able to evolve and capitalize on with his next titles.”
What Is Heart of the Machine?
The Strategy RPG Hybrid
Chris identifies the genre challenge: “Heart of the Machine has a lot more narrative to it. Even though it’s still a strategy game, it’s also a strategy RPG. Actually, in the last year, how to talk about it has crystallized a lot because there’s been just repeated user reviews explaining it.”
The 93% positive review rate masks diverse player motivations. Chris notes distinct camps: “Some people who are there for the story, some people who are there for the strategy. There’s some people who play it in spite of the story—’I don’t like the story, but I enjoy the mechanics and I just kind of look past the story.’ And then other people are like, ‘I’m not really into strategy games, but I’m here for the story.'”
This flexibility echoes The Witcher 3’s broad appeal: “How many people play The Witcher 3 and they can’t stand Gerald? There are people that are that way, but hopefully most people actually like the main character and want to root for him.”
People Want to Play When It’s Done
Chris identifies a fundamental difference from his previous work: “One of the things I’ve noticed during early access and kind of knew this was going to be the case, but it’s more intensely the case this time is that people want to play it when it’s done. And when I think about it, I’m like, ‘Yeah, me too, actually.'”
Games with RPG or narrative components create different player expectations than pure strategy: “When I am going to play any game that has an RPG component or like a farming simulator that has narrative bits, then I want to play it all at one time because otherwise I’m going to forget what’s going on and then I’m going to come back in a few years when they’re done.”
Chris uses Roots of Pacha as personal example: “My wife started playing it again recently and I’m like, ‘Ah, yeah, I remember liking that game, but I’m going to wait.’ I’m going to wait another couple of update cycles before I resume playing.”
Contrasting With Previous Games
His earlier titles functioned differently: “None of my past works really had that issue at all because it’s like chess. If there’s a new season of chess or new pieces are being introduced later, you actually want to be in there early and you don’t care if there’s new content.”
First-person shooters provide another analogy: “If there’s a new map that comes out later that doesn’t impact how you play on the map now or the meta changes with some new class or some new gun or whatever, you don’t care. There’s no reason to wait. You kind of want to be there the whole time.”
Heart of the Machine “has more in common with novels and TV and movies where it needs to be kind of concrete—this part’s done.” This creates authorial constraints: “I know there’s certain things I can’t change anymore. Not that I really want to anyway, but when some people are like, ‘Hey, what about changing this plot point?’ I’m like, ‘People would flay me. I’m not doing that.'”
Escaping the Strategy Hook
Al’s Provocative Question
Al references their previous conversation: “When we first spoke, your response to the very first question was that you felt that you were on the hook for making strategy games. Having played Heart of the Machine, it’s very dense. There’s a lot going on and it feels completely unlike any other strategy game that I’ve played. Is this your attempt to escape that hook?”
Complexity Reduction Modes
Chris’s answer reveals sophisticated accessibility thinking. He introduced complexity modes relatively recently: “I introduced some complexity modes—basically complexity reduction modes. The game already has difficulty levels, but then some people just want to kind of show up for the story and they don’t care about some aspect of it.”
The hacking minigame exemplifies this approach: “There’s a hacking minigame. Some people don’t want to do that at all. In fact, a lot don’t. There’s a way to just turn that off so you don’t have to—it’s still you choose to hack but it just skips the minigame and we’re assuming you did it.”
Even players who initially enjoy mechanics sometimes tire of them: “Some people who like the hacking minigame play it for a while and they’re like, ‘I’m on my seventh run, I get it, I don’t want that interruption anymore’ so they turn it off at that point.”
Total War’s Auto-Resolve Analogy
Chris uses Total War as perfect precedent: “As much of an RTS history and background I have, I just don’t like RTS stuff in the middle of my 4X stuff in the Total War game. So I auto-resolve all the battles. They’re just like, ‘We’re going to assume you won the battle based on we calculate based off the amount of troops you brought.’ I’m like, ‘That’s great. I’m playing this like a grand strategy game because that’s how I personally feel like playing it.'”
The reverse also exists: “There’s other people who are like, ‘I barely want to play the grand strategy part of Total War. I’m just here for the most ridiculous RTS type battles I can get.'”
Stripping Down to Story Core
Chris identifies the essential experience: “That honestly is the heart of the game. If you strip it all the way back, then you’re missing the ‘prove your intention by executing it’ but that’s okay. That’s what some people want.”
With all complexity removed, “this is now we’re getting a little more towards Citizen Sleeper or Scholasticism where it’s really just about choices in the story.”
The Opening Binary Choice
Deliver the Box or Kill the Humans
Al highlights the prologue’s stark decision: “Right at the start, there’s that binary choice when the android wakes up in the warehouse and it’s sapient and the humans don’t know and he’s trying to understand who he is and his place in the world. And then the first choice is deliver the box or kill the humans. It was such a binary choice.”
The polarization struck Al forcefully: “I’m either going to just be docile and do as expected of me or just go in the complete opposite direction and murder these people. It was such a very stark choice to make.”
The Hidden Third Option
Chris reveals the choice isn’t truly binary: “The reality is they’re sending you out on a delivery so you can walk out. ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll take the package. I’m not going to murder you right now.’ They’re not going to necessarily notice in the first five minutes that you’re alive, sentient. So you can immediately defect from your first decision.”
However, reversal operates one-directionally: “You can’t take back murder. That’s not a thing you can do. But you can say, ‘I’m not going to murder anymore. That was a youthful mistake. I’m done with that. I’m going to be a good robot from now on.’ And then you can change your mind again.”
No Alignment System
Chris emphasizes the absence of tracking: “You’re not being locked into a dark side or a light side. There’s not dark side points or whatever. And I don’t know why you’re doing stuff. Did you kill someone out of fear or because you’re planning to genocide the continent?”
Motivations remain ambiguous: “Are you being compliant to get them to shut up and get away from them? Or are you being compliant because you’re really wanting to be compliant—you just want to stay under the radar and see where things play out if you don’t rock the boat too much?”
Old West Violence Philosophy
Normalized Brutality Enables Nuance
Chris explains his thematic inspiration: “The setting had to be appropriately violent. This is one of the reasons why I think people like Old West shows in particular. If you got a bunch of outlaws and they killed your brother or whatever, then obviously you’re out for a blood feud. But if somebody robbed a bank 10 times over and you run into them, whether you’re a lawman or just a regular Joe, you’re not necessarily going to be immediately violent towards them.”
The key insight: “But if you were, people would be okay with it because they’re like, ‘Well, you must be a good guy because you killed those bank robbers’ and you’re like, ‘Actually I’m a serial killer but I just ran into them.’ There’s so much violence inherent in the Old West that it’s normalized and therefore weird complicated relationships with people who are morally gray show up a lot.”
Corporate Black Ops Setting
Heart of the Machine’s world reflects this: “Companies are running black ops assassination raids against other sub companies because they’re all ultimately owned by one megacorp in this particular region. If that’s kind of the status quo then if you kill a few people then there’s a lot of people that are okay with that.”
This creates room for partnerships despite violence: “Characters are like, ‘Well, I don’t like you. I don’t like you killed so and so, but maybe we can work together.'”
Chris contrasts this with inflexible morality: “If characters are too obviously moralizing about stuff—the traditional paladin sort of thing of ‘I’ll never forgive you now that you’ve done this’—that setting is less rich for this sort of thing.”
Emotional State, Not Visual Theme
Chris clarifies: “There’s absolutely no iconography or visual theming of the Old West, but the emotional state of the world is somewhere between noir and westerns because it’s the most fun place to play—lower consequences in a lot of ways but still consequences, just different.”
Power Disparity as Theme
The 800-Pound Gorilla Problem
Chris addresses Al’s question about the murder choice seeming unmotivated: “You are bigger than an 800-pound gorilla. You’re a technician robot at that point, but you’re still incredibly weak. But you’re made of hydraulics, man. You could bench press a car if you needed to. And these are just office workers sending you on a delivery.”
The existential crisis feels immediate: “You’re having this kind of freakout moment of just, ‘Oh god, should I kill everybody? Because I sure could.'”
Humans Aren’t Used to This
Chris explains humanity’s evolutionary disadvantage: “We as humans aren’t used to dealing with that. A small group of us, if the strongest man in the world is getting violent, a small group of us just need to get some pointy sticks or some other weapon and we can subdue that guy. If there’s several silverback gorillas loose, that’s not going to go the same way because they’re just so much stronger than us.”
Humans underestimate this: “We’re like, ‘Six people, that’s enough for the strongest man. We’ll get them. Like especially if we have makeshift weapons at least.’ These machines are just so much stronger and that’s how we would build them.”
The Cat Analogy
Chris offers darkly humorous comparison: “They’re almost like dealing with small animals. It’s like how many cats would it take to get the average person down? Like a lot of cats. Cats aren’t that strong compared to humans. And that’s kind of where humans are compared to these machines they’ve made.”
The casualness enables violence: “A lot of times in the prologue in particular, it’s not like—it’s so casual. You just, it’s just so easy to do it. Like, do you care even? And they’re just so faceless. So it invites you into that violence almost because this would be so easy and I would barely even have to clean up. Just flick my arm and they’re dead. Let’s just go.”
The Time Loop Premise
Spoiler or Core Mechanic?
Chris addresses the spoiler question directly: “Some people will feel like this is a spoiler, so for those people, maybe give them a time stamp to skip ahead a little bit, but it’s honestly part of the premise of the game. This is one of those discussions that players have of like, my personal opinion is it’s not too much of a spoiler because it’s part of the premise.”
A Really Long Loop
The fundamental structure: “Basically you’re in a really long time loop. It’s not Groundhog Day because in Groundhog Day, he lives the same day over and over and over again, but there is an aspect of that with individual timelines, but it runs for what would be the equivalent of a few months. And from a player’s perspective, it’s anywhere from 5 to 50 hours depending on player speed. The average is like 10 to 20 hours.”
Chris emphasizes the uniqueness: “That’s a long time loop. 12 Minutes the game—it’s 12 minutes. There’s a lot of ones that take 20 minutes for a time loop. The Outer Wilds, it’s a 20-minute time loop. I don’t know of any 20-hour time loops, but this is one.”
Carrying Things Forward
The key difference from typical loops: “Usually when you go through time loop, you can’t bring anything with you, and when you’re done with it, you’re done with it. This is a little more like SimCity 4 where they had the region and then the multiple cities.”
The mechanic allows: “Once you’re able to start going through time, you’re able to start essentially a new loop, but you’re able to bring over certain information with you, which allows you to then construct things. And some physical objects also phase over kind of without your intention. Once you learn which what phases over, then you can kind of manipulate that as well.”
Jumping Between Timelines
The strategic depth emerges from non-linear navigation: “You can jump back to loops that you were already in. So you can be going through one timeline, get stuck on something, go somewhere else that’s in the past but in a parallel timeline, move forward, get something, have that carry over knowledge-wise into the other one. And then suddenly your other character is just struck with inspiration.”
Multiple Versions of Yourself
Chris explains the consciousness mechanics: “You’ve got multiple parallel versions of your character and they don’t have the episodic memory of what happened. They don’t remember why this thing is bleeding into their mind all of a sudden. You do as the player. You’re like, ‘Yeah, we did this whole other mission and you developed this thing out of necessity.’ And then your other version just remembered, ‘Huh, you know what? What if I did the same thing?’ And then you can use it in a different context.”
The SimCity 4 Inspiration
Industrial City Meets Pretty City
Chris identifies his conceptual source: “That was the thing I was thinking about because you’ve got like here’s my gross industrial city and this is where I ship all my trash and my pollution to. And it supplies electricity back to my other city that’s nice and environmentally pretty and all the things. And that was really fun. I was like, what if you could do that with time?”
Ethical Experimentation
The parallel timelines enable moral flexibility: “Here’s the one where I torment all the humans and I’m a huge dick and I’ve gotten all these secrets and things by being the worst machine. And here’s the one where I’m a pacifist and I don’t even kill anybody and I’m super nice, but I’m reaping the benefits of the murder machine over here because I’ve remembered some things that murder machine learned.”
This creates satisfying complexity: “So you’ve got these two totally different ethical versions of yourself that you’re playing. And that’s really fun.”
Tempting Players to Evil
Chris addresses player psychology: “We’ve all probably seen the statistics of like 90% of people when given a good and an evil choice they’ll choose good if they can—Baldur’s Gate 3 and all these other ones talk about that. I was like, how do I tempt people seriously into evil more because evil could be really fun?”
His solution: “If people are only going to have one playthrough, I’d honestly like to have them have kind of a mixed one. So it’s like, here’s the one where I’m being good, and then what if I just do a small timeline where I’m really evil and I get the benefits of that? It’s a way of tempting them into doing stuff they might not do otherwise.”
Not About Real Morality
Chris clarifies the goal: “It’s not about what your real morality is. That’s not the point. It’s what kind of character are you choosing to roleplay as? And how does that affect the world around you?”
The timelines “lower the stakes a little bit. We’re not here to have a moral judgment of you. Your character is a complex one who could go a bunch of different ways.”
Complexity Through Character
The Amoral Blank Slate Problem
Chris articulates a challenging design constraint: “Developing a character that’s completely morally flexible but still has some core values—one, they’re not too interested in humans. They’re just not that into us. They don’t really care how we function or surprised by the fact we need toilet paper and stuff like that. It’s like, ‘Gross. Don’t tell me about that. I don’t want to know. Like I’m a robot.'”
This creates personality: “They’re just not that interested and a little bit baffled by us from time to time and so get caught off guard occasionally by aspects of human nature, but they’re like, ‘Really? Really, guys?’ Ah, gross. All right. Well, moving on.”
Still a Character
The balance proves difficult: “The character still has values. The character values intelligence and they value certain other things. Otherwise they’re just not even a character. They’re just kind of a spot for the player.”
Chris references player expectations varying by genre: “When people are coming to Dungeons and Dragons they’re more likely to want to be somewhere in the middle. Let’s have some nuance to me. I don’t want to be a goody two-shoes paladin, but people also don’t want to be that evil because it locks out a lot of things.”
Skynet Simulator Expectations
Different player preconceptions arrive with the premise: “When they’re coming to something that they’re thinking of as a Skynet simulator, sometimes they’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s get those humans. Let’s do that.’ When they play Plague Inc., there’s no morality behind that. You’re just being a virus or bacteria. The expectation is you’re going to kill everybody.”
The goal becomes disrupting assumptions: “Some people come in with the expectation that they’re going to be like a murder hobo, so to speak. And then they’re like, ‘Oh, but these people are kind of nice, and I feel kind of like a jerk. Maybe I’ll stop that for a while.’ And then they’re like, ‘Those guys, actually those guys are dicks, so I’m going to get them.'”
Shaking Preconceptions
Chris defines his design philosophy: “My goal is to shake those up and get them to just experiment. That’s really my goal—not to moralize at them, but to get them to do whatever it is they wouldn’t have normally done. If they were coming in to be Skynet and be genocidal, can I make them be compassionate? If they were coming in to be really nice, can I tempt them to evil?”
The focus shifts from traditional morality systems: “That’s where I come from—not trying to get them to do the good thing, but trying to get them to do whatever it was they weren’t initially going to do.”
The Mario 64 Completion Model
70 Stars Gets You the Princess
Jack asks about narrative completion philosophy, prompting Chris’s most elegant analogy: “Speaking in analogies is maybe useful here. Mario 64 is one I come back to. Not a very narrative game, obviously. Not a very strategic game either. I love that game, though.”
The structure: “There’s kind of a core experience to Mario 64 that involves Mario saving the princess. There is a point where he does that. You have saved the princess. Congratulations. And you need 70 stars for those not in the know to do that. And there are 128 in the game.”
Casual Player Path
Chris describes the average experience: “As a casual player, I go in, I can get any 70 stars, and then I can save the princess by beating the final boss. And there’s a definitive final boss where you go, ‘That’s him. I got him,’ and then the princess gives you cake. You roll credits and you’ve got the cake and the princess.”
Then the decision point: “You could be done now or you can come back and there’s another 50 stars for you to go do. And guess what? They’re a lot more challenging.”
Natural Stopping Points
Most players find their limit organically: “For the average player, they’re like, ‘Let me do a few more stars because I just enjoy the platforming.’ And then they probably hit a point where they’re like, ‘It’s not fun anymore. I already got the princess and the cake. Maybe I’ll beat that final boss again just to put a capstone on it because that would be a nice place to end. I’ve got 90 stars. I’m not having fun anymore. Going to beat that boss again.’ And then I’m done for a while.”
Completionists pursue different goals: “For other people, they’re like, ‘I’m getting all the stars. I’m doing the 100% thing.'”
Applying to Heart of the Machine
The numbers translate: “To 100% the game takes about 175 hours minimum. Most people will take longer to do it, but the minimum reasonable time to expect somebody to do it in is 175 hours. That’s a lot of hours.”
Minimum completion sits much lower: “The minimum amount of time to roll credits is somewhere in 20 to 40 hours. And that’s if you’re really gunning it and you kind of know what you’re doing.”
Comprehensive exploration: “For somebody to see all of the things—in other words, make all the various choices in all the possible combinations and most of the possible combinations and get all of the normal difficulty achievements—that’s 90 hours.”
The Spectrum of Engagement
Chris emphasizes player diversity: “There’s this spectrum of how involved players want to get with any particular game.” This applies beyond mechanics to narrative consumption as well.
The Star Wars Trilogy Structure
Core Narrative Arc
Chris uses familiar film structure to explain narrative scope: “In the core trilogy it’s like, really does Luke deal with Darth Vader and the Emperor in some fashion and how does he do that? So there’s a definitive set of some stuff that happens with Luke and the Emperor and Darth Vader and that if we wrap those up thematically we’ve wrapped things up.”
The Broader Universe
But completion doesn’t mean exhaustion: “Hey wait a second, there’s all this other stuff with these Mandalorian people that could be around at the same sort of time. There’s like we’ve run into these crime syndicate people and we’ve run into these Ewoks which we may like or not like and hey what about a Wookiee planet and there’s all these other things.”
The nested stories: “Luke’s journey to dealing with Darth and the Emperor—that’s one thing. But then there’s this separate, well this is a pretty big world actually. We could go off and do all these other sort of things. Hey is there a whole story in how they got the Death Star plans?”
Multiple Valid Endings
Chris acknowledges varying satisfaction points: “If you’ve got ‘I just blew up the Death Star and Darth Vader got sent off and that’s the end’—if that’s the moment where it’s done for you, okay? That needs to be okay. Versus if it’s the moment when you’ve gone through all this stuff and you know the truth about Darth Vader and you see what Luke has truly become and that’s the end for you, great.”
His Dad’s Opinion
Chris shares a revealing anecdote: “My dad was that way with the first Star Wars. He saw Star Wars—the movie, it wasn’t called A New Hope—in theatres. He’s like, ‘I saw Star Wars and that was great. I didn’t need more. I didn’t need The Empire Strikes Back. That’s the best bit. That’s my favourite part.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s all right.'”
Al and Jack immediately protest this take, prompting Chris’s key point: “As a creator, I have to accept the fact that there are going to be people who are like, ‘All I needed was the first Star Wars. I didn’t need The Empire Strikes Back.’ And that should be okay. Man, does that first movie end on a high note? They get medals and stuff except Chewie. If somebody doesn’t want to engage with it more after that, even though the best bits come later, it’s okay.”
Contrasting With Lord of the Rings
Chris identifies different structural requirements: “If you’re talking the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, it’s not done when you finish the Fellowship of the Ring. It’s not done at the end of the Two Towers. If you stop anywhere before the Return of the King, that’s a little weird. Like I think you didn’t really like it that much. It is one story told across a trilogy and it’s weird to stop partway through one story.”
The distinction matters: “Star Wars is one story in one movie and then also is one story over a trilogy and then also is one story across stuff that expands beyond that trilogy too. That kind of Russian nesting doll of what’s a complete story is really interesting to me.”
The 1.0 Release Details
What’s Actually New
Chris provides specific information: “It adds in the Cybercratic Ambitions Tier 3 ending scenario. That’s the main difference between the build that’s currently out for everybody and the 1.0.”
Content growth during early access: “Compared to early access first build which was 0.655 and then the 1.0 build, the amount of general content almost doubled. Most of that is for later game content and so forth.”
Quality of life improvements: “There’s been a lot of harder difficulty modes and easier difficulty, easier complexity modes and a focus on scraping off all the sharp edges that were kind of annoying some people.”
Avoiding Perpetual Waiting
Chris explains his communication strategy: “I’m trying to be sensitive to spoilers on the one hand and two I don’t want people to just endlessly go, ‘I’m going to wait for the Roots of Pacha situation for me.'”
He describes his own experience: “To be honest I played Roots of Pacha two years ago and I enjoyed it. I played it all the way through all the things. I didn’t feel like it was lacking. They’ve been developing for another two years and I’m like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ I mean, I want to go back and play it again and play more, but they’ve already said there’s going to be another big thing coming after the current one. So I’m like, ‘I’ll wait for that.'”
The problem with this: “One of the things I want to avoid is having players always in that perpetual state of, ‘Oh, wait for that next thing,’ because they wind up just kind of never feeling comfortable.”
Audience Uncertainty
Chris remains flexible about future content: “I don’t know that I want to make endless next things in this. If the audience is there and wants to do that, then yeah, sure. I’d love this world and I’d love to expand it.”
Post-Launch Philosophy
The Matrix Sequels Lesson
Chris uses film history to frame his approach: “I really like the original Matrix, the movie. I enjoyed the two sequels that came after and I did not watch the fourth. My enjoyment of the second two movies in that trilogy were largely diminished compared to my just love of the first one, but I’m not sorry they made them and I’m not sorry that I watched them.”
The key insight: “If they had stopped with the first Matrix, it would have been okay and it would have been an all-time classic movie anyway because it stood alone, but it also had room for expansion. And when they did expand it, most of the world was a little bit lukewarm on it, aspects of it, but was glad to be back in that world. And other people were like, ‘I’m good.'”
Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 DLC Model
Chris identifies his gold standard: “When I imagine what those might look like, I often think of The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077. Those are really great DLCs and they’re all story focused. You don’t need them. You don’t have to play them to play the core experience.”
The structure he admires: “There’s a core game about Gerald and Ciri and there’s a core thing about V against the megacorp with Johnny Silverhand and all that sort of stuff. And that all plays out without the DLC. So nobody’s being FOMOed into those things. But if you’re really invested in the world, then there’s meaty other stories.”
Phantom Liberty exemplifies this: “In the case of Phantom Liberty, that has a whole alternate ending to the main storyline. That’s fun because there’s no reason to not. Why not do that?”
What He Won’t Do
Chris draws clear boundaries: “The player doesn’t have to play Phantom Liberty to get the true experience. But it’s really good and if you like Cyberpunk 2077, you may as well do it. There’s not a thing where you go, ‘Oh, play Cyberpunk 2077 to a certain point. You have to have the DLC though and then play that DLC and don’t do the real ending because the regular ending is not any good. You have to do the DLC ending.’ No, it’s really friendly.”
No Model in Prior Work
The narrative focus changes everything: “I don’t have a model in my own prior body of work that fits because the story aspect changes everything.” His AI War DLCs provided mechanical expansion, but Heart of the Machine requires different thinking.
The Murderbot Novels Ideal
Chris identifies another inspiration: “The Murderbot novels are something I love. There’s like nine of them or something at this point. I’ve never felt at any point that it was going to not be okay if another one wasn’t written. I’m always up for another one because I love that series. But any point is a good stopping point although you should read them all.”
The friendly approach: “That’s the ideal—to kind of mimic those models because I feel like they’re very friendly to everybody and that therefore leads to fewer angry people and that’s always a good thing.”
The Future of Arcen Games
Returning to Smaller Projects
Jack asks about whether Chris will continue narrative-heavy development or return to systems-focused design. Chris’s answer reveals fatigue with complexity: “I’d kind of like to work on some games that are a little bit smaller and just easier to pick up and play for a couple of dozen hours or whatever and be a little more mechanics focused.”
The Jurassic Park Problem
Chris uses memorable analogy to explain Heart of the Machine’s challenges: “There’s that quote from Jurassic Park where he’s like, ‘We’ve got all the major problems of a zoo and a theme park.’ And that’s exactly what you inherit with something like Heart of the Machine because you have all the major problems of a novelist and a TV showrunner and a strategy game designer.”
The triple burden: “Things have to be internally consistent and characters have to behave as they would and you can’t have it do something the audience doesn’t agree with fundamentally to a certain extent. This character would never do that. It’s like, well this character is an amoral blank slate that could genocide or be the saviour of humanity. There’s a lot they would do. Oh, but there’s certain things that they would not.”
Learning New Writing Skills
Chris believes the experience transformed him: “I do plan on bringing more of the narrative bits in. I think I’ve learned how to write in games in a new way. That is something I think would be kind of the before Heart of the Machine way I wrote narratives in games and the after way. I think that’s something that is going to be really evident 20 years from now.”
However, balance matters: “But I don’t think I’m going to just go off to narrative land forever. I do like games that are just straightforward and mechanics-y and they’re a lot less taxing to make in a lot of ways.”
High Concept Problems
Chris distinguishes Heart of the Machine from his other work: “Heart of the Machine is very high concept. It’s one of the few games that I’ve made that could be described that way really—’Skynet Simulator’ or something. That’s a two-word thing. That’s not accurate, but it’s good enough. And that’s a concept that gets a lot of people immediately excited, but people are excited about that for different reasons.”
This creates audience fragmentation: “Some people want to feel like Skynet or feel sneaky or they like the strategic implications or they like the story implications or they want to do some specific thing. There’s a bunch of media about that sort of thing.”
Contrast with AI War: “Something like AI War, it’s like, ‘You’re a space admiral and I want to feel like Ender Wiggin.’ That’s high concept kind of, but not really. Pretty much everybody who wants to do that, they’re there for the mechanics. They want to feel like a space admiral—aka they want to play a strategy game.”
Character Constraints
Creating a morally flexible protagonist with personality proves unexpectedly difficult: “Developing a character that’s completely morally flexible but still has some core values—one, they’re not too interested in humans. They’re just not that into us. They don’t really care how we function or are surprised by the fact we need toilet paper and stuff like that.”
The writing challenge: “When you’re a consumer of something like Lord of the Rings, there’s this sense of anything could happen. Indiana Jones—anything can happen. Indiana Jones fairly amoral guy in a lot of senses, but there’s certain lines he won’t cross obviously and he usually comes out on the side of good guys most of the time and it helps that he’s pitted against Nazis, but he plays loose with a lot of other morals in a way that makes him exciting.”
This creates paradox: “That has a way of actually making for a writer the world smaller than it otherwise would be.”
The Dinosaur Park Dead End
Chris uses Jurassic Park sequels as cautionary example: “You can see this in the Jurassic Park sequels where they don’t really know what else to do with it in some ways. As we imagine as the audience, okay, you’ve got dinosaurs in a park and stuff and that could just go any number of different ways. And it’s like, well the dinosaurs eat people and then what? Well, they eat people and then sometimes they get loose and they eat people. It’s like, okay, well that’s…”
Heart of the Machine fortunately offers more: “With Heart of the Machine there’s a really rich set of things that the machine intelligence can do and that’s exciting, but there’s still these kind of fundamental constraints. Sometimes there’s a really rich space and you stumble into it which I did here. Sometimes it’s like there’s nowhere else to go—like what do you do with the dinosaur park?”
Following Projects Where They Lead
Chris acknowledges uncertainty: “I’m not fundamentally changing how I’m making games forever, but you never know. I never planned on being a strategy game developer in the first place. I just kind of follow the projects where they lead.”
Heart of the Machine’s growth: “Heart of the Machine was supposed to be a much smaller project. It grew so large because in order to do the high concept justice and hit all the things people wanted and that I wanted to see, it required it to grow and that required more systems and this that and the other.”
The lesson: “It is the shape that it is because of what it is, not because that’s necessarily how I want to make every game from now on. But it answered a lot of fundamental questions for me about how you can have characters who are actually characters in a narrative that actually has endings and player agency at the same time.”
The Creative Process Is Unpredictable
Chris’s final thought on future direction: “That’s just the creative process—wildly unpredictable. Sometimes you wander into what you think is a small room and it turns out there’s a cave back there. It’s like a Narnia situation.”
Hooded Horse and Strategy Gaming in 2026
The Monthly Release Cadence
Jack identifies impressive publishing rhythm: “Heart of the Machine is being published by Hooded Horse in 2026. On January 5th, Terra Invicta released into full release. On February 5th, Menace came out. Between the two of them—Terra Invicta was a game spoken about on this podcast well ahead of time as something members had played on their own and really enjoyed. Menace was one of the most wishlisted strategy games of 2025.”
The pattern: “They’ve kept this monthly chain of these large titles from their catalogue either entering into early access to finally be accessible to the community at large or into full release where they’ve exited the training wheels and are part of their substantial and ever evolving and growing impressive back catalogue of completed projects.”
Gratitude for Platform
Chris expresses appreciation without committing to future collaboration: The discussion doesn’t explicitly address whether Chris will continue working with Hooded Horse, but the successful relationship clearly provides value to both parties.
Contact & Links
Heart of the Machine
- Steam: Heart of the Machine
- Official Website: Arcen Games
About | Contact | Meet the Team | Get Involved | Forum | Episodes
Discord | Reddit | Twitter / X | Facebook
Instagram | Twitch | Steam Group | Steam Curator
YouTube | Spotify | Apple | Amazon
Email: [email protected]
Episode Verdict
This episode captures Chris McElligott-Park at a significant career milestone—completing his first narrative-driven strategy RPG after 17 years developing purely mechanics-focused titles—revealing how wrestling with novelist/TV showrunner/game designer problems simultaneously for four years taught him “how to write in games in a new way” while convincing him his next projects should be “smaller and just easier to pick up and play.” The conversation’s greatest value emerges from Chris’s sophisticated thinking about narrative completion, using Mario 64’s star system and Star Wars trilogy structure to articulate why Heart of the Machine deliberately creates multiple satisfying exit points (20-hour minimum, 90-hour comprehensive, 175-hour completionist) rather than pressuring players toward endless content consumption. His explanation of the long-form time loop mechanics—enabling players to maintain parallel genocidal and pacifist timelines simultaneously while knowledge bleeds between them like SimCity 4’s regional resource sharing—demonstrates innovative approach to reconciling branching narrative with player agency, solving the “90% of players choose good” problem by lowering stakes through temporal experimentation. The complexity reduction modes discussion reveals mature accessibility philosophy where story-focused players can skip hacking minigames while tactics enthusiasts disable defensive management, treating Heart of the Machine’s various systems like Total War’s auto-resolve rather than mandatory content. Most valuable are Chris’s boundary-setting around post-launch content, citing Witcher 3’s Phantom Liberty as gold standard for optional-yet-substantial DLC while explicitly rejecting models requiring players purchase expansions to experience “true” endings, and his candid acknowledgment that if audience reception proves lukewarm he’ll “walk away from the project going, core trilogy dusted” rather than perpetually adding content to justify initial investment. The episode concludes with honest admission that he doesn’t know Arcen Games’ future direction—variables include Heart of the Machine’s commercial performance, audience appetite for more stories in this universe, and whether he can stomach another project requiring simultaneous mastery of character consistency, narrative branching, and strategic depth when “games that are just straightforward and mechanics are a lot less taxing to make.” For developers attempting narrative strategy hybrids or players curious why Heart of the Machine permits genociding humanity then creating paradise for cats and dogs, this conversation provides masterclass in respecting player agency while maintaining coherent character identity.
Next Episode: [TBD]
Discover more from Critical Moves
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.