RECONNECT – The Heart of Darkness

Game Details

Title: RECONNECT – The Heart of Darkness
Genre: Action, Indie, Strategy
Developer: RobotHeart Lab
Publisher: RobotHeart Lab
Release Date: 10 Jun, 2021
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1492260/RECONNECT__The_Heart_of_Darkness/

About This Game

The fate of the cosmos lies in your hands as an evil A.I. has infested the cosmos. Its swarm of drones consumes one planet after another sucking off all life and light. Only darkness remains. You are a being of light courageous enough to face the dark threat. It is your mission to restore balance in the cosmos and reconnect the Heart of Darkness to the Light. To do so you have to face it directly!

Key Features

BUILD your base as an organic, grid-free light network. With RECONNECT’s simple and intuitive web building algorithm all you need is two buttons and your creativity to grow an elaborate organic base structure that protects your light source from the hostile AI. Simplistic structures, extravagant line drawings, highly efficient architectures, graceful plant-like netting – There are no limits for your creative and strategic mastermind. (Controller highly recommended)

PREPARE your defenses using five different towers with offensive, defensive and tactical features.
This minimalist set of crystal buildings adds color to your base and provides you with all necessary capabilities to fight of the AI swarm.

IMMERSE in the flow state of creative yet strategic building while your every move makes music – ranging from calm to driving.

WATCH the A.I. learn how to see, move, and (eventually) attack. With every wave a new, more intelligent generation of drones is being spawned.

SURVIVE attack waves of the merciless swarm. Your playing-behavior and tactics influence if the AI develops an aggressive or a more hesitant behavior.

EXPAND your territory to reach the AI’s base before it destroys yours. Use your power to manipulate time in case things start to get out of hand.

RECONNECT the Heart of Darkness to gain access to one copy of the smartest AI “genome” and weaken the AI’s crusade through the cosmos.

TRAIN your own AI drones in an epic battle of dark vs. light. You receive one drone (Light Knight) for every reconnection victory.

The first round of RECONNECT will be calm, almost Zen-like relaxing and gives you the chance to settle in. With every new round the game becomes more challenging as the AI has access to its experiences from the previous fights – just like you. It will be more intelligent from the start and launch its attacks earlier each time. You will need all your tactical and creative skills to keep up with its development. The fate of the cosmos lies in your hands…

Additional Features:

Optional tutorial
The tutorial in RECONNECT is basically a coin-based reward system for your curiosity. Instead of dictating how you experience our game we want to encourage the extremely satisfying feeling of having figured something out by yourself.

Or do you prefer to explore the cosmos of RECONNECT on your own and all the adventures that await you there? Then you can disable the tutorial system at the beginning of the first game and no one and no text will disturb you while you immerse in this experience.

At the same time, we want to spare you the frustration of feeling completely lost. Therefore, we prepared a full step-by-step tutorial pdf that you can check here, anytime.

Interactive Sound Design
The interactive, dynamic sound design makes RECONNECT a multi-sensory flow experience. The music and sound effects are not put on top of the game action, but instead your interactions forms both sounds and music. RECONNECT plays like an instrument, if you want to.

Benchmark Run + Automatic quality setting
Your first game start with a graphic quality benchmark run to guarantee optimal quality and resolution for your experience.
Depending on your hardware the self-learning AI and colorful light base can place a significant strain on your CPU once they reached a good size / level of development. You can keep an eye on the performance yourself by checking the FPS meter on screen. The game automatically downgrades the quality setting if the FPS stay in the critical area.

Artificial Intelligence

The self-learning A.I. in the form of a swarm of drones is the antagonist in "RECONNECT" and is the focus of the game.

To be precise, we use artificial neural networks (ANN) trained with “deep learning” algorithms. In other words, digital modeling of biological neural networks, such as the human brain. Numerous intermediate layers and context neurons that store past values create an extensive internal structure of the ANN that can simulate a multi-layered memory. The A.I. from RobotHeart Lab has a complex memory. This creates a capacity for abstraction that enables the ANNs to find their way around ever new environments. The A.I. starts completely randomly without any preliminary training and learns during the game. At the beginning of the learning phase when the game starts, the ANNs in RECONNECT are just a useless bunch of random neural connections. Generation after generation they learn to move, find their way around and defend themselves. The learning curve of the A.I. swarm thus runs parallel to the player’s learning experience. In addition, players are in direct contact with the A.I. and can directly participate in the evolution of the ANN by observing the learning process. Even direct communication takes place through the targeted changing of the environment by the player.

The Team

Hi, we are Max and Insea, first time self-publishing game dev couple from Germany. Max did all the designing and programming by himself. Even the AI’s architecture is his brain child alone. Meanwhile, Insea takes care of all the communication and the management of RobotHeart Lab, our visionary game laboratory.

Developing and releasing RECONNECT has been a massive adventure for us. Now, we are extremely happy and excited to finally share our work with you!
We know that for the last finishing touches until the full release we need the support of the community and are very much looking forward to hear your feedback!

Come talk to us on discord!

System Requirements

Minimum:

OS:

Windows (7, 8 and 10), 64-bit system required

Processor:

Intel i5 3.4 GHz or comparable

Memory:

2 GB RAM

Graphics:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or comparable

Storage:

600 MB available space

Recommended:

OS:

Windows (7, 8 and 10), 64-bit system required

Processor:

Intel i7 3.8 GHz or better

Memory:

4 GB RAM

Graphics:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2060 or comparable

Storage:

600 MB available space

Screenshots