Greetings viewers! I’m back for another game mini-review. This review is based off of my own personal playtime.
First and foremost: the game is quite fun (once you know the basics), but its tutorial kind of fails on directing the player. Now that’s not really a bad thing (as most people don’t like being ‘hand-held’ when doing things). I’m mainly talking about how vague one core feature to the game is explained.
So, what is this game and what is it about. Simply put, it’s based around landing on an uninhabited planet (with no sign of enemies and stuff). Your task is to prepare the planet for automation and to colonize it for the human race. However, it offers a twist that kind of makes no sense (when you get to the first level of Colonization).
The core of the game is to automate everything you can do, with robots. The way you do it is for them to repeat your own actions (for example, chopping a tree or storing sticks).
Basically, anything you do a lot, consider making life easier by having a robot do it for you.
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However the way you program each bot is taught with ‘block code’, doing something like this (telling a bot how to make an Axe);
Or this (telling a bot how to pick up sticks until they can pick up no more, and then keep throwing them into storage until there is no more)…
Complexity of what you can tell your bot to do, is limited to how much memory the bot can hold, and how complex you can think. Starter bots, you have to make sacrifices with one bot chopping and another picking up logs and storing them.
Storage is interesting. Pretty much everything is infinite in this game, and you never have to worry about gumming up having too many logs or too many planks. The game has a safety feature that deletes excess of whatever, preventing lag. So don’t ever worry about a robot over-producing something.
Robots do run out of power, and can be recharged by the player, or by even setting up robots that will do it for you (and even recharge themselves when needed), making life so much easier.
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And then, there’s the colony system. Or as I like to call; heart-shitting babies. Once you’re able to automate the production of food, you’ll have access to colonists. Thing is, you always have access (even when you start).
So how do you get colonists? Place a beacon down and wait for them to show up? No. Explore the world and find humans? No! Educate your bots until they become colonists? NO!!
…You create them, from seeds. So when you’re a parent and you’re faced with that embarrassing question from your child; “where do babies come from?”
This, is what you tell them. Then you deposit the seed in an incubator (add 5 food), and..
So that, son, is where babies come from! 😀
Each baby colonist has its own Tier system. Freshly created babies start at Tier 1. There are 6 tiers in total. You start by feeding a baby colonist food, and it craps out hearts. You use these hearts for research.
The research is used to unlock new tools, houses for your colonists (that will help to advance them to Tier 2), cooking options, new bots (and upgrades for your existing
ones), new workstations, new things to build…, etc.
When you unlock research, the training wheels are removed and you’re pretty much on your own at that point. Meaning, you don’t have to choose a particular path; play the game the way you want.
If you want berries to be the colonists’ only food source, this is allowed. Continue to grow your automated factory, your way.
So yeah, that is Autonauts. A nice, chill game that seems perfect for kids (and kids at heart). Just don’t pull your hair out early game when you realize all the tasks you need to do (and the number of bots you need to make to automate said tasks).