As someone who loves base building and crafting style games, Autonauts has been on my radar for a while now. I managed to spend some quality time with this over the weekend and found it to be a charming experience. At first glance, Autonauts may have a rather “childlike” style to it, but this is certainly no kids game!
How to Download Autonauts
You can download the commercial Windows versions of the game from Steam. There is also a free prototype version of the game that will work on Windows, macOS, and Linux-powered machines
The Game Review
The idea of Autonauts is that you are on this planet and as well as surviving, you want it to flourish and have it filled with life too. Of course, this is more than just a one-person operation and that is where your robot buddies will be helping you out. You see, Autonauts at its core is about automation and getting robots to do the work for you, but this is easier said than done.
In the early part of the game, you are held by the hand and taught quite well what you need to do. You need to get supplies and so on as you would expect, but it is really getting the robots to do your work that makes things happen. For example, you can teach one how to chop down trees, and then another to pick up the wood. You can get quite in-depth with your instructions if you desire.
At first, I just kept things as simple as possible and found it straightforward. Progression ramps up pretty quickly and the game does not exactly do a great job in telling you how the more advanced mechanics work. You can figure it out on your own, but it can be rather jarring to go from having things spelled out to you to being left in the dark.
I do feel most people will figure it out, but it could be handled a little better. You eventually will have to get colonists and this is fun. In this game, colonists are grown from seeds and the need to be fed in order to give you “wuv”. Wuv is then used to power your colony moving forward as it gives you more access to advanced technology. Think of it as XP and you will know what it is!
Autonauts is the kind of game I can see many people getting very addicted to. You have a ton of items that you can craft and you can get really quite technical with how your program your robots. I found this to be a lot of fun and coming up with more and more complex ways to get the robots to work was something I really sunk my teeth into.
The presentation of the game has a lot of charm to it. It is this charm that I think may throw some people off with how challenging the gameplay can be. I would best describe the visual style as part Minecraft and part Dragon Quest Builders and those are two games, I like so I mean that as a strong compliment.
Overall, Autonauts is a game I really had a lot of fun with. I am sure those who love games where you get to build a base and work on various automotive ways to get it ticking will have a great time. If that sounds like fun to you be sure to check this one out.
