Autonauts [Xbox]
Starting strong with a “Made in Scotland” tagline in the main menu, Denki’s Autonauts is a colony-sim game based around automation, and learning how to ‘code’ in some sense, by giving commands to each of the robots you build. You’ll start with a Planet Scan, which will show you the results of the general makeup of the planet and its resources. You can name your planet, as well as randomise the seed (or input a specific one), and toggle the options for Small Planet, Random Objects and Tutorial. There’s a few different modes: Settlement, Free and Creative; with Settlement being the main game mode - and the one we’ll delve into most, here.
Once you’ve completed the tutorial - which introduces you to the various mechanics - you’ll be welcomed into the Autonauts Academy, which has a bunch of different sections that you can learn from and use to fully automate your settlement, allowing it to evolve to more in-depth and advanced stages. There are eight stages of programming and automation in order to make your civilisation thrive into a full-blown Metropolis, with little people populating the world you’ve cultivated. You can build a variety of different tools and other items, as well as other bots to help you automate tasks, which will make for a much more productive planet.
With a user friendly progression to everything you’ll do, Autonauts offers a fantastic mix of relaxation and challenge. There are a huge variety of tasks to complete, but having no time ‘deadline’ for you to race against keeps it from feeling overwhelming. Getting into a rhythm with things, and having a plan in place for gathering resources helps to give you a steer on later tasks, as you’ll always have a steady supply of the usual stuff, like logs, planks and rocks, ready to go as you unlock further craftables.
The visual style is very cutesy, with simple designs and a steadily advancing world where you have full control over how everything is laid out. As you grow the number of robots, you’ll be able to take a little bit of a back seat from the doing and enjoy a little bit more exploring, wandering further and further out from your starting area in order to see what else there is to be found, though sadly there’s no random events or unexpected things as far as I could see - which would have been a fun and exciting thing to include for you to find. Your character’s little plippy footsteps as you wander around the world is satisfying to hear, and the soundtrack is pleasant and relaxing.
Sometimes you will run into problems, such as a robot breaking their last tool, and not having the resources available to replace it - but as long as you prepare (as much as you can) for these eventualities, and pause robots if required - then things won’t get too bogged down. There are alternate ways to find and make certain items and resources, so checking out the Autopedia frequently is well worth it. For the most part, I tried to keep most of my resource-gathering to one specific part of the world, ensuring that I wouldn’t completely wipe out every tree or every stone deposit prematurely.
Overall, Autonauts is definitely a game designed for people that enjoy the organisation of tasks and the repetition required to build your own thriving world. It’s a title that some might find a little tedious, and that’s okay - not everyone will work well with this type of game - but for people like me, it will easily pull you in - and is simple enough in its processes to pick up and put down whenever you fancy. You’ll get hours upon hours of playtime out of Autonauts , but it will mostly come down to how much you’re willing to put into it - so if this looks like the game for you, you can pick it up for £15.99 on the Xbox Store.
In the end, we decided to give Autonauts the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Are you interested in Autonauts? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Curve Games for the Autonauts Xbox review code!
