Frequently, I take a look at what games are already available on Steam to see if they meet my requirements of being a good simulation game. Plus, I browse the Kickstarter pages to find hidden gems and get tips from our readers.
Having found games that really interest me, I then keep my fingers crossed and hope it will make the jump to the Switch somewhere in the future. You see, even though we are making progress, the Switch can always do with some more RPG/crafting simulation games, don’t you think? Let’s look at Autonauts!
What is Autonauts?
Autonauts immediately conjures images up for me from automated beings. A bit like the automatons that always have a place in the Atelier games. And I’m not far off: in this simulation game you can only progress by building a robot empire to do the work for you.
Here’s the description:
“Travel the universe colonising uninhabited planets with the sole goal of setting worlds in motion through the power of automation.
Fresh from your spaceship you must harvest stick and stone and begin your colonisation efforts. Create rudimentary crafting items from blueprints and slowly build a number of workerbots to aid in your efforts. Teach and shape their artificial intelligence with a visual programming language, then instruct them to begin the formation of your colony. Marvel as a planet you’ve shaped becomes home to a civilisation of workerbots, happy to do your bidding!”
What simulation features can we expect?
Autonauts has all the important features that belong to a good simulation game. It’s just that while you do most of the work in other sim games, here you build a robot workforce to do it for you. There’s farming, building and tending to the life stock. And before long the robots will also be busy fishing, cooking and tailoring.
The added part of the game is the way you have to build your robots. Don’t worry, you don’t need computer designing skills to do that. In the beginning you’re all alone, and as everything must be built from scratch, you’ll soon be swamped. But it’s robots that can do the repeating jobs for you.
Using a basic visual programming language, you can create scripts to guide a robot’s behaviour, all without typing a line of code. Instead, you teach the robots by asking them to observe how you approach a task. That in turn generates a script made of different coloured blocks, each representing a command like “pick up”, “move to” or “use”.
That script can then be edited to tweak a robot’s function. Adding a “repeat” block, for example, loops a given task over and over. Hit a play button, and the robot sets off to work. Fundamentally, it works somewhat like real game development tools.
Might sound difficult, but check out the video to see how it’s done.
Will the game come to the Switch?
The game has only just released on Steam on October 17, and there’s no word of bringing it to the Switch. But, we might be surprised. In the past year many Steam games made it over to the Switch successfully.
