Autonauts

As Elon Musk focuses on colonizing Mars and putting humans other planets, this Animal Crossing meets Sim City styled game is one step ahead of him. In Denki and Curve Digital’s 2019 release Autonauts, the player is tasked with creating a functioning, fulfilling, and happy colony on barren planets in the cosmos. Controlling what seems to be the head of the colony, the player performs various jobs to keep other humans, livestock, and their robot companions satisfied and working together to ensure the success of their other-worldly lives.

Gameplay

Autonauts is a “started from the bottom now we’re here” style game, sharing the same concept as popular games such as Sim City, Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved, and Minecraft. The player steps down from their spacecraft overlooking and empty space rock that that are supposed to make into their home.

Collecting stones and sticks starts the colonization mission, opening up blueprints to create rudimentary items, which then open up blueprints to create more complex items, creating a chain of ever-increasing complexity and functionality to the colony. For now, though, we will stick to the basics.

One of the first creations the player will find themselves making is a series of robots to take care of various jobs around the colony. Each robot has a different work capacity in the form of its memory. The memory of a robot can store simple coding provided by the player to equip it with the ability to perform different tasks. Robots with less memory will get less complex tasks and those with more memory can perform more complex tasks. The robots receive their directions from the player and be on their way, allowing the player and their character to tend to the more pressing matters, like managing the people.

The player’s character, at this point, focuses on getting new lifeforms to the planet, like cattle or sheep, to feed the other colony members when simple crops just no longer do the trick. The robots ensure life is simple and convenient, but the player ensures life is successful. Overseeing the robots as they continue to work and planning the next step of the colony to ensure survival falls into the hands of the player.

Game Style

As far as playing, there are missions given to the player, but as long as they survive, Autonauts mimics a sandbox styled game similar to Minecraft or Terraria, which obviously have loose objectives, but there is a lot of personalization along the way to really make the game belong to the player. The art style is reminiscent of a mix between Scribblenauts, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing, offering bright, vibrant colors, happy, lively characters, and blocky, edged graphics to make it feel like an old school game.

Overall Take

The game is definitely one that belongs in my personal collection. Downloading Autonauts would not be a bad move for anyone who has patience and likes the idea of starting from scratch and making a world of their own.

The graphics, controls, and play style overall is extremely simple, but still engaging, not giving up any quality in the simplicity of the game. The sandbox style has become more popular in recent years, and for any who enjoy loosely defined goals, this is a perfect game to log onto every once in a while to relax and get away from the competitive grind that plagues some current games.

Pros

• Simple, relaxing game
• Bright, engaging graphics and colors
• Fun idea, timely relevant
• Like games currently popular

Cons

• Can be too simple for some
• No competitive drive
• Not extremely straightforward, requires thought and patience at times