Game: Autonauts vs Piratebots
Genre: Simulation, Strategy, Casual, Indie
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Denki | Curve Games
Controller Support: No
Price: US $TBC | UK £TBC | EU € TBC
Release Date: July 28th, 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to Bastion.
It wasn’t that long ago that I reviewed Autonauts on the Nintendo Switch. Just over a month later, developers, Denki are getting ready to release Autonauts vs PirateBots on Steam.
Autonauts with Pirates
This time around, a bit of Tower Defence-style gameplay is thrown in for good measure. As before, Autonauts is a factory game with bots that you program to do the work, but this time, there are Pirates marauding.
All is peaceful on planet Rigel VII in the Denki quadrant; Autonaut Kyo has a thriving settlement underway until Piratebots savagely attack it, wiping out the base camp and taking control of the working outposts and industries.
Restore the Settlement
The place is in ruins, so you are despatched to the planet to restore the settlement and take out the pirates. You’ll automate a farming business to earn gold to fund your defence campaign and rescue the colony.
There is a good tutorial for folk who haven’t played Autonauts before or those who need a refresher course in the game. It takes you through how to make bots and program them to do your bidding. You can skip that tutorial portion for those who have previously played the automation part of the game.
Automate
You’ll have to automate your production to grow crops to sell, earn gold, and build an army of bots to take down the pirates. Once you have the production line sorted out and create a spaceport so you can sell your crops. After that, you can begin making fighter bots using the Defence research centre.
Constructing each bot costs 100 gold, so you must sell plenty of crops to afford each fighter bot. It’s a good idea to set up some defences around your colony against pirate raids.
Meet the Pirates
Exploring the map, you will soon discover a pirate outpost you must take down and reclaim. To do so, you build an army of bots and arm each with a sword. Then you and your little army of bots advance on the pirates, and battle commences. This is the fun portion of the game; I loved battling the pirates. I developed a technique of running around in tight circles while my army bots followed me and took out any pirates at an outpost.
You must destroy the Space Pirate Boss, Dread Pirate Robot, to win. However, the Dread Pirate’s heavily-defended stronghold lies on the other side of the world. As you destroy each outpost, you earn Pieces of 8-bit pirate bot technology used to research new army bots.
But unfortunately, between you and the ultimate showdown are hundreds of scurvy Piratebots commanded by The Dread Pirate Robot’s trusted Boss Mates. So you’ll be building lots of bots, from warriors, archers and knights, as you need quite a few to teach the pirates a lesson.
Addictive Gameplay
In addition to all of this, I found myself wanting to build a large army of them as it is pretty addictive wanting just one more bot fighter. The only real issues I had were some pacing problems when my production lines of bots as they inevitably ground to a halt from running out of items. It can be a bit of a grind to make robots fix these minor problems.
Visuals and Controls
The game controls are keyboard and mouse, which all work as they should. The cartoony graphics look great, and all the familiar Autonauts sound effects are present in the game.
Autonauts vs Piratebots was initially planned as a DLC for Autonauts. However, when developing the DLC, the add-on grew so big that Denki decided to make a new game. Of course, that took longer than initially planned, spanning a two-year development. I think it was worth the wait as the game is packed with new stuff and enjoyable.
Important Survival Mode Update pic.twitter.com/74dDWGQrCo
— Autonauts vs Piratebots – Coming July 28th (@Automationauts) April 26, 2022
Conclusion
Avast, me hearties! You didn’t think I would write the review without at least one pirate’s pun added in, did you? Autonauts vs Piratebots is a super fun game, though be prepared for a bit of a grind in setting up everything before you start making pirate bots. Anyone who has played the original Autonauts game should enjoy some more bot action in Autonauts vs Piratebots.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 