Autonauts

Such a strange game for this genre. It's a both a programming game and a factory game in one, yet in both aspects, it is somewhat shallow - but that's kinda the point. The game knows what it's doing; It doesn't overwhelm you, problems are simple and straightforward to solve, and there's no time limits. All of that meshes well with the overarching theme of relaxation and positive vibes this game is going for. ... which also means that this game gets pretty boring after a while. Some perspective: I'd say I 100%'d this game rather efficiently, requiring 2 separate playthroughs. In both playthroughs, I ended up having to deal with mandatory wait times of multiple hours. Approximately 10% of my time spent on this game was just AFK. Granted, I already came in with *plenty* of experience in factory/programming games, so that *definitely* skewed my experience. Though especially with the final challenge of the "Enlightenment" mode, it felt weird to have little left to do but wait for 3 hours straight, until the game went "Okay, you can win now". But hey, that's one of the many things the "Settlement" mode fixed, so this is really just a thing for completionists to worry about. (By the way, definitely play that mode first, it solves a lot of flow issues.) Unfortunately, there are also the occasional bugs to deal with here. Bots really don't like you messing with structures they're trying to interact with, so they might end up in infinite loops that the game can't warn you about. Similarly, structures and objects sometimes become perpetually "locked" from *ALL* interaction, including their removal from the world. (Thankfully, quickly reloading the map fixes this issue.) Finally, near the end of Enlightenment mode, the game crashed semi-frequently for me. My guess is that I had a few too many bots going; Once I went past 800 bots, the game noticeably struggled to load the bot list whenever I opened it. (Note: PC specs attached.) The game was still playable and beatable just fine, but I did find myself doing a lot more safety-saves at that point. The programming features also leave some things to be desired, with a lot of world interactions not being "programmable" per se. Even if you know all the tricks to streamline bot programming, the game just flat out lacks the tools to program e.g. tile or item pickup interactions remotely. Meaning: You will never fully move on from using your player character to physically "demonstrate" to a bot what it is supposed to do. It works, but it's a bit frustrating. (Maybe the sequel improves the situation here?) Despite all of that though, this game's still worth a "Recommended". Because honestly, if you're just looking for a cozy automation game to sink some hours into, there's nothing wrong with picking this one up. Just have a comfy, relaxed time, click some buttons, plot out some buildings, and watch your cute little robot army go. It doesn't need to be much more than that.