Autonauts, the adorable automation-focussed colony management sim from developer Denki, has just received its first major free update of 2020 on Steam, titled Industrial Revolution.
Your basic goal in Autonauts, as Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips discovered when he dabbled last year, is easy enough to get to grips with: automate your merry band of worker robots to make your new planetary home inhabitable for humans. Actually reaching that point, though, is considerably less straightforward, with players needing to programme their charges to efficiently navigate an ever-more dizzying crafting tree. Wood makes tools makes a farm for rearing sheep to gather wool to make clothes and so on and on.
Autonauts’ first free updates, which arrived at the tail-end of last year, introduced the likes of new bot variants, new cooking options, new buildings, and new apparel. Today’s update, however, is far more substantial; as well as introducing mod support, it punts the somewhat rustic world of the core game straight into the Age of Steam.
Autonauts Phase 2: Industrial Revolution – Official Trailer Watch on YouTube
As Denki puts it, the goal of the Industrial Revolution update is to “[shift] the automation emphasis to mechanise the mining of coal and metal resources to build and fuel steam-powered worlds”. To that end, there are new advanced rail networks and related infrastructure for the transportation of goods and resources (featuring 20 new structures and four core vehicles), alongside a range of new tools and upgrades.