Greenlight Highlight | Project Automata

Title: Project Automata
Developer: Dapper Penguin Studios
[Greenlight Page]

What type of game is it?

Tycoon/Production Line Simulator

What’s the 30 second elevator pitch?

Play as an early 1900’s industrialist throwing money around to set up an industrial empire, but be careful to tweak and tend to the quantities and production lines you create, there’s a fine line between over-expansion and nailing a niche.

What do we like most about it?

Despite first impressions the game isn’t a simple production line game of creating products to suit the local town’s needs. In fact, there’s a delicate amount of balance and care required in setting up said lines in order to keep costs down and productivity up. If you’re transporting too much water to the farms then they’ll have no storage to take in wheat to feed the chickens and production will grind to a halt, if you’re only sending two loads of sand a day into your glass production network then you’re only going to turn out glassware everything three or so days.

It’s a case of assessing the price the locals are willing to pay, finding a balance in production based around resources local to that, and costing it all up – sure, they’ll pay $300 for hamburgers in Seattle, but getting the water, wheat, chickens, meat and dough to the right place -as well as the truck costs- might just not be economical.

I spent a little over an hour playing the pre-alpha build for the game available over on the developer’s website (link on the Greenlight Page) and was absolutely hypnotised. It took me a while, and I had to wind back on the expansion, but I managed to start turning a major profit and expand my efforts to the other cities (a large map generates about 6) on the map.

The alpha only has gathering, factory, and farm buildings in, while the completed product will contain a whole lot more. Keep your eyes peeled on the GL page too as the developer is looking to launch a Kickstarter at the start of October, and this is a game that most tycoon fans will likely fall in love with.

When’s it due?

Project Automata is expected to hit a more solid alpha state in early next year, with development to continue ongoing after that. Planned formats include Windows PC, Mac & Linux