Project Automata Demo

One of the most important periods in human history was the industrial revolution, because it allowed us to mass produce goods and offer everyone a chance to own cars, appliances, and a variety of other things that would otherwise take too long to manufacture by hand. Hence, it’s no wonder that the planet is full of power plants and factories, and it’s also no wonder that pollution is a big problem nowadays.

Project Automata is a sandbox game in the style of Transport Tycoon or SimCity, in which you have to use a certain sum of money to put together a huge empire consisting of factories, processing plants and transportation routes. The goal is to make as much money as possible while providing everyone with the goods they desire, and the game itself appears to be quite polished at the moment.

Each factory requires raw resources in order to start producing goods, and these resources have to be extracted first. Whether it’s wood, oil or gas, you can find all of these around the map, which is procedurally-generated, by the way. Thus, the replay value is through the roof, especially since there’s no end in sight once you start making money and expanding all over the map.

Since you cannot build everything in the same spot, roads are important when it comes to getting things from one city to the other. At this point, the demo only features trucks as a method of transportation, but the full game promises to include railroads and a variety of other options. The complexity of the simulation should be quite high by the time the full version rolls out, especially since it should feature things like town personalities, pollution, different biomes and even politics.

As for the graphics, the low-poly style used by the designers is perfect for the genre, even if some games have managed to create much more detailed environments. On the other hand, the most important part is the simulation itself and the freedom to do everything you want. In that regard, Project Automata appears to be quite gifted, and it also runs pretty smoothly at the moment.

In the end, Project Automata features everything you might need in order to enjoy yourself for hours on end, especially if you are a fan of classic games like Transport Tycoon. Hence, you can support the developers by backing their Kickstarter campaign or by voting for the game on Steam Greenlight.