Automata Empire

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The game is vaguely reminiscent of old rts titles from the nineties.

Cute little monsters. Takes awhile to learn how they work but there's an autoplay mode where you can watch the game play itself and learn from the AI.

Yet another should-be-neutral review.
Automata Empire is a nice cellular automata-inspired RTS. Unfortunately, it is plagued by the usual hallmarks of indie development: unintuitive ruleset (I get where the overcrowding rules come from, but it doesn't make board evaluation any easier), incomplete tutorial and unwieldy controls. Still playable and mostly enjoyable (for several hours), if you value conceptual novelty above polish, but could be so much better.

No singlerplayer campaign. Only skirmish. Only text tutorials, and are somewhat overwhelming. Hard to catch on.

Fun little strategy game inspired by conways game of life.

I dont think the principle is "shallow" because it has a lot of ways to experiment with very simple rules..kind of like chess...if your into that you will like it.

Also the Dev seems really active fixing bugs and listening to suggestions...something that is rare and deserves support.

Rather bland and boring; bit slow placed. Maybe more variety in game types which actually include differant mechanics and features would help; or some way to speed up and slow down the game.

An interesting and unique RTS game which is somewhat hard to grasp. You have an army of creatures which move around and multiply in a way somewhat resembling the rules of Conway's "Life" game. You build roads, walls, taverns and other buildings, but all this only controls the army indirectly and in non-obvious ways.

The good:
- intersting basic idea to use game-of-life like principle, I've never seen this anywhere else

The so-so:
- I found the graphics cute and appropriate for the setting, but I can imagine that many players will find them too simplistic.
- sounds are functional but not much more
- the map is really big. Completing a single battle takes ages because the enemies spawn new and new taverns and you need to cover the whole map with your soldiers until you finally win. Or at least that's my impression so far.

The bad:
- the music gets pretty annoying after a while because it's too repetitive. Also, the plain piano track feels very low-budget. I understand it's there to fit the "automata" setting but still I could imagine a much better soundtrack
- everything in the game takes too long. In fact, you could let the game simpy run, go grab a coffee and come a couple minutes later just to see that not much has changed. The basic feel that "you give an order and something happens" is missing here totally. At the same time, a lot of things are happening in the game, all at once, at such fast pace that you'd never be able to fully predict what will happen. This may sound like a contradiction but it's not: you have zillions of small objects moving around but since they can't respond to any commands it all feels like an uncontrollable mechanism which runs mostly on its own according to its arcane rules. You don't have the feeling that you are in control.
- there is no tutorial. Instead, there are several lengthy pages with text and illustrations. The only real advice the game gives you before starting is that you need to build "feedback loops" but how exactly that could work isn't really clear. Even 1 example with 1 picture and an explanation why that works as a feedback loop would be enough, but there is nothing like that. I tried building just a lot of taverns but it's not clear how exactly the microbes move around them. Sometimes I saw microbes strangely disappear even though they weren't too big.

My overall feel of the game is mostly confusion. I wouldn't expect a player of an average intellience to be able to fully understand what's going on here, even if he's patient enough to read thru the instructions. What this game mostly misses is a proper tutorial and maybe a few very small introductory missions which would show how all this exactly works. Despite its interesting core idea, this game seriously lacks accessibility. This is the obvious reason why its multiplayer servers are empty and why it didn't get many reviews (or sales, i guess).

[table][tr][th]I'm a Steam curator, you can follow me[/th][/tr][/table]

I really like this game. I was on the steam store and just happened to buy it the day (or maybe day after) it released and I was extremely pleased. The cellular automata idea is really a cool one.

That said, there are a couple things that need mentioning if you're thinking about buying it.
1. Knowledge of Conway's Game of Life would benefit you greatly. I've noticed a couple people saying they're confused by the mechanics, but it's just a modified version of Conway's Game of Life, turned into an actual game.
2. There are ways to annihilate the computer player easily. If you destroy all your buildings, your cells will propogate into the world quite well. That said, I don't think that's a problem. The idea of the game is to use strategy to defeat the opponent, and that's really fun to do. Letting the game play itself doesn't even benefit you. The value of a victory in this game is that you were able to outplay the opponent, so if you didn't play at all, you gain nothing from a win.

Neither of those are bad things, Just maybe something to keep in mind if you're thinking about buying it.

Overall I like the game, personally I think it's fine as it is, but I'm excited to see where it goes.

Extremely basic game. I started a game on highest difficulty without going through the tutorial and was able to beat the game simply be eliminating all my own buildings. Any game that can be beaten without interaction from the player isn't worth any money or time.

This game has a slight learning curve but once you get used to it, it becomes friggin addictive. Highly reccomend this game for rts and board game fans.

I'll lay my cards on the table now- I LOVE the game!

BUT

The game is broken.

EDIT: The developer just got back to me regarding the review, and they've told me that AI changes are in the works, so I will change my recommendation to a tentative "Yea" considering the level of dev involvement and the fact that the AI will be changing in the future! I'm sure with the inclusion of multiplayer, the game will soon grow into it's own!

- - -

Bear with me, you'll enjoy learning about the system behind the game:

I'm very familiar with cellular automata, and there are tons of different formulas in which the "Game of Life" can be played. Some are made for creating interesting patterns, others can run for hours on end and then fizzle out suddenly, but designing a formula requires balance.

Too many ways to reproduce? The entire screen will be choked out by rabidly deviding cells. Too few and the system will fizzle out with nary an interesting pattern.

This game's problem is with the former. I can literally put one road out of my tavern and overtake 3 AI's on the hardest difficulty, simply because the AI thinks about how to position it's forces, when all I do is let them breed and overtake the enemy with massive numbers.

It's a great game, it's unique, and clever, and frankly I'm impressed with how natural it is in almost a "factory designer" sort of way as you build roads to transport your troops, arm them, and then send them off to the enemy, but like I said, no one is going to need to do that.

How do we fix this? Well we need to take a look at the formula, and I'm sure in time the developers will change it, but as it stands, the game is broken.

For example:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667120850

if you take a look at my other screenshots you'll see what I mean.

Great idea though guys, keep it up!

Really great game inspired by The Game of Life; highly reccomended.

I bought it after looking at the screenshots and knowing it was an RTS, I wasn't really expecting too much from it, but so far I've been plesantly suprised.

The game revolves around building feedback loops (combinations of taverns, roads and walls designed to replicate monsters) and destroying / disrupting enemy feedback loops. The mechanic allows for REALLY interesting designs, and I look forward to seeing what people do when multiplayer is added.

Ease of play: 7/10

Potential for competitive play: 9/10

Graphics: 8/10

Sound design: 7/10

Price: $9.99 CAD

Overall: 8.5

This game...hmm how do I say this it is simple and in its simplicity it focuses on the fundamentals of programming and even is reflective of the global economy. To summarize it is brilliant in its simplicity. Please get multiplayer soon...this game is on the level of Chess and Go.

Addicting as hell, if your into RTS games I highly recommend this game. Surpising amount of planing for such a small game. If your looking to get all the Achievements and master every game type I could see it taking a while. I look forward to wrecking everyone of you Multiplayer once it is ready.

Overall I would give this game a solid 8/10 (will update when Multiplayer comes avaliable, which is the main reason for losing the 2 points)

My video when I look at some of the things about Automata Empire in game:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyFJ3SDYNxo&feature=youtu.be

Cellular Automata is a fun strategy game about, well, automatons which you will attempt (and miserably fail at first) to control.

Unlike in other strategy games you cannot directly control your units, instead you can influence them through buildings such as roads or catapults, meaning winning is as much about "engineering" as about fighting. The ressource system in this game is that each building costs units, killing said units if they are nearby or otherwise failing to be built which adds more difficulties to building a massive wall for instance.
You can (and will) indeed kill yourself without all the help from anyone.

The principle of the game makes for really fun and interesting gameplay which is quite unique.

There are 5 game modes, war (annihilate the enemy), capture the flag, king of the hill, fort (defend a fort and protect it from enemies) and my personal favourite migration (you have a huge horde comming at you from the bottom and all players have to scramble to flee them while killing each other)

At the moment it does just have singleplayer which despite various gamemodes may for certain people not be worth it.
However if you are a strategy fan you should at the very least follow this game and wait for the multiplayer, which should be great fun.

very fun game, although takes a while to fully understand the whole feedback loop process thats needed to multiply rabidly and win games. Overall would definitely recommend to anyone that enjoys strategy games and having to think a bit, although there are a few of things that would make the game even better:

1.
training mode: So that new players can quickly grasp the main concept of the game alot better (abusing feedback loops/disrupting enemy feedback loops effectively)
2.
map editer type thing: would absolutely love creating unique maps with quircky game play from map design. Such as there being death pits everywhere, or lots of mountain ridges and setting up interesting zombie maps. With maybe the option to set preditermined spawn points + more AI players on these maps
3.
in game time controls: personally I think the the current speed of the game is fine and all, however having the option to slow down to 1/2 the speed or even pause at times to plan out your next moves would greatly be appreciated, as well having the option to go to 2x when you own 60% of the map and youre pretty much guaranteed to win.

What a novel take on the RTS genre. Nothing really like it out there, looking forward to the MP portion. It feels great to build up a swarm and take down a pile of enemies, a satisfying game with a wonderful aesthetic.

This is excellent! I got to try a demo of it at PAX South a month ago, and I thought it was a cool concept, but I wasn't sure how well it would actually work as a strategy game. I can now confirm that it works rather well indeed!

It's very different from any RTS I've played before. Instead of issuing orders to individual units, you're trying to shape an every-shifting pattern into something resembling an army. And, seemingly inevitably, the whole thing grows out of your control: you can't be everywhere at once, and if you spend a minute focussing on one side of the map you're likely to find that your monsters on the other side have mindlessly spread out and populated whole areas.

The standard "WAR!" deathmatch mode is pretty easy once you've learned some basic tactics: just flood the map with your units and you'll probably win. The other modes introduce some interesting twists; I've tried Capture the Flag a few times now, and every time I think I've got it figured out the AI does something unexpected and ruins me. The AI seems quite clever; it's pulled a few sneaky manoeuvres on me.

I can't wait for multiplayer! Will this be the first RTS I'm actually good at? (Probably not.)

Games mechanics are quite interesting. Takes a bit of time to get the hang of it, definitely one of those 'easy to learn, hard to master' experiences. Main gripe is the music track, there is only one, repeating track which while quite nice, will destroy your soul after half an hour.

Game modes, difficulty settings, customisable number of AI per match, even an autoplay mode where you 'do not' play, but watch AI duke it out. Needs multiplayer, but apparently it is coming.

Game seems to be worth the price all in all. Defininitely recommend assuming you like the genre.