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• gamedeal user

  Dec 11, 2021

  Edit 12/23/21: I just posted my guide to Automation Empire. It may further help you decide if it's a game worth your attention. Edit 12/28/21: As I develop the second planet I find I'm having even more fun. I'm just so impressed with the game's accessibility. Automation and logistics on a small, manageable scale. Starting a new playthrough of Foundry or Satisfactory require me to prepare for a long haul. With Automation Empire the arc from start to finish (Master Extractor's Medallion) never feels overwhelming, just enjoyable. A testament to that is I picked up Hardspace: Shipbreaker and JUNKPUNK recently and haven't played either one yet. Still time though. Review: Some perspective so you can decide if my opinion might be of value to you. Here are the automation games in my PC library (games with an * are marginally automation): Assembly Planter, Astroneer*, Automachef, Automation Empire, Autonauts, Big Pharma*, Dyson Sphere Program, Eco*, Evospace, Factorio, Factory Town, Final Upgrade, Foundry, Infinifactory, Little Big Workshop*, Mewnbase*, Production Line, Satisfactory, Shapez.io, Space Engineers, and Wasted World*. Then there's Builderment and ReFactory on my iPad. The point is I've played a few automation games over the years. First, ignore all negative reviews that complain that the game has been abandoned. Did Leo Tolstoy abandon "War and Peace"? No, he was finished writing it, got it published, and moved on with his life. Automation Empire did not release in early access. It was complete and fully playable at launch, hence not abandoned. The devs did make a few adjustments in response to player feedback and then added monorails to celebrate the game's one-year anniversary. While they might have done more with the game had it been more successful it's not a knock on them for facing reality and moving on with their lives. Second, ignore all negative reviews that say it was a cash grab by the devs. Spend an hour or more with this game and you will likely be more than satisfied with the quality of the artwork, the clever game mechanics, and the overall sense that this represents a true effort to produce a quality entrant into the automation game genre. Just because it didn't meet with market success doesn't mean the devs' weren't trying. I'm convinced they were. Who is this game for? The easy answer is, anyone who likes automation games. But what sets it apart from others in the genre and why should you give it a try? 1) Dyson Sphere Program, Factorio, and others can and do overwhelm some players. The truth is I've only once launched a rocket in Factorio, preferring the early stages of the game. I frequently start new playthroughs and then quit once I reach oil and trains. Things start to escalate exponentially and that just doesn't interest me. Dyson Sphere Program is even worse. Automation Empire keeps it simple and accessible. Small tech tree and limited recipes mean everything is attainable in a reasonable amount of time. You'll be launching your rockets and attaining the Master Extractor's Medallion in no time. 2) In many other games as the spaghetti grows you start running out of options to create new paths. In Automation Empire I've never found myself in a situation I couldn't resolve by running mine cart tracks or water pipes up and over with no or minimal adjustment to existing infrastructure. In other games I dread the moment I realize I can't do what I want to do because I've blocked myself. In this game I smile and set about figuring out a solution that's fun and rewarding. 3) Associated with the above point, laying tracks and pipes and getting things connected is just so darn flexible. There's that saying that "you can't get there from here". In Automation Empire you can always get there from here. 4) This is as much a logistic game as it is an automation game. Each scenario may have the same resources and you may know the optimum setup for processing the various products but you still need to get the cargo shipped out. With each map comes a unique challenge and this is where you appreciate the game's design of limiting where you can place truck and train entrances and rocket launchpads. If you could place these items anywhere then it would be too easy. 5) There are six graphics settings: Very Low, Low, Simple, Good, Beautiful, and Fantastic. I've tried them all and even on Very Low the game looks sweet. The graphical detail is excellent. When you zoom in, and you can get up close and personal, you can see the connections between transfer tubes and containers or water pipes and mining rigs. I had a situation where everything looked good from above but the factory wasn't getting air conditioned. When I zoomed in nice and tight I saw that the pipe had not connected with the corner of the building. No guess work, it was there for me to clearly see. I moved the pipe over one space and all was good. 6) Adhering to the principle of KISS, the developers did just that. The game is beautifully simple. If you've ever wondered if you'd enjoy an automation game but feared they're too complex and convoluted and would take hundreds of hours to become somewhat competent then consider Automation Empire. There are enough YouTube videos out there to compensate for a lack of an in-game tutorial. Or just relax, trust in yourself, and explore the game on your own. It's not too complex. 7) And lastly, though I'm leaving out a lot of the game's little charms, the game is complete. The devs aren't continuing to tweak the game so when you feel you've finally mastered it, whether that's in 5 hours or 50, you have. The goal posts won't keep moving. Don't get me wrong, it's great that the devs of Satisfactory and Factory Town keep adding new elements but I have to keep relearning things and sometimes I just want to play a familiar game. I've read some reviews that complain that once you know the optimum designs and priorities then it's just rinse and repeat. Name an automation game that you've replayed that works any differently. Heck, in Factorio you save blueprints to use in future playthroughs. What's more rinse and repeat than that? And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's the fun of it. The game is not fully optimized. When you load a save you've been playing for awhile it takes a minute or so for the moving assets to settle down. I don't see that as a big deal. Could it be better? Yes but it doesn't impact gameplay, at least not on my 2 1/2-year old computer. Despite my being greatly intrigued I waited over two years to purchase the game, on sale, because of the mixed reviews. I consider this one of the most underrated automation games available right now. Thirty hours in I honestly can't understand all the negative reviews. It's as if they played a totally different game, or just aren't big fans of automation and logistics. Having followed the game since before it launched I feel the biggest mistake was releasing the game with an SRP of $29.99 and a launch price of $26.99. That reinforced the opinion of many mainstream YouTubers who were comparing this to Factorio and Satisfactory. This game is neither but it's a solid game on its own. Had it released at $19.99 and a launch price of $14.99 or $15.99 I think sales would have been more robust and players more forgiving. We'll never know. I use the standard metric of one hour of play for every dollar spent so Automation Empire would have made value for me even if I had bought it at full price (I paid $19.79). I anticipate that I will revisit the game many times over the next few years. You can never get too much automation. If you've read this far I apologize but I also hope it's helped you decide if the game is or isn't for you. Peace!
• LordZaruflex

  Jan 15, 2023

  relaxing game which satisfies the need of optimizing efficiency :D
• El Rhino

  Feb 12, 2023

  As far as the first 25 minutes go, it's gets a big ZERO for in-game help. No idea what to do. I've built and deleted things that had no effect on the game. Can't even find an in-game tutorial.
• Sondre

  Feb 19, 2023

  There is always a risk in obtaining early access games, one which I have accepted due to the high amount of gems in all the dirt I have had the pleasure to find. This game however was not a gem by any stretch of the imagination. Abandoned by developers long ago. No updates in over two years. Current gameplay is extremely limited.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 19, 2023

  This game has a great start if you like this sort of game. However, a lot of bugs await you as you build and rebuild your empire. Among those, there are some particularly frustrating ones, like factories that will not allow you to rebuild their footprint because the game decides you can't reuse squares for no reason. Given that the game has not been supported by its developer since the monorails patch, and there is no community mod support due to no community engagement by the developer, I'm forced to give this game a "VERY NOT WORTH $30" rating. It's too bad - the premise is great and the early game is addictive, but it just wears on you after the novelty wears off. So close!
• TheLazyGrizzlyBear.ttv

  May 20, 2023

  Just another abandoned attempt at money grab.
• rwolf

  May 21, 2023

  It was disappointing that there was only one goal to achieve. It is an ok game overall however I would like to see many levels with different goals.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 22, 2019

  Lots of negative reviews with barely any time played, so let me say from a position of somebody who gave it a solid try before reviewing: I wish steam reviews had a possibility to give a mixed recommendation, but since it doesn't the review must fall on the negative side. I *hope* there is more content planned for this or some kind of dramatic rework, I'd love to change my review score sometime in the future. But for now after 13 hours I have already exhausted the content when I completed the tech tree on the first map. The reason why I say this is that, unlike Factorio, there's actually very little optimisation in this game. You figure out the ratios and then you get to a point where you have a "perfect" build, then you keep replicating it until you get to the tonnage required to win the mission. It seems like the game has a lot of resources for you to offer, but ultimately you will end up using the same build to process all of them because game mechanics are solved actually really quickly. Once you build your first two combiners between two large containers you realise that is the optimal design and there is nothing more to it. No resources ever need more than 2 ingredients anyway so it boils down to balancing ratios, but that too is solved easily. Technically your limiting factor should be money, but once I started exporting gold fuel on trains I was making cash hand over fist and didn't really care about income any more. When you nail down the most "correct" factory set up, you are done, the rest of the game is spent rebuilding the same build over and over again and running mine cart tracks across the whole map. Lack of easy design replication (like in Factorio with bots + blueprints) adds tediousness on top of the boredom. As you unlock the tech tree, you're given clearly superior "options" that you will want to upgrade to straight away: drones are completely pointless once you balance your production and unlock claw loaders for trucks for example, and the only reason to continue using trucks later on into the game is to avoid the strange restriction placed on truck/train entrances where they must be next to each other, otherwise trains are superior in literally every way as a way of exporting your goods. There are a lot of complaints about the lack of a tutorial, but I think the devs made a decision not to include one because the process of learning by trial and error makes the game seem like it offers more than it actually does. This game looks more like an early access proof of concept that will be fleshed out over a number of years, except... it's not early access as the devs keep insisting. The price in UK pounds is £21.41 (during the limited time post-release promotion, which is something that gets AAA studios named and shamed these days, just saying), way too much for the current amount of content that's available in the game. I'm not going to try to refund, but I'm not going to play this game either because there's nothing more to do in it after 13 hours. I guess I will go back to Factorio where it took me 60 hours to launch my first rocket, and then another 600 more playing both modded and unmodded, optimising builds by reducing the space that they take, carefully weighing benefits and drawbacks of all the design possibilities it offers, playing with circuits and digital automation... I could go on. Buy only if you trust the devs will expand this game.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 23, 2019

  [h1]Automation Empire - a very mixed experience...[/h1] This is a 'quite like' review, with a few buts.... What attracted me to this game (and what I DO like about it) is the quality of its graphics. After a pixelish Factorio, I was pretty excited to see another game but using 3D assets. The game looks great, and it IS fun. I just don't know whether it really has the longevity of similar games (Factorio, Factory Town etc). This game's main obstacle is the existence of Factorio, and I think the devs knew this because they DID emphasise quite openly that this game would not have the depth and scale of that game. With these nice graphics, I'm not sure it would even be possible. This game is more a Factorio-LITE. The tech tree is quite shallow and there are only 3-4 levels of equipment you can unlock, limiting the scope of the game considerably and it won't take you all that long to unlock everything there is. Chances of any further content have really slipped away because it appears the devs abandoned the title back in 2020. Camera movement badly needs a way to drag the screen around more quickly (waiting for slow edge-screen panning is frustrating). A map would solve it (clicking on a map to choose that position). Drones aren't coded well at all. Each truck can carry 6 crates. Now you could have 30 trucks waiting for crates, but all 100 of your drones queue for one crate and all try to take it to one truck (the drones should be coded so only 6 aim towards each truck). They could use some zoning control too. Adding drones to a busy delivery point is of no use if they all fly off to another part of your factory. The cost of power (as mentioned by many) becomes too steep too quickly, leading to your factory plummeting into the red without you being able to rescue it. The game does need a difficulty measure, but this power taxation is brutally high. Ideally, there should be a sandbox mode to let people create freely. In and out tunnels have to be built within the vicinity of each other, into a cliff. This causes problems in trying to expand your delivery zones to elsewhere on the map. This seems to be a needlessly frustrating limitation and the in-and-out tunnels would have been better like the surface to below surface tunnels in Surviving Mars. Lastly, there is NO tutorial. This would be okay if there was a little more logic and consistency applied about how things work together. Transfer pipes cannot connect to each other, conveyor belts can't be built through an open door, and moving goods raw or in crates causes logistical headaches. Factorio left most of the game to the player to figure out too, but everything was much more logical in that game. It has taken me the best part of a day to figure out a small part of the game. Now that I have, I'm beginning to enjoy it for what it is. [h1]Summary[/h1] This is no Factorio and it is important to play this game for what it offers rather than how it compares to other games, otherwise you will likely be hitting the refund button very quickly! There are frustrations aplenty and the game could definitely use more content, but what is there offers a lot of promise and I'm enjoying it as a casual game more than anything, hence the tentative recommend. [b]EDIT:[/b] since I first wrote this review, much better contenders have surpassed this game including the exceptional Dyson Sphere Program. If this ever appears on discount and you're a bit of a factory-game addict like me, then still worth it for a bit of factory-lite gameplay, but otherwise, it looks like it's pretty much become abandonware. A missed opportunity sadly.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 23, 2019

  Read the forums before buying this game. Once I realized that all the gameplay shortcomings were intentional, I requested a refund (which is *really* out of character for me); HOWEVER, the UI seems to be cynically designed to make it take more than 2 hours to learn how bad the game is so I don't know if the refund will be processed. Beneath the polished graphics is a crummy idle puzzle game falsely advertised as a factory building and automation game.