Info about AutoForge: Official game description: Roadmap ======= About the Game ============== A 2D automation sandbox adventure. Build an automated factory with Mana-powered machines and farming, progress through an expansive tech tree, uncover a vast world filled with wonder and danger, upgrade yourself with ancient technologies, and defend it all from enemy invasions. You are Otto, a magical golem who awakens to find himself abandoned and alone. Seek out your ancient masters and learn what happened to them and the world – but first, you must build… Automate -------- Crafting takes time. Instead, build a automated factory composed of Mana-powered machines, farming and monster husbandry. Design sprawling production lines connecting vital resource outposts to the heart of your factory. Reshape the world to fit your needs. Explore ------- Forge your own path through dangerous lands. Find new ore deposits to expand your factory, uncover valuable treasures, and interact with the denizens of the world. Each new region is a unique blend of procedural generation and hand-crafted points of interest. Expand ------ Otto is forever tethered to the powerful Apotheos; however, with the right materials these bounds can be expanded. Unlock a sprawling sandbox world region by region. Progress -------- Delve into a massive technology tree, discovering new structures and materials as your factory’s power expands. Use ancient technology scattered throughout the world to upgrade Otto’s mainframe. Defend ------ A mysterious auto-defense system has awakened to protect the world’s resources – from you! Defeat the drones with a sword, blaster, and an auto-defense system of your own. Release date: 27 Mar, 2024 Categories: Automation Game, Factory Building, Base Building, Open-World Exploration, Resource Management, Character Progression, Tower Defense, Real-time Combat - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Terraria/Factorio blend works well (weight 0.75): The game blends elements from Terraria and Factorio, creating a unique and enjoyable factory-building experience in a 2D side-scrolling environment. Players can expect a mix of exploration, crafting, automation, and combat, with a focus on resource management and base building. - Satisfying, chill gameplay with content (weight 0.73): Despite being in early access, the game offers a substantial amount of content and a satisfying gameplay loop that keeps players hooked for hours. The game is considered fun, chill, and relaxing, with a well-organized structure and a promising tech tree progression. - Engaging factory automation mechanics (weight 0.73): The game features engaging factory automation mechanics, including material acquisition, processing, and assembly line placement. Players enjoy optimizing base efficiency and setting up complex builds, finding the automation process mentally stimulating and fun. - Appealing and well-crafted pixel art (weight 0.25): The game features a well-crafted pixel art style with cohesive animations and attention to detail, creating a visually appealing aesthetic. The visuals contribute to a chilled vibe and enhance the overall gaming experience. - Responsive and active developers (weight 0.17): The developers are active on Discord, responsive to feedback, and provide steady updates and improvements, indicating ongoing support. They quickly address bug reports and engage with the community, showing care and passion for the game. - Interesting enemies and good combat (weight 0.08): The game features interesting enemies and good combat, with enemy variety adding to the challenge. The enemies serve a purpose and act as a necessity, enhancing the overall gameplay experience. - Pleasant music and sound effects (weight 0.06): The game includes pleasant music and sound effects that enhance the overall gaming experience. The music is well-composed, doesn't loop too quickly, and remains discreet at reasonable volume levels. - Unique and quirky ideas (weight 0.06): The game has funny and quirky ideas, such as the initial manual crank for power generation, adding a unique touch. The reviewer loves the crank-power aspect, finding it to be a positive addition to the gameplay. Common complaints: - Slow pace and excessive grind (weight 0.88): Many reviewers feel the game's pacing is slow and grindy, with tedious early-game actions and limited options for increasing movement speed. This is exacerbated by high resource requirements and a lack of compelling content, leading to frustration and a feeling of artificial lengthening. - Significant bugs and performance issues (weight 0.81): The game suffers from various technical issues, including bugs, crashes, performance slowdowns as the factory scales, and save corruption after updates. Some reviewers experienced game-breaking bugs that forced them to restart, leading to lost progress and frustration. - Uninspired, unpolished, and repetitive gameplay (weight 0.69): The game feels uninspired, borrowing mechanics from other games like Terraria, Factorio, and Oxygen Not Included, but failing to execute them well. Reviewers note a lack of polish, clunky controls, missing quality-of-life features present in similar titles, and a general sense of repetitiveness that makes the game feel like a chore. - World feels empty and unrewarding (weight 0.21): The game world feels generic and empty, lacking interesting exploration content, rewarding digging mechanics, and boss fights. The core gameplay loop is repetitive and unsatisfying. - Raids are disruptive and unsatisfying (weight 0.17): Enemy raids are frequent, disruptive, and offer little benefit, often leading to terrain destruction and halting production. Preparing defenses is difficult due to cost issues, making raids feel more like a nuisance than a meaningful challenge. - Poor tutorial and lack of guidance (weight 0.17): The tutorial and in-game guidance are inadequate, failing to clearly explain mechanics and controls. This makes it difficult for new players to learn the game and progress. - Combat is underdeveloped and simplistic (weight 0.11): The combat system feels underdeveloped and simplistic, with limited enemy variety and uninspired AI. It feels like an afterthought to the factory building aspect of the game. - Building is frustrating in 2D (weight 0.09): The side-view perspective and 2D character movement make building frustrating and tedious. Rebuilding the base after attacks is especially cumbersome. - Progression feels unoriginal (weight 0.08): Progression feels unoriginal and unenticing, relying on familiar material requirements. The game lacks a compelling drive to continue playing beyond numerical progression. - Resource depletion is too rapid (weight 0.07): Resource nodes deplete too quickly, requiring players to constantly relocate and connect to new deposits. This becomes annoying and disrupts the flow of gameplay. - Inventory management is tedious (weight 0.06): Limited inventory space becomes problematic when expanding, exploring, and building simultaneously. Managing inventory with small chests spread far apart is tedious. - Automation logic is lacking (weight 0.06): The game lacks automation logic, making automation tedious to build and slow, hindering progress. The cost of resources like fuel is hard to find, further complicating the process. - Enemy attacks are hard to locate (weight 0.06): It's difficult to locate attacking enemies, leading to confusion and base damage. Enemy AI needs improvement in pathfinding and aggressiveness. - Lacking quality of life features (weight 0.06): The game's convenience is lacking compared to older titles in the genre, such as Satisfactory. Some quality of life features from games like Satisfactory/Factorio are missing. - Inconsistent enemy difficulty (weight 0.06): Enemy difficulty is inconsistent, with some enemies being too easy and others becoming impossible to defeat, halting progress. This creates an unbalanced and frustrating experience. - Lacking or annoying audio (weight 0.06): The game's audio is lacking, with annoying music or a complete absence of music and sound effects. This detracts from the overall player experience. - Game is in early access (weight 0.05): The game is in early access, so there are incomplete parts and bugs. This is a general statement and doesn't provide specific feedback. Gameplay feedback: - Combines automation, exploration, and base-building (weight 0.48): The core gameplay loop blends elements from factory automation games like Factorio with exploration and base-building mechanics found in games like Terraria. Players focus on building automated production lines for resource extraction, transportation, and processing, often in underground environments. The game differentiates itself by incorporating magic and a storyline. - Automated base defense is present (weight 0.09): The game incorporates automated defense mechanics, such as turrets, to protect against enemies. Enemy strength varies, requiring players to balance automation with combat and defensive setups. - Map areas unlock through progression (weight 0.08): New areas and biomes are unlocked through progression, often involving delivery tasks or tech tree unlocks. Players may need to relocate their spawn points as they unlock new regions of the map. - Simplified resource management systems (weight 0.06): The game features simplified systems for resource management, including automated delivery and cultivation/animal husbandry. These systems allow players to transform resources and obtain rare materials, potentially making limited resources infinite. - Extensive, confusing tech tree (weight 0.05): Research unlocks new buildings and materials, enabling more complex factory designs. However, the tech tree is extensive and can be confusing. - Enemies provide essential resources (weight 0.05): Enemies serve a purpose by providing specific resources needed for crafting, such as fuel or torch materials. However, mob drops may be limited to these essential items. - Large map, sparse resources (weight 0.04): The game features a large map, but some reviewers feel it is sparsely populated with resource nodes. Other reviewers appreciate the map size, as it allows for the construction of mega bases and complex piping layouts. - Upgrades enhance interaction speeds (weight 0.04): Upgrades primarily focus on increasing interaction speeds and character abilities. Some reviewers noted that the only available upgrades were damage-related perks. - Incomplete documentation for basic resources (weight 0.03): The game's wiki lacks basic information on essential resources, while more advanced topics are well-documented. This makes it difficult for new players to learn the game. - Tube merging is unintuitive (weight 0.03): Transport tube merging doesn't prioritize straight lines, instead alternates. This can make it difficult to design efficient transport systems. - Inserter unlocked late game (weight 0.03): The porter (inserter) for extracting items from chests is unlocked relatively late in the research tree. This limits automation options in the early game. - Digging lacks rewarding discoveries (weight 0.02): Digging is primarily used for expanding space and laying down logistics infrastructure. It lacks the discovery of hidden ore pockets or interesting structures. - Unintuitive default controller layout (weight 0.02): The default controller layout may be unintuitive, requiring players to switch to a different layout. Getting used to the alternative layout may take time. - Standard death penalty in place (weight 0.02): The death penalty involves dropping all items at the point of death, but key items are not dropped. This mitigates the severity of the penalty. - Housing feels underdeveloped (weight 0.02): Building a house feels underdeveloped and takes up time that could be used more effectively. This suggests that the housing aspect of the game is not fully realized. Performance notes: - Good stability and performance (weight 0.07): The game generally exhibits good stability and performance, with players reporting few bugs and no crashes. One user specifically noted seamless compatibility on Linux. - Ultrawide screen support (weight 0.03): The game offers support for ultrawide screens, enhancing the visual experience for players with compatible monitors. One user confirmed support at 3440x1440 resolution. - Limited zoom function (weight 0.03): The game's zoom function is limited, offering only two levels of magnification. This may restrict the player's ability to view details or manage the battlefield effectively. Recommendations: - Cautiously optimistic; wait for updates (weight 0.91): Many reviewers express cautious optimism, recommending the game with reservations due to its Early Access state. They see potential and enjoy aspects of it, but suggest waiting for updates or sales, or only recommending it to specific audiences. Some reviewers suggest buying it to support the developers. - Good for automation/factory fans (weight 0.41): Reviewers frequently compare the game to Factorio, Terraria, and other similar titles, recommending it to fans of automation and factory-building games. Some suggest that players who dislike these genres should avoid this game. Some reviewers suggest that it is a good entry point to the genre. - Unintuitive; watch guides, build defenses (weight 0.05): Some reviewers mention unintuitive mechanics and the need to watch guides before playing. Players should prioritize building defenses to avoid repeatedly rebuilding structures. - Substantial content; needs controller support (weight 0.05): The game offers a substantial amount of content, providing at least 30-40 hours of gameplay. One reviewer anticipates spending a lot of time in the game once controller support is implemented. - Overpriced for current state (weight 0.04): Some reviewers feel the game is overpriced for its current state. They suggest a lower price point is more appropriate. - Wholesome art style; add peaceful mode (weight 0.02): The art style is wholesome and cutesy. One reviewer suggests adding a peaceful mode. - Not recommended for Steam Deck (weight 0.02): The game is not recommended for Steam Deck users. - Progress to Plant Support early (weight 0.02): Players should progress to Plant Support to experience the core gameplay. Other player notes: - Active development, promising future (weight 0.27): The game is in Early Access, but the developers are very active, communicative, and dedicated to rapidly addressing bugs and adding content based on community feedback on Twitch and Discord. This suggests a promising future for the game. - Workshop support would be beneficial (weight 0.03): The game would benefit from Steam Workshop support. This would allow players to share and download mods, expanding the game's content and replayability. - Nicely done character models (weight 0.02): The game features well-designed character models, environments, and a cohesive color palette. This contributes positively to the game's overall aesthetic appeal. - Nostalgic pixel art style (weight 0.02): The game's pixel art style evokes nostalgia for some players. This can be a positive aspect for those who appreciate retro-style graphics. - Non-actionable review content (weight 0): These points are too specific to a single reviewer or express a lack of specific feedback. They do not provide actionable insights about the game itself. Emotions: No emotions}