Learn the fundamentals of programming and colonise worlds in Denki’s charming management game
Funded company Denki, based in Dundee, recently announced that Autonauts (a project supported in Round 4 of the UK Games Fund) will launch on PC on 17th October. The studio is working in partnership with fast-growing UK publisher Curve Digital.
Autonauts challenges players to colonise fertile alien worlds for the benefit of humanity with an array of robot helpers at their disposal. Utilising a visual programming language inspired by Scratch, players can playfully program their helpers to perform basic tasks like chopping down trees to more complicated duties like baking pies, fishing, marshalling other robots and more!
Autonauts comes from the minds of former DMA Design creative director Gary Penn and technical director Aaron Puzey and has been downloaded over 330,000 times since the game’s pre-pre-pre-alpha debuted on Itch.io back in 2017.
Autonauts has officially become Curve Digital’s most wish-listed game pre-launch in the publisher’s history, proving that gamers worldwide are looking for this kind of colourful, creative and intellectually stimulating experience.
Paul Durrant, CEO at UK Games Fund said,
“Gary and Aaron have demonstrated great resilience and commitment to the Autonauts IP. Their hard work and creativity is evidenced by the amazing community they’ve created pre-launch. It’s always rewarding for our team to see a UK Games Fund supported project launch get published. It’s all the better to have a company with the pedigree of Denki secure such a well-suited publisher partnership and make their mark once again on the indie games scene.”
Gary Penn, Creative Director at Denki, said:
“Autonauts has been a labour of love from Aaron and me from the very beginning,”
“The UK Games Fund gave us the confidence and the security to follow our dream of making something so different in the UK games industry. Autonauts is a refreshingly violence-free playground designed from the ground up to be accessible and enjoyable for all those who like to tinker, optimise and express themselves creatively. We can’t wait to see what the world at large thinks of Autonauts!”
Autonauts’ launch on steam marks the game’s evolution into a full 1.0 release and features a fully fledged campaign mode with a complete audiovisual makeover, massively expanded research possibilities utilising the love economy, built-in Autonautopedia wiki, achievements and lots more to play with including transportation, animal husbandry, mix ‘n’ match multipart bots and more!
To learn more about Autonauts and to stay up-to-date with games’ updates post-launch, please visit the official Steam product page.