Wireframe_-_Issue_23_2019

wfmag.cc \ 07

Interview

Attract Mode

satisfying nature of automation writ large,

and it’s utterly beguiling to boot.

Adorable? Check. Intelligent? Check.

Capable of stealthily teaching players the

basic tenets of coding? Check. Our three

checks checked, we spoke to creative

director (and former Zzap!64 editor) Gary

Penn, and technical director Aaron Puzey,

to find out more about Autonauts.

Where did the idea for Autonauts come

from? And just how good is Factorio?

Puzey: I worked on a friend’s farm for

a day and realised there are a lot of

interesting systems, some of which feed

back into each other. For instance, crop

waste is ploughed back into fields, sold

to other farmers, or incinerated to make

heat for growing berries in polytunnels.

I made obvious connections to Factorio

and immediately started on a prototype

the next day.

Penn: I think it was the day after that

Aaron brought in a Typically Aaron

Prototype: a sketch borne from a personal

game jam with enough functional charm to

win me over there and then. Factorio is ace

but too dry for my liking. The trailer video

they did was fantastic and made me feel

like an excited child desperate to play it;

the reality turned out to be too ‘grown-up’

for me.

It’s a small team with big plans – how

challenging has it been to get the project

up and running, and then to tweak it to

the point where it’s fit for release?

Penn: A lot of work – a lot of reworking,

actually. But we love working with each

other and love the concept, so it hasn’t

felt like work. Well, it has when it’s been

outside of our comfort zone, like when

we considered publishing it ourselves.

When there are only two of you, you

have so many different types of job to

“One of the hardest

things of all for us to

do has been to contain

its potential ”