GTA designer’s Autonauts will release on October 17

Curve Digital’s “playful programming and colonisation” sim Autonauts will release for PC via Steam on October 17 priced at £17.99 / $19.99 / €19.99, it’s announced.

In development at Dundee, Scotland-based Denki Studios, Autonauts is the latest title from Gary Penn, former creative director at Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings studio DMA Design.

The game sees players visit procedurally generated planets and harness their natural resources to build an army of programmable AI helpers to aid their colonisation efforts.

Players can teach their “workerbots” to perform a variety tasks including building, farming and cooking using a “powerful but easy to pick-up” visual programming language designed for users of all ages.

In development since 2017 and downloaded over 300,000 times during early alpha, the title won UK trade association TIGA’s Best Educational Game 2017 award and Best UK Game at Gamescom 2019.

According to Curve, Autonauts has the highest number of Steam wishlists of any game that the publisher has brought to market thus far.

In VGC’s recent Autonauts preview, we wrote: “The colourful colonisation sim feels like it has it all; it’s cute, educational, its mechanics are surprisingly deep and unlike the majority of games on the shelves today, it features no violence whatsoever.”