Automon
Automon is a new game that blends perfectly the genres of Roguelike, Monster-Catcher and Autobattler. Its demo was recently featured in Steam's Next Fest in February 2022 (where I can across its demo), and has been released on 4th March on Steam.
Capturing a Clamity in a Garbage Bag
The game is surrounded by dark humour, where you catch Automons in a garbage bag (yes it's a bit darker than Tem Cards or Poke Balls) and then fight your way through wild areas, gym leaders and the Champion. In this post, I will go into more depth about the elements of this game and dish out my final thoughts.
P.s. It's completely worth buying!
Roguelike Runs
In roguelike games, you get a procedurally generated path in which to play, and loss is almost guaranteed for a good number of your runs. Each run is independent, so if you get unlucky, you can always start over with no punishment.
The Four Automon Starters
You start out by choosing one of the 4 starters, Weedge (Grass), Fironek (Fire), Clamity (Water), or Ramblast (Electric). After choosing your first starter, you can choose one of three areas to battle in, with an indication of what automons and types you might face. After defeating a wild battle, you can choose one of the automons to join your team.
A Choice Path, hovering over the Lake of Calmness to see what Automon to expect
At every 5 areas, you fight a gym leader, who generally has 4 automons of the same typing. After all 6 leaders are beat, you get to pave your way through the Winning Way, defeat 4 bosses and then face the Champion. If you win against the Champion, you may also decide to continue an endless run.
Combat
The combat is pretty straightforward - it's an autobattler! Before you start combat, you can choose your party and re-order your Automon around. Once the battle starts, the Automons will just hit each other until one faints. If one of your Automon faints, the next party member is thrown out automatically. Since it is an autobattler, you can speed up the fighting to up to x8 from the bottom right of the screen.
Stats and Abilities
There are three stats that Automons can have: Attack, Defence and Speed. In particular, Speed affects how many times they will attack per second. Stats can be buffed by Type Effects or Automon Abilities.
Clamity's Stats at Level 5 and Ability, Bulky
Upgrades
In autobattling games, a common feature is that you can collect multiples of the same character to upgrade them. In Automon, this is no other. Combining 3 of the same Automon will upgrade them into an Automon with 10% bonus stats. The interesting thing is that, there is no limit to how many upgrades you can do! For instance, in the below screenshot, you can see a 3-star Jazzap with +30% stats at level 21.
A 3-star Jazzap with +30% stats
Type Effectiveness
Similar to other monster-battler games, each Automon can have one or two types, e.g. Floatox is Water and Poison. Each type takes 0.66x damage from the type they resist and 1.5x damage from the type they are weak to.
Automon Type Effectiveness Chart
Moreover, when an Automon has two types, their attack type seem to be randomised per attack. So, in the above example, Floatox may attack with Water, then Water, then Poison, etc.
Type Bonuses
If you have two or more Automon of the same type, your team gets a bonus. For instance, if you have two Grass type, all your Automon will gain 2HP Regen per second. This scales to 4HP when you have three grass types, and 6HP when you have four grass types. In the below screenshot, we can see I have a 3-Grass type effect (do note that Florey's ability is that it counts as two grass types).
3-Grass Type Bonus, with Florey counting as 2 Grass Types from its Ability
The gym leaders will also have benefits from their party type. Because on the top of the game you will see what type your next leader will have, you can plan ahead to ensure you have a decent counter.
Experience and Healing
You have 10 spaces for Automons: 4 in your party, and 6 in the bench. When killing an Automon, all Automons gain experience, although those not in your party gain 20% less. Moreover, after each battle, the monsters in your party will regain 25% HP, whereas those in the bench will instead heal up to 50%.
After winning a wild battle, instead of choosing to catch one of the Automon, you can decide to Rest and heal all your Automon for 35% of their Max HP.
You can also Release an Automon by dragging it to the garbage can that is aptly named "released". By doing so, all your other Automon heal for 25% of their HP. This may be necessary to heal up a pivotal Automon right before a boss or champion fight!
Combat Strategy
Since you only control the order of the party of the battle and nothing else, there are a few strategic decisions you can consider before entering combat:
- Hover over your Automons to get an indication of which enemy Automon they will be strong against
- Switch out lower HP Automons so they can heal between fights
- Read through the enemies abilities. E.g. If the first enemy is Blamtern, it has the ability Exposed which will lower both your Automon and Blamtern's defence by 50%. In that case, don't put your best automon in front if you can't afford it's defence to get debuffed significantly.
- Combine multiple of the same types in your party to get type bonuses
- If necessary, before a Champion or Boss fight, release an Automon to heal up your Automon
Autodox and Achievements
The game comes with its Autodox and Steam Achievements. For each Automon in the dox, they can be classified as one of four states:
- Seen
- Caught
- Upgraded
- Won
Jazzap's Autodox Entry.. yes I had a 3-star and still did not win
This provides completionists an opportunity to try and upgrade and win with all the 46 Automon available. It will be a challenge, but I look to do my best to complete as much of this as possible. Apart from that, there are also Steam Achievements that provide an additional layer of challenges.
Difficulty Settings
Once you complete a run, you unlock a higher difficulty. At this point, I have no idea how many difficulties there are, since I have only won once. I will be looking forward to completing this game numerous times, aiming to win on all difficulties and obtain all the achievements.
2nd Difficulty Setting
Gameplay Videos
I have uploaded my first two runs on youtube, so if you are interested in getting a visual idea of how the game plays out, check them out:
Learning the Basics in our First Run
Reaching the Winning Way (In our Second Run)
Final Thoughts
Automon is an extremely fun and addicting game. Despite not excelling in its pixelated graphics and designs, this game proves that high-quality art is not essential to being a fun game. Its simple yet strategic autobattling combined with the roguelike nature makes the game enjoyable and replayable. At its price point (of €6.59 in Malta), I find this game extremely worth, and I will do my best to complete as many achievements as I can before moving on to my next Roguelite game.
Links
- Steam: Automon
- Twitch: PinkGeeRough
- Youtube: PinkGeeRough
- Twitter: @PinkGeeRough