If you love cute robots make sure you don’t miss The Colonists when it comes to PlayStation 4 on May 4. You’ll need to help the bots build their dream home by automating a whole city to meet their needs.
Think of city builders and you probably visualise gray tower blocks and industrial cranes. But The Colonists has a much friendlier face in the form of a grinning robot. The hard-working bots are the stars of the game so we hope you fall in love with them as much as we have.
Each bot is defined by the specific job they have to fulfil within their community. We want to introduce you to a few of them as by learning what each bot does you will understand the basics of how The Colonists works.
Carrybot
First up is Carrybot. This energetic bot’s job is to carry resources along roads to the various buildings. This means you’ll need to consider the layout of your roads and where you place buildings in relation to them in order to maximise this bot’s productivity.
That said, if Carrybots do run out of items to transport they’ll just start dancing on the spot. They clearly have a lot of energy and know how to use it to have a good time. You’ve got to admire that!
Farmbot
Where do Carrybots get all of that energy? You can thank Farmbot for that. These bots till the soil and grow crops in it that go towards feeding the entire city. If there are no Farmbots then there’s no energy to power your bots. It’s that simple.
You’ll notice that Farmbot is fit for its job by taking the shape of a plough. There’s no better design for cutting lines in the ground, tending the orchard to make apple juice, and growing wheat for baking bread. Farmbot always looks happy to be outside in the fields. It’s not a bad life.
Treebot and Lumberbot
At the start of the game you’ll be relying on wood to construct your basic buildings. That’s why you’ll need Lumberbot, who you send out into the woods to cut trees down and bring back logs for your supply. It’s easy work when you have a buzzsaw for a hand.
But you can’t keep chopping trees down and expect the wood to keep coming. You’ll need to plant more trees with Treebot so that you’ll have more wood later on in the game.Treebot can grow a variety of plants, including pine trees, palm trees, and even cacti! Look after nature and in return it will look after you.
Smithbot and Smeltbot
Later in the game you’ll be able to graduate beyond wood and start using stone and metal in your construction projects. Once you’ve mined ores you’ll be able to bring them to the first of these burly bots, Smeltbot, who will use a furnace to turn ore into metal.
It’s then the turn of Smithbot to take that metal and bash it into a shape that you can work with. Don’t they look great with their aprons on? You’ll be able to greatly expand your settlement with the refined metals you’ll get from this pair, acquiring new bots and accessing even better resources.
Captainbot
Ahoy! It’s Captainbot. This seafaring bot happily sets sail in its boat in search of new lands for you to harvest. This will become necessary as you progress and start needing rarer resources that can only be found overseas.
Not only will Captainbot discover new land, it will also bring back any materials found over there for you to use in your settlement. You can tell Captainbot loves its job by how much it’s committed to the look. Impressive hat!
These are just some of the bots you’ll meet in The Colonists. There are plenty more to discover, including those that go fishing, research new technology, and defend your base from attacking bots.
The Colonists is designed to be welcoming to newcomers to the genre with friendly tutorials and beginning stages that ease you in. But later on the complexity increases and fans of games like Factorio will find the familiar appeal of pursuing productivity zen.