Pax Autocratica is a totalitarian colony management simulator and roguelike hybrid, tasking players with creating their own empire to take over the fractured Tyris system after the state’s previous expedition leader was assassinated.
The game was initially envisioned as “Earth From Another Sun,” an MMO blockchain title, which has thankfully been course-corrected into a single-player experience with no Web 3.0 elements. As someone who has genuinely no patience when it comes to play-to-earn and other similar business models, I am glad to see that it could still be salvaged, and what has come out in the form of Pax Autocratica is surprisingly creative and engaging, stripping away a lot of the caution that I first had when approaching the game.
Idle Hands Betray the State
Despite being similar in premise to games like Satisfactory or Valheim, Pax Autocratica doesn’t have an early resource-gathering stage, instead jumping straight into automation in the form of soldiers; after all, a leader does not concern himself with menial tasks. Your job as the leader is to manage the base’s upgrades and workers, as well as taking on the game’s combat encounters, whipping the system back into shape one dead rebel at a time.
Pax Autocratica places a heavy emphasis on fear, control, and loyalty, stats that can be directly tracked down to each soldier, influenced by the amount of propaganda you place around your base and how well you take care of your troops. There’s a surprising amount of micromanagement present in the game, as you have the ability to control your soldiers’ pay, work hours, and even how long they’ll live for. Pax’s themes of totalitarianism come out in full force once you start capturing and converting enemy soldiers to your cause, either putting them to work or turning them into biological material to enhance your better soldiers if they aren’t particularly talented.
The main way to acquire resources is to set out into the regions surrounding the Tyris system, starting with Elysya, where you’ll fight against various rebel factions before tackling a decisive battle to see who gets to keep control of that sector. Pax Autocratica’s first-person shooter encounters start off pretty tame, featuring small waves of enemies in semi-open spaces, but the game truly starts to shine once you get to the more open maps, where vehicular combat and multiple objectives start being introduced. The game’s movement and gunplay are very reminiscent of the early Halo games, feeling satisfying but not exactly too over-the-top like what you’d see in most modern movement shooters.
Establishing the Regime
Rather than setting you loose on a big open world, Pax Autocratica follows a roguelike mission structure, treating every expedition to the Tyris system as its own run. Space exploration is done in a turn-based manner, where every move makes the enemy stronger, forcing you to decide between quick progress or higher rewards. A big part of this exploration section is getting to craft different ships to make up your fleet, which carry soldiers that get deployed into battle with you.
Unfortunately, this is where the game’s scope gets a little out of hand, as the allied soldiers leave much to be desired, usually hanging out at the spawn point of the level struggling to kill a handful of enemies, while you have to dash through entire armies by yourself to take down the elite targets. It’s quite clear that the game is designed around having these AI companions by your side, since the enemy amounts get overwhelming very fast, but they are painfully weak, which makes progression quite difficult.
Thankfully, the game’s roguelike mechanics do provide some variety between runs, especially as you start to unlock new weapon types through crafting blueprints, as well as new core fragments that enhance your character’s abilities. Certain weapons, like the SMG, usually have the upper hand when it comes to activating core effects more often, but there are also weapon-specific cores that give massive boosts to different weapon types, rewarding experimentation while also increasing the amount of viable loadouts.
Final Verdict
Pax Autocratica is impressive for a game of this scope, providing players with absurd micromanagement options, as well as a very fun core gameplay loop. This is a game that constantly expands with new systems as you make progress, meaning there’s always something cool to unlock by the time you finish a run and get back to your base.
Its balancing and AI definitely could use some work, especially pertaining to the soldiers who accompany you during missions, but those are minor tweaks on an otherwise very competent game, especially one this ambitious. Despite my initial reservations with the game’s blockchain past, I now consider myself a proud member of the state, genuinely looking forward to seeing what else comes out of Pax Autocratica.
