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Action & Automation

Fight directly as a Commander while your automated base keeps working. Gather physical Nuts, build modules and logistics routes, and master three asymmetric machine species in a 2D action-strategy battlefield.

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About the Game

Fight Directly. Build Systems That Keep Working.

Action & Automation is a 2D side-scrolling action-strategy game where you control a Commander on the battlefield while an automated base keeps producing, routing resources, and pressuring the enemy. Fight up front, build from the Core, and move between personal action and system design as the match changes.

Every battle runs on the tension between action and automation. Lead with your Commander, then rely on drones, belts, modules, factories, and AI units to hold ground, move resources, and attack across multi-height maps with elevators and platforms.

Physical Resources, Real Routes

There is one resource type: Nuts. Nuts fall from trees and defeated enemies. They are physical pickups on the map, not numbers that teleport into a bank.

Invest Nuts into your Commander, expand what your base can automate, or fuel species-specific tactics. Flux sends Logistics Drones to deliver Nuts. Forge moves resources through conveyor belts. Shade personally picks up Nuts and spends them through combat and meditation.

The pressure comes from positioning, collection routes, build timing, and deciding whether the next Nut should strengthen the Commander on the front line or grow the war machine behind you.

Three Machine Species

Flux - Modules, fusion, and automated armies. A balanced plasma-rifle Commander with shields, aim upgrades, jetpack mobility, grid modules, fusion, power routing, and drone logistics. Flux is the clearest expression of the action-and-automation loop.

Forge - Automate heavy industry. A heavy industrial foreman with treads, flamethrower pressure, wrench construction, conveyor belts, worker modules, and toy production. Feed the factory, grow a workforce, and give broad orders when it is time to work or attack.

Shade - Fast, precise, and stealthy. A commander-skill species built around direct pickup, close combat, social-engineering pressure, misdirection, and control. Shade slips inside enemy systems and turns their investment against them without playing like a standard base builder.

Each species changes how you move, collect, build, upgrade, attack, and lose. They are not cosmetic reskins.

Campaigns And Ways To Play

The story takes place inside Project Babel, a machine-world where humanity has gone silent, commanders improvise meaning from partial orders, and each species believes it has found the right way to survive.

Play three species campaigns across Flux, Forge, and Shade. Each campaign changes how you fight, build, upgrade, and survive.

  • Campaign: follow three machine species as each one reads the same broken world in a different way.

  • Skirmish: fight AI commanders on generated or hand-built maps.

  • Custom Maps: use text-friendly map files to build your own stages quickly.

  • Multiplayer: casual Steam P2P and LAN support is a launch target for private lobbies and co-op vs AI.

  • More ways to play: additional modes are planned to stay discovery-friendly and public-spoiler-safe.

Key Features

  • Fight on the front line as a Commander while your automated base keeps working.

  • Gather physical Nuts, then choose whether to strengthen your Commander, grow your base, or fuel species-specific tactics.

  • Build automated defenses and production lines that keep fighting after you move on.

  • Flux module fusion turns simple buildings into new army roles.

  • Forge conveyor belts feed a growing toy-factory workforce.

  • Shade uses stealth and control tools to pressure enemy systems without building a standard base.

  • Multi-height 2D maps with elevators, platforms, drones, belts, and side-scrolling combat.

  • Strategic AI commanders that expand, collect, build, and attack.

  • Three species campaigns across Flux, Forge, and Shade.

  • Text-friendly custom maps with planned Steam Workshop sharing support.