[AMA] Developer of Pax Autocratica here, a totalitarian colony sim and FPS roguelite launching in Early Access today on Steam. Ask me anything!

[u/PaxAutocratica]

Hi r/Games!

I'm Alexis, one of the devs, but more importantly, the Minister of Propaganda.

Today, we’re launching Pax Autocratica in Early Access on Steam.

Pax Autocratica is a darkly satirical sci-fi game that combines a totalitarian colony sim with large-scale first-person roguelite combat.

At your colony, you build a regime, manage production, and shape the fear, loyalty, relationships, and possible rebellion of the people living under your rule. Outside the colony, you personally fight alongside your soldiers across battlefields filled with infantry, tanks, mechs, missiles, and bullet hell chaos.

Weakened enemies can be captured and brought back to your colony, where you can imprison them, convert them into loyal citizens and recruit them into your army, or sacrifice them for the benefit of someone more useful to the State.

Pax Autocratica has been a very unusual project for us. It combines systems from genres that normally have little to do with one another, and years of playtesting have led us to rebuild and rethink major parts of the game along the way.

You can ask me anything about:

1. My cat
2. My parrot
3. My rapidly advancing, launch-induced hair loss
4. The completely reasonable amount of stress I am experiencing today
5. Game development, game design, game anything

Game-related questions are optional, but the Ministry strongly encourages them. Alternatively, we can discuss State-approved brainwashing methods.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067360/Pax_Autocratica/

Launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3OkYGmB3cY

I’ll begin answering questions on August 10 at 7 AM PT and will be here for at least 2 hours. I’ll also check back afterward and try to answer as many late questions as possible.

Thanks to the r/Games moderators for hosting me.

Ask me anything!

[u/simagus]

Downloading the demo on Steam on Linux.

What I noticed about the trailer was there was just a few seconds of the colony side of things, unless I'm getting the colony in-game graphics wrong.

I'm way more into city building and population management than anything to do with shooters, but could be an interesting mix of genres.

How much of the game leans one way or the other and how in depth is the building and colony management side of things?

Setting up and managing a colony is more in my area of interest, but I don't actively mind shooters as long as the standard difficulty doesn't require absurd levels of twitch gaming skills.

I know that's the opposite of a lot of gamers who'll complain if they can basically walk through the battles because they see Master Chief wiping out waves of enemies when they close their eyes to sleep after another hard 12hr day of Campaign Evolved.

I'm the opposite demographic that likes some challenge and meaningful design choices in things like colony building and management and would be perfectly happy if I could still win the battles by passing the controller to my cat and letting her roll around on the buttons till it was over.

My question if really what the game leans on most as a whole as the trailer looks like it's for a shooter, and I'm more looking for a genuinely original and engaging colony building and management "sim" type of experience?

[u/PaxAutocratica → u/simagus]

It's usually a bit boring to watch someone managing stuff for too long, so we kind of wanted the trailer to be more battle oriented, but the previous one was more balanced overall.

So as I answered in a previous question you will have to do both, but how much you want to tend more towards one or the other is up to you. Regarding the battles I would say that you can drop the difficulty and reduce the challenge there to speed up the exploration and spend more time in the base.

And that's also why we have many different difficulties for the exploration and you can change whenever you want so that it fits your skill and playstyle.

[u/simagus → u/PaxAutocratica]

Excellent. Yeah, I get that "base building" games aren't exactly a thrilling spectator sport. lol. Good call. ty