Autonauts vs Piratebots

The sequel to Autonauts, this time with bad guys to fight. The resource management is as fun as ever. Building your little outpost and getting the automation up and running is just as neat as in the first game, and the battles, reminiscent of Clash of Clans, are great fun. A fun game that will make you the king or queen of coding! We loved it.

Another game you don't want to miss! As you can no doubt tell, this is the sequel to the fantastic Autonauts. But you don't need to have played the first game to get stuck into this one.

The good news is that for gamers who are new to the Autonauts games, this one comes with a full tutorial. It tells you how to create bots and then programme them to carry out your instructions, but if you've already got the hang of it you can feel free to skip the tutorial.

This time, one of your colonies has come under a pitiless piratebot attack. You're sent in to repair the colony and wipe out those pesky pirates.

All pretty standard stuff, apart from the fact that this is a game that has you programming bots. You don't need to fight in the battles yourself, just train your bots in combat and strategy.

Our advice: automate a farm before you do anything else, so that you can earn gold to fund your defensive campaign and save the colony. It costs 100 gold to build each bot, so you'll need to sell plenty of harvests to build each and every battle bot.

A little tip: it's a good idea to set up defences around your colony, to protect it from the piratebots' constant raids.

Then, once you've built your bot army, you can get ready for battle, assigning a role and issuing orders to each group of bots.

The battles between Autonauts and Piratebots are similar to those seen in Clash of Clans. You build your bots and group them into squads, programme targets for them to focus on (usually enemy troops or buildings), and then you take a step back and let the bots fight the battle themselves.

Our favourite part? Just how much fun it is to watch your little bots spring into action as they implement your programming.

And while Autonauts vs Piratebots is funny and easy to play, it's also a great tool for learning the basics of computer coding. Need proof? Curve Games and Denki committed to donating 5000 copies of the game to schools in the United Kingdom, where teachers are already using it to teach pupils programming logic, and the . The best part is that the kids learn without realising it, because the game encourages creativity.

Fancy having fun while learning? It's possible for gamers of all ages!