Servonauts is an action party game for up to four players, developed by MAXART Games and published by Untold Tales. If you’re looking for a decent multiplayer game, then this title is a good choice. However, it may not hold everyone’s attention for too long.
The premise of this game is that you’re service station attendants, fueling cars across the galaxy. The characters work for Astroil, which provides the drills, pipes, and oil for these vehicles. That’s pretty much all you need to know. Once you start the game, Servonauts goes into some advertisement for the company and that’s as close as you’ll get to any story or explanation of what’s going on. Then, you’re dropped onto your ship where you can click through the different planets you want to go to.
There are four planets, each one with four levels, giving you 12 total levels. My sister and I got through the game in about three hours. Only the first planet is unlocked because you need to earn a certain amount of stars to unlock the next planet. You can earn up to three stars per level and the threshold to unlock the next area isn’t much. We only got three stars on one level within the first world and still unlocked the next place. And yeah, that was the only level we earned three stars on.
Earning the max number of stars per level is difficult, not because the game itself is tricky, but because you don’t have enough time to keep the customers satisfied. Satisfied customers equal a higher score. To explain this, let me go over the controls.
Each level has one or two drill spots. Press Y to open your inventory wheel and you can create a drill. Press A to pick it up, A to place it down, and you’re done. You have oil. If you pick up something you didn’t mean to, you can press B to let it go. Those are the only controls you need to know, aside from moving with the analog stick. You can also spawn blue, red, and yellow containers to change the oil’s color. Finally, you use pipes to connect them all from the oil drill to whatever color you need to the car.
The cars in Servonauts will ask for specific oil: black, blue, red, yellow, orange, green, or purple. For example, to give purple oil, you’ll need to finagle the piping to connect the oil drill to the blue and red containers to turn the oil purple. Basic color theory is the main puzzle for this game. So, to keep the customers happy, you need to do this fast. However, when spawning the crates and pipes, it takes a few seconds for them to appear. Most of the time, a car would ask for red oil and I’d have to create a red tank. By the time that spawned and I was able to spawn a pipe (the inventory wheel has a slight cooldown after you order something) the car would already start getting annoyed with a yellow face. Then, if you still take too long, it’ll give you a red face. It was frustrating since it was something out of my control. Also, there are no timers, so I have no idea how long we’re supposed to take.
Each level has its own set of hazards, too. For example, the floor giving out under you or lasers heating up half the area at a time. Sometimes, it was easier for the lasers to kill us and respawn rather than avoid it because it was faster. You don’t have health or lives, so there were no consequences otherwise.
Overall, Servonauts is a fun game. My sister and I did enjoy our time playing it together, but we found it was easier to get through the game if we divided and conquered the levels rather than communicate and work together on each car. I bet if you play this game with three or four players, it could get pretty chaotic and fun. At the start, we had a good time. The longer we played, though, the more we went through the motions of each level, and that was it.
I went back and played a couple of levels on my own once we beat the game and the experience was dull. It was slower-paced, which is fine, but this game really isn’t meant for single players. If you’re going to give Servonauts a try, then definitely have a friend or two ready to play with you.
And that’s all there is to Servonauts. You can unlock hats for your character, but that’s it. There are no leaderboards, no other modes, nothing. The only replayability value would be to go back and get three stars on each level, which is easy to do in single-player mode. Once you get that, there’s nothing left to do in the game.
Review: Servonauts (Nintendo Switch)
Good
If you’re looking for a solid party game, Servonauts should be in the running. The fun may be short-lived here, but it’s not a bad option if you want something quick to pick up and play.