This genre-bender is a creepy marriage of Factorio and Don't Starve

An image from survival and automation game Atrio: The Dark Wild — (Image credit: Isto Inc)

In Atrio: The Dark Wild you're an android in an abandoned, neon cyber city. Everything is dark, the city is filled with rogue, vicious cyborg animals, and you need to get the lights back on. It's an open world survival crafting game fused with an automation-factory building game. Also, because it's about horrible dog-things with pusher plates for heads pouncing out of the darkness to murder you, you're likely to get spooked at least once.

As your character strikes out to explore the city, restore its functions, and find new stuff as you unravel a narrative mystery—but you also build a base. A base with lots of conveyor belts and tosser things and pusher plate dogs that you captured and made into factory parts. You've also got to keep the base's defenses automated, since you're out exploring so much, adding a fresh twist to this genre hybrid. It's a bit like if you were playing a lite Factorio, but you also had to deal with Don't Starve's dangerous expeditions outside your base's comfy walls.

If you're into this kind of game, there's also a great little video from the developers about how they held a contest for the people who playtested the demo and, well, they did a lot of stuff the developers didn't anticipate.

You can find Atrio: The Dark Wild on Steam, where there's a demo, at least until Steam Next Fest ends tomorrow. We've also compiled a list of our 16 favorite Steam Next Fest demos and a list of the demos for 52 games announced at E3 on Steam. If you want to play those, act quick: Steam Next Fest closes at 9:00AM GMT on June 22nd, and the demos with it.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.