An Automaton's Journey

A familiar formula, built with real care

An Automaton's Journey casts players as Cecilia Immergreen, an amnesiac automaton awakened to fight a curse that's turned once-friendly faces hostile, and its clearest strength is how competently it executes the classic top-down Zelda formula it's clearly built on. One detailed reviewer summarized the loop: "The game is an action adventure with puzzle-focused dungeons, which gives a pretty clear idea of what to expect... You explore an interconnected world, search for dungeon entrances, acquire new items and abilities, and use them to reach previously inaccessible areas before moving on to the next dungeon." A second detailed review praised the specific structure across its eight dungeons: "Across eight major dungeons, players encounter a mixture of environmental puzzles, enemy encounters, and unique mechanics that keep the experience from becoming repetitive... Each dungeon feels like a distinct location with its own identity, forcing players to think carefully about navigation and problem-solving while still delivering satisfying action sequences." A third reviewer, more critical overall, still credited the dungeon design as the game's best asset: "The best part of this game is easily the dungeons. It's very clear what this game was inspired by, and while it doesn't do anything wholly unique itself, it manages to understand why it works."

Fan service that reviewers say actually lands

The game leans heavily on the Hololive VTuber universe for its cast, world, and boss roster, and reviewers familiar with the source material consistently said the character writing holds up on its own terms. One wrote, "the character writing is great, the talents themselves stay true to their characters and you will especially enjoy this if you are an autofister fan." Even a reviewer who ultimately gave the game a mixed score praised this specifically: "What I did like about it as a start was the way the Hololive members were portrayed. They had genuinely funny bits, and it felt like the characters were pulled right out of the stream, so well done on that." Crucially, multiple reviewers stressed the game doesn't require that familiarity to function as a standalone adventure. One noted, "Although knowledge of Hololive characters and references can enhance the experience, the game does not rely entirely on fan recognition. Players unfamiliar with the source material can still enjoy the well-designed world, rewarding progression system, and engaging exploration."

Combat that fights the player back

The pool's most consistent mechanical complaint concerns how attacks are implemented. One detailed reviewer explained the core issue: "the game has omnidirectional movement; however, your attacks can only go in four directions. This means you're very often at a disadvantage because if the enemy moves even slightly up or down, you completely miss it." A second reviewer described the resulting frustration directly: "The hitboxes in particular felt odd at times because you line up to hit them with the lance and it misses so you now have to eat a hit and reposition just to try and get it right again." That same reviewer also flagged inconsistent i-frame and animation timing on specific character-themed abilities, and a difficulty curve that didn't feel fairly tuned: "I feel like the upgrades I got don't really scale with the difficulty, the boss can end me easily because I either sometimes not having i-frames for some reason and got combo'd to dead, or they just do ridiculous amount of damage."

A world that feels more like a level than a place

Beyond combat, reviewers repeatedly singled out the connective overworld as the game's weakest area, in contrast to the dungeons themselves. One detailed critique put it sharply: "A lot of it are empty fields to dash through, and then you find structures that don't even feel like they make sense. Like, why is there a Faunamart in the middle of nowhere, next to a random graveyard? What do you mean there's a random giant castle and evil-looking tower?... What we got is a world that feels too video game-y." The same reviewer extended the critique to the story, calling it "just your typical Hololive fangame shtick. It's your classic case of 'Everyone is all of the sudden mean now,' with lots of miscommunication," and wishing the stronger, more in-character writing found in side quests and NPC dialogue carried into the main plot instead.

Technical hiccups and a real Steam Deck bug

A smaller but serious complaint concerns cross-platform save handling. One reviewer reported losing significant progress entirely: "I started my playthrough on Windows, beat the first 2 dungeons... Trying to load my save kept crashing the game, and the text is stuck in Japanese, even after changing the settings and starting a new game. The Steam Cloud unfortunately changed my save to the new one, so all my progress is lost." That reviewer specifically flagged the mismatch with the store page's Steam Deck compatibility claims as the more frustrating part of the experience.

Verdict

An Automaton's Journey succeeds where it matters most for the genre it's imitating: eight genuinely well-built dungeons, a satisfying item-gated progression loop, and Hololive character writing reviewers say actually captures the source material's humor and charm. Its four-directional combat fighting against an omnidirectional character, a connective overworld that rarely feels like a real place, and a generic curse plot keep it from reaching the classics it's clearly channeling, and a reported Steam Deck save bug is worth watching for before buying on that platform. For roughly eight dollars and eight hours of content, genre fans, Hololive-literate or not, will likely find it a worthwhile if imperfect adventure.