Pax Autocratica

Pax Autocratica opens with a straightforward pitch — build the greatest regime in history — and then complicates it at every turn. You govern a colony through whatever mixture of fear, propaganda, surveillance and genuine care you choose, watching citizens grow loyal, afraid or quietly rebellious depending on how you treat them. When threats appear, you don't send troops in your place; you drop into first-person combat yourself, fighting alongside soldiers who can be spent as expendable shields or protected as an investment, in battles that escalate from small skirmishes to full mechanised warfare against colossal alien threats. It's an unusual, ambitious combination, and Early Access reviewers have responded well to it — 1,066 of the game's first 1,165 Steam reviews are positive. It's also, by its own reviewers' account, a game inseparable from where it came from, and that history is worth understanding before deciding whether to buy it.

A totalitarian colony sim with teeth

The colony layer draws obvious inspiration from genre staples like RimWorld, assigning citizens to mine, gather, haul, research and manufacture while the player shapes the culture of the whole settlement through policy. Screenshots of the base show a stark, functional industrial aesthetic — squat concrete structures, smoke-belching processing plants, and citizens moving between work stations under the watch of a day-cycle clock. The morality system isn't cosmetic: an in-game log entry captured in one screenshot reads "The Leader whipped Rynae Mina. Friends feel Worried," showing punishment mechanics rippling through relationship networks rather than sitting in a separate menu. Weakened enemies captured in battle can be dragged back to base and processed through fear, indoctrination, execution or conversion — turning a defeated threat into either a new citizen, a public warning, or a resource, depending on the player's chosen brand of tyranny.

Combat at a scale few colony sims attempt

Where most colony sims resolve combat with a pause and a few clicks, Pax Autocratica puts the player in first-person for all of it. Promotional screenshots show grassy alpine battlefields lit up with tank fire, drone swarms and mech-versus-mech duels, escalating well beyond the "defend the base" skirmishes the genre usually offers. One shot shows a colossal, tentacled creature looming over the colony's skyline entirely — the kind of set-piece scale that reads more like a AA action game than a management sim. Reviewers consistently single out this combat layer as the strongest part of the current build, even when they're critical of other systems.

The history that won't stay separate from the review

This is not Multiverse's first attempt at this game. Independent reporting from 2022 confirms that Pax Autocratica is built from Earth From Another Sun, an open-world sci-fi MMO the studio spent years developing around Web3 and NFT mechanics — player-owned characters, weapons and mechs recorded on the Solana blockchain, backed by roughly $4.5 million in funding from investors including Solana Ventures and Alameda Research. That funding history is independently documented, not just something reviewers are repeating. According to Steam's own community discussions, the NFT and blockchain elements were eventually dropped, and the project re-emerged under its current name and premise; the current store page carries no mention of blockchain, Web3, NFTs or cryptocurrency anywhere.

That history is the dominant thread running through both the positive and negative reviews. The single most-upvoted review on the page — 1,304 votes, and a recommendation despite everything it raises — opens by identifying the game's former name and NFT model directly, states plainly that this is "the best that the game has ever looked," and still argues the studio's past monetisation choices "should not be forgotten." Multiple long-time backers describe playing since the original Earth From Another Sun alpha and say the current build represents real, substantial improvement now that the NFT model is gone. On the negative side, around a quarter of the English-language critical reviews sampled for this piece raise the same history unprompted, several citing it as a trust concern going forward rather than a current defect. Separately, the developer's earlier VR title, Seeking Dawn, appears to have gone unsupported after 2019, including a cancelled PSVR port — a relevant data point for anyone weighing how long-term the studio's Early Access commitment is likely to be.

What reviewers actually find wrong with it today

Setting the backstory aside, the specific complaints in the review corpus are worth taking on their own terms. The most-upvoted review documents concrete bugs: severe lighting glitches on characters and objects, item drops that despawn within seconds if the player isn't standing over them, and no in-game map. A meaningful share of critical reviews describe the game as spread thin across too many genres — base builder, roguelite shooter and scripted story content — without any one piece feeling fully finished yet, which is a fair description of where a lot of ambitious Early Access releases sit at launch. Several reviewers also allege the game contains undisclosed AI-generated art; this review can't independently verify that claim, and notes only that the store page currently carries no AI Generated Content Disclosure section addressing it either way. Against all of that, plenty of reviewers with real hours logged — several past ten and even twenty-five hours — report a game they're actively enjoying, with substantial content already in place for an Early Access launch.

Price and monetisation, judged on the current build

At NZ$38.58 during its launch discount, Pax Autocratica is priced like a substantial release rather than a cheap Early Access experiment, and that price draws its own complaints from reviewers who feel the current scope doesn't yet justify it. What it does not carry is any of the monetisation that defined its previous life: no DLC, no microtransactions, and — per both the current store page and multiple former backers — no NFTs. One widely-read review specifically references a $280 NFT that reportedly granted resource advantages in the old build, framing the switch to a flat, one-time purchase as a genuine improvement even from reviewers still unhappy about the history behind it.

Final verdict

Pax Autocratica is two things at once, and being honest about both is the only fair way to review it: a genuinely ambitious, well-received Early Access colony sim with first-person combat at a scale the genre rarely attempts, and a rebuild of a studio's earlier NFT-funded project that a significant share of its own reviewers don't think should be forgotten. The current build, judged on its own merits, backs up its 91.5% positive score with real systemic depth and striking combat set-pieces, held back by reused assets, some corroborated bugs, and a design that hasn't fully settled into one identity yet. Buyers who weigh a developer's history heavily should read the detailed backer reviews before purchasing; buyers focused purely on what's installed on their machine today are getting an unusual, promising Early Access game for their money.