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Get Children Automating

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Automation is hailed as the future of work and industry is set for economic rebound. As a result, growing, managing and relating to machines are and will be important skills for children to develop.

The good news is that the process of transferring work tasks to computers and automated mechanisms is something they can try their hand at in the games in this list. Organising tasks and distributing work in the name of efficiency and effectiveness is also a common feature of many games.

We've worked with Game Academy on this list of games that help prepare players for an era where organisations are being rewritten daily, business processes reimagined and the labour market is driven by fusion skills - humans and machines coming together to form new kinds of jobs and work experiences. Game Academy is a tech venture that helps game players make the most of their in-game talent out of games. Using new game analytics, online courses and boot camps, they help players identify their game and life skills, develop them and link game players to new work and educational opportunities.

Some games like Factorio and Satisfactory look like crafting sandboxes but soon become much more than that. You discover that it will take a very long time to extract and craft the necessary resources manually, and the surrounding monsters are not ready to wait. Automated extraction/production lines come to the rescue and their creation is the main mechanic of the game. Learning Factory is a more peaceful version of factory building. You just need to repair the Martian factory to make goods for cute cats. It also provides some links to machine learning.

Other games provide you with tools to minimise your manual labour. In a game like Stardew Valley, players spend a lot of time watering plants. A lot! But automatic sprinklers save on the grind, greatly simplifying the whole game.

At the other end of the life - and emotional scale - is Graveyard Keeper where you manage a medieval graveyard to get your character to open a portal back to his old world. You have a dozen different activities: gathering resources, brewing drinks, farming and carrying out autopsies - hilarious rather than gruesome tasks, we can assure you. But this is all hard, hard work. Fortunately, there’s a moment when you get the opportunity to create zombies and give them the hard labour. It changes the gameplay dramatically, as well as your fortune and fate.

This list includes 48 games from the last 32 years, with 776 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to automate your game world.

List Details

PEGI Ratings: PEGI 3 to PEGI 16
ESRB Ratings: ESRB EVERYONE to ESRB TEEN
Australian Ratings: G to M
Genres: Action, Adventure, Battle, Brain Game, Collecting, Communication, Creative, Fighting, Narrative, Platform, Point-and-Click, Puzzle, Race, Role-Play, Sequencing, Shooting, Simulation, Stealth, Strategy, Traversal and World Building
Total Likes: 776

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Stardew Valley

Release Date: 26/02/2016, updated in 2018

Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Grid, Open World and Pixels

Stardew Valley looks like a farming simulator. That’s partly what it is, but you also develop relationships with the other townsfolk and delve deep into the mines. Its quirky labyrinthine attention to detail is inviting for young players to try their...

Graveyard Keeper

Release Date: 15/08/2018

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Grid, Open World and Pixels

Graveyard Keeper is a funeral-themed role-playing game where you are the caretaker of a local cemetery. You make choices about how to lay out the plot, what services to offer and generally how to make money from your unusual enterprise. The pixilated...

Loop Hero

Release Date: 03/02/2021, updated in 2022

Out Now: PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Cards, Grid, Hand-Made and Pixels

Loop Hero is a dungeon-exploring adventure game where you use cards to create a world for your character to survive. Rather than control the hero yourself, you are tasked with playing cards to create a level that is hard enough to be rewarding without...

Wilmot's Warehouse

Release Date: 29/08/2019

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Wilmot's Warehouse is a game for people who like to organise things. You are in charge of a warehouse and must manage 100s of items of stock. Identical square boxes are labelled with rudimentary icons. On your own or with another player, you must...

Tren

Tren (Dreams)

Release Date: 01/08/2023

Out Now: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Hand-Made

Tren is a traversal-puzzle game set in a hand-crafted world as a wooden train, sailing boats and helicopters. You control points, shunt trucks around, operate cranes and generally move cargo from one location to the next. Like an escape room with toy...

Station To Station

Release Date: 03/10/2023

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Pixels

Station to Station is a railway-building puzzle game about connecting commerce and community to create a beautiful rail network. Play is about making connections between buildings to move materials and people around the world efficiently. It stands out...

Factorio

Release Date: 14/08/2020, updated in 2022

Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid, Open World and Pixels

Factorio is a construction strategy game where you crash-land on an alien planet and must harvest resources to create industry to build a rocket to escape (or fall in love with running your factory and stay on longer).

Quadrilateral Cowboy

Release Date: 25/07/2016

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Quadrilateral Cowboy is an adventure in a 1990 retro-cyberpunk world where you take on covert mission to infiltrate buildings and security systems. You carefully explore each level hacking security by typing commands into your grey-market equipment.

Astroneer

Release Date: 16/12/2016, updated in 2019

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night and Open World

Astroneer is an open-world space adventure where you colonize planets by creating habitable structures, farming and mining resources. There is no specific story, although the challenges of each planet give rise to struggles of achievement to placate the...

Satisfactory

Release Date: 19/03/2019, updated in 2020

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Open World

Satisfactory is a factory building set on a foreign planet. Like the popular Tycoon and Factory games in Roblox, you start with humble beginnings, you harvest what you can by hand but steadily you build a sprawling empire of automated harvesting...

Farm Together

Release Date: 25/02/2018, updated in 2019

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night and Open World

Farm Together is a low-pressure farm simulator. You develop your farm by yourself or cooperate with your friends. Starting with an empty plot you can grow crops, plant trees, take care of the animals, add buildings and facilities, and unlock new items...

Skyblock

Release Date: 01/01/2011, updated in 2020

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Xbox One, Xbox X|S and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person and Blocks

Skyblock is a game played on Minecraft servers where you start on a bare island floating in the sky and must gather resources to thrive and reach other players. It's the Minecraft equivalent to being washed up on a desert island and is hugely popular...

Forager

Release Date: 18/04/2019

Out Now: Android, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night and Pixels

Forager is an open-world adventure where you manage resources in a simple pixel world. The collecting, crafting and consuming requires you to tap buttons. It soon becomes apparent that you need to automate your work if you are to progress effectively...

TerraTech

Release Date: 04/07/2018

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks, Day and Night and Open World

TerraTech is a construction game where you create vehicles to explore the environment, find resources and craft upgrades. It includes a modular building element where your decisions affect the performance of what you make. Each building block has its...

Autonauts

Release Date: 17/10/2019, updated in 2022

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Blocks

Autonauts is an adventure game where you tame new worlds. You start with a blank slate similar to Sim City, but here you must build each dwelling, tools, and vehicle yourself. It’s a task that’s too complex for any one person to handle. You are soon...

Railbound

Release Date: 06/09/2022, updated in 2022

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Railbound is a track-bending puzzle game where you lay track, switch points, and use tunnels to get the carriages to the engine in the right order. Although it's the puzzles that keep you playing, there's also a real joy in connecting tracks and seeing...

Learning Factory

Release Date: 18/02/2021

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4 and Switch

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Pixels

Learning Factory is a strategy game where you automate an old factory. Unusually, this isn't to make money and conquer the world but a round about approach to understand cats. Peculiar backstory aside, the game tasks you with renovating the factory,...

Bloons TD 6

Bloons TD 6 (Series)

Release Date: 16/08/2007, updated in 2021

Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, DS, Mac, PC, PS4, PSP, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead

Bloons TD 6, the latest in a series of Bloons TD (Tower Defense) games, is a strategic puzzle game where you use various contraptions to pop balloons before they get to the end of the track. It sounds simple, but quickly escalates with faster-moving and...

Ritual of Raven

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Pixels

Ritual of Raven is a farming game like Stardew Valley but here you add programming code to the inhabitants of the farm to help them grow and harvest the plants. Similarly to Rabbids Coding,...

Claustrofactory

Claustrofactory (Dreams)

Release Date: 30/11/2021, updated in 2021

Out Now: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Blocks

Claustrofactory is a time management factory simulation. You build factories on a grid to connect their processes and make products using conveyors and assemblers and pickers. It's an unusual efficiency challenge where the best system will score the...

Foundation

Release Date: 01/02/2019, updated in 2021

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead

Foundation is a city-building simulation game where you create networks of supply and consumption in a medieval village. You not only develop structures, gather resources and create your own unique settlement, but also manage the individual needs of...

Oddworld Soulstorm

Oddworld Soulstorm (Series)

Release Date: 19/09/1997, updated in 2022

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS3, PS4, PS5, PSP, Switch, Wii U, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox X|S and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Oddworld Soulstorm is a running and jumping game where you guide members of your species through labyrinthine levels to free them from brutal oppression. It's a remake of 1998's Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus and a sequel to Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. Its...

Universal Paperclips

Release Date: 09/10/2017

Out Now: Android, Web and iOS

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Text

Universal Paperclips is an adventure game about making paperclips. It sounds simple, but behind the incremental process of clicking a button to create these paperclips is a story about how the desire to make paperclips (or anything) if fully realised...

No Plan B

Release Date: 01/12/2021

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

No Plan B is a tactical role-play game where you plan missions to neutralise various threats. Unusually, you don't directly control your team during the action. Instead, you plan orders for them ahead of time then watch as they execute your commands in...

Air Traffic Controller (Airport Hero)

Release Date: 01/01/1998, updated in 2020

Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, DS, PC and PSP

Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night and Weather

Air Traffic Controller (Airport Hero) is a series of games where you take charge of an airport. You deal with landing planes, directing them to runways and gates while ensuring things run on time and without accidents. Each session is a unique set of...

PixelJunk Monsters

PixelJunk Monsters (Series)

Release Date: 24/01/2008, updated in 2018

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS3, PS4, PSP, Switch and Wii U

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead

PixelJunk Monsters is a strategy game where you build defensive towers to defeat a linear march of enemies before they reach your base and kill your creatures.

868-Hack

Release Date: 30/08/2013, updated in 2017

Out Now: Mac, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Pixels

868-HACK is a puzzle game where you hack a computer program to collect as much data as you can. It's a unique puzzle as collecting data triggers more enemies to appear so you walk a delicate balance between collecting as much as possible, but not so...

Splitter Critters

Release Date: 15/05/2018, updated in 2021

Out Now: Android, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

Splitter Critters is a puzzle game where you cut up the world to connect platforms and get to the exit. You split and rearrange each level so you can avoid deadly lasers and create floating swimming pools to guide alien critters back to their spaceship.

Train Valley 2

Train Valley 2 (Series)

Release Date: 16/09/2015, updated in 2022

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X|S and iOS

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Grid

Train Valley 2 is a toy train puzzle game where you build a railroad company from the days of the Industrial Revolution into the future. It looks like a kids train-set but simulates real economics of the valley's cities and industries. The result is a...

Lemmings

Lemmings (Series)

Release Date: 14/02/1991, updated in 2018

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS2, PS3, PSP and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

Lemmings is a series of puzzle games where you guide small (suicidal) creatures to the end of the levels. Unusually, you don't control when or how a character jumps and navigates the areas, but instead, you assign them actions that change the level to...

Little Fox Train Adventures

Release Date: 29/10/2018

Out Now: Android and iOS

Skill Rating: 3+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Little Fox Train Adventures is an interactive narrative game about a fox who drives their train to pick up and deliver different items.

Oxygen Not Included

Release Date: 30/07/2019

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Day and Night and Pixels

Oxygen Not Included is a creative strategy game where you build an underground colony for survivors of a spaceship crash-landing. You need to manage everything, placement and planning for oxygen distribution, energy, plumbing and living arrangements. It...

Beglitched

Release Date: 07/10/2016

Out Now: Mac, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Pixels

Beglitched is a puzzle game that combines Candy Crush's matching with Minesweeper's mapping challenges in missions where you foil computer hackers. Play is first traversing the computer network grid and then taking on hackers in match-three puzzles when...

Bomb Club

Release Date: 02/08/2021, updated in 2022

Out Now: Android, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Bomb Club is a puzzle game where you use an arsenal of whacky bombs to clear the board with a chain reaction. You place and trigger the bombs to ensure a single chain and complete the level. It's a novel combination of fun explosions and puzzle solving...

Cinco Paus

Release Date: 25/12/2017, updated in 2021

Out Now: iOS

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Cinco Paus is a puzzle game where you try and get through 5 rooms picking up treasure as you go. What makes it unusual are the magic wands that help you do this. What appears to be a maze game turns out to be a challenge to discover the effects of each...

Common'hood

Release Date: 10/11/2022, updated in 2023

Out Now: PC, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Common'hood is a squatter simulator where you craft the means to survive in an abandoned factory. You work to create a thriving community by growing food, constructing shelters, workshops, and eventually high-tech manufacturing. It stands out for the...

RoboCo

Release Date: 03/11/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Blocks

RoboCo is a creative physics-based robot-building game where you design and code robots to perform challenging tasks. With the multitude of parts and templates to build from, there are countless ways to approach each situation, be it by creating an...

Word Factori

Release Date: 01/07/2021

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Word Factori is a puzzle game where you use factories to create letters and words by a series of interrelated processes. You start with the letter i and chain together a system of satisfying factories to form words.

Ctrl Alt Ego

Release Date: 22/07/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Ctrl Alt Ego is a puzzle game where you a disembodied character taking control of robots and electronics to move around, interact and solve the puzzles. Using a combination of stealth and problem solving to progress the story and get to the bottom of...

Robotry

Release Date: 26/10/2022

Out Now: PC, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Robotry is an unusual platform game where you don't have a jump button. Instead you use two analog sticks to control each leg of your robot and in this way you take on a range of puzzles and challenges.

Curated lists:
Game genre:
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Components:

How long to play:
User-generated content:	No
Accessibility features:	Yes

Controls
Gamepad:
Mouse And Keyboard:
Touchscreen:
Motion:	Motion Aiming Motion Pointing Motion Tilting Motion Gesture Motion Camera
Remap Controls:
Button Combinations:	Holding Down Buttons Optional Rapid Repeated Pressing Optional No Simultaneous Buttons
Controller Vibration:
Sensitivity:

Getting Started
Onboarding Before Play:
Assistance Getting Starting:	Tutorials Practice Area View Control Mapping Assistance With Controls Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Adjust Speed No Jump Scares
Assistance For Progressing:	Guaranteed Progress With God Mode Bank Progress With Frequent Checkpoints Assisted Progress With Boosts Assisted Progress With Hints Assisted Recall for Characters Assisted Recall for Narrative and Dialogue Save Progress Anytime

Reading
Reading Level:
Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text High Contrast Text
Subtitles:
Captions:
Voice Acted:

Navigation
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Visual
Contrast:
Interactive Elements:
Visual Distractions:
Audio Cues for Visual Events:
Narration for Visual Elements:
	Motion Sickness Friendly
Colour Options:
Play Without Sight:
Violence:

Audio
	Balance Audio Levels
Audio Events:
	Play Without Hearing

Communication
Player-to-Player Online Communication:
Online Communication Assistance:

Difficulty
Difficulty Options:	Simple and Full Version No Memorisation Advantage No Hidden Information No Deceit Advantage No Colour Advantage No Mathematics Advantage No Weighing Decisions

Getting Started
Assistance Getting Started:	Clear Manual Electronic Version of Manual Electronic Version of Manual for Screen Readers Getting Started Video Digital Version Reference Aid
Assistance Progressing:	Play Order Tokens (Or play order doesn’t change) Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Low Impact Catch Up Rule

Reading
Reading Level:
Necessary Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text on Board (Or no text required) Large Clear Text on Cards (Or no text required) High Contrast Text (Or no text required) QR Code For Text (Or no text required) Primary and Secondary Text Distinguishable (Or no text required) Information Orientation Clear Icons

Physical
Pieces:	Components are Distinguishable by Touch Components are Replaceable No Non-Standard Dice (Or No Dice) No Tiny Pieces No Paper Money No Sprawl
Cards:	Large Card Size Standard Card Shape Limited Hand Management No Excessive Card Shuffling No Right-Handed Advantage
Placement:	No Unbound Placement Player Components Not Shared No Fiddly Placement Easily Verbalised Actions

Visual
Printed Visibility:	Colour Blind Friendly Design Double-Coding Colour High Contrast Colours
Component Identifiability:	Outline Key Elements No Busy Backgrounds Easily Verbalised Game State No Close Inspection Disadvantage Playable Without Sight

Audio
Communication:	Audio Cues Mirrored Visually (Or no critical audio signals) No Pressured Reveals No Pressured Communication Playable Without Hearing

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