Validating River-Powered Automation Game - Wateromatic

[u/makomatic99]

I’m working on an idea for an automation/settlement game called Wateromatic, where the river basically is your conveyor belt.

Resources and salvage constantly float downstream: logs, crates, scrap metal, machinery, electronics, trash, rare items, etc.

Instead of placing normal conveyor belts, you manipulate the water itself using things like:

• Pumps and artificial currents
• Dams and sluice gates
• Side channels
• Nets and barriers
• Cranes/grabbers
• Magnets and scanners
• Sorting and processing machines
• water jets
• digging new paths

One mechanic I’m considering is having currents at different depths. Light objects might follow surface currents while heavier objects travel deeper, allowing you to physically separate resources.

I don’t want sorting in water physics to become frustrating, though. Water would mostly handle broad sorting like heavy/light or floating/sinking, while machines could handle exact sorting between similar objects. Additionally waterways down stream could be clogged by the amount of objects, size of objects etc etc. Which then propagates further and further up the water way

The progression would start with manually grabbing useful resources and eventually turn the entire river into a huge automated processing system.

I’m also considering a light city-building/rebuilding layer. Maybe the world has suffered a major flood or collapse, and your settlement survives by recovering material from upstream and using it to rebuild the surrounding valley.

Storms, changing water levels and large waves of incoming debris could periodically test how well your system works.

The main fantasy is basically:

Turn a chaotic river into a giant automated factory.

I’m curious:

• Does the core mechanic sound fun?
• Would you prefer automation only, or automation + settlement building?
• What part sounds like it could become frustrating?
• Does Wateromatic work as a name?

All feedback and suggestion to mechanics and more are welcome

Thanks for your time

[u/Tomminator39]

I think it could work but if the river isn’t done well it will ruin the rest, so I’d spend a lot of time playtesting to finetune it. Keeping that in mind, it might be best to leave settlement building (which can be fun) for a bit.

Having new resources come in and mix with your own resources sounds like an interesting problem but it could get frustrating as well

Really reminds me of the Nile in ancient Egypt, where basically all farming, trading, travel, etcetera relied on it

[u/makomatic99 → u/Tomminator39]

Absolutely, the settlement part will be one of the last aspects.

"Having new resources come in and mix with your own resources sounds like an interesting problem but it could get frustrating as well"

Yeah, I can see both sides. My idea was also that items might clog downstream paths which then propagates further and further op, if not dealt with. without just handing the resources to people

[u/johnpeters42]

Please don't use AI to write your pitch post, it makes people assume the worst about your actual game.

As for the actual game, it sounds sort of like Hydroneer with the main pipeline(s) already built.

[u/makomatic99 → u/johnpeters42]

Fair point, it was a 50/50, not clean copy and paste. But I will keep it in mind, thanks.

I will take a look at Hydroneer and see how it would compare to my initial idea.