Servonauts Review

Are you searching for a new and unique multiplayer game to play with your friends? I have a crazy couch co-op party game for up to four players called Servonauts where everyone is playing as a service attendant at a galactic gas station. Working at the Astroil gas station may not sound like the most interesting job that you can have, but there is a lot more strategy required than you expect. The station doesn’t only serve one type of fuel; instead, there are a variety of base kinds and mixes you will need to make to fill up the cosmic vehicles and keep your impatient customers happy. 

The physics in Servonauts reminds me of titles like Gang Beasts, where everything feels wobbly like it was made out of jelly. You will have to use your pipes to pump the right kind of fuel to the customer that they request; if it’s not the right type, you may cause their vehicle to explode. This is pretty funny, but it causes you to lose 100 points off your stage total. You earn coins from customers whose vehicles you fuel. For example, the first stage has 360 coins that you can collect; get them all to get all those points. If you are playing by yourself, a handy little robot will help collect the gold when they are shot around the stage once a vehicle is successfully refuelled.  

When the stage is complete, you will see a graph that shows you how many stars out of the three available that you have earned. Along with that chart, you will see how many coins were collected out of the total available and how many vehicles you destroyed (by accident or on purpose), along with the number of points that were lost for any explosions you may have caused. 

There is a very minimal tutorial here; you learn how to make a pump and how to select the type of fuel you need and refine it so that you can run it to the customer requesting it. I felt like I was ready to jump into the first level. Sometimes the customer wants the most basic kind of fuel. This one is easy, all you need to do is set up a pump on the oil patch and run it straight to the waiting vehicle. 

Then it gets trickier, if someone wants yellow, red, or blue fuel you need to build the corresponding machine to refine the fuel. These all need the raw oil to run, so a hose will need to be connected from the base fuel to each pump first. Once connected, that colour of gas will come out of the hose, so it is ready to fill the waiting vehicle. The more challenging part comes when the customer wants a combo of fuel types, so red and yellow make orange, red and blue creates purple, and then finally yellow and blue for green. So you will need to figure out how to connect all the different fuel pumps to make the requested petrol colour. 

When I started playing the game, I was trying to challenge it on my own with no help. You will quickly see that Servonauts really shines when played with others in the multiplayer mode. When playing alone, the game is fine, but running from one side of the stage to the other while trying to keep track of all the gas pumps and what each customer wants is difficult. It’s incredibly challenging to make all the people who have stopped at the station for gas happy! 

Playing solo is fine, but taking on these challenges with friends is a lot more fun and manageable when you can delegate who is in charge of what colour of fuel, who covers which customers, or if someone is the person in charge of hooking up the hoses to the main fuel pump. Playing multiplayer reminds me of Overcooked! The main difference here is that you are all working together instead of teams pitted against each other; like that food-serving title, Servonauts will test both your patience and communication skills with your team. 

There are four different characters available to play as, each a different colour to make it easy to keep track of which station attendant you are. As you play through the stages, you will unlock fun hats and accessories that you equip on your base ship by clicking on the closet. On the ship, you can also interact with different items you find at the base like kitchen appliances (like a blender), cups, or you can even pet the ship's pet duck! The ship also acts as your base where you can get ready for your next job posting. You can select which planet you want to travel to next or if you want to revisit an area you previously played to earn more stars and improve your high score.

All the different planets you visit have their own cartoony look and accompanying soundtrack. The Desert Planet song has a twangy western sound to it that plays for all the stages located on that planet, while your home base sounds like a tune you would hear in a lobby or elevator. There is no voice acting in Servonauts, instead, it’s more annoyed sounding mumbling if you take too long to get fuel to the impatient customers. The sound effects are over the top and fun, with a happy-sounding noisemaker you blow, celebrating the arrival of your next stretchy pipe. 

Each of the stages you play introduces a new obstacle to challenge. One of the levels has a highway going through the middle of the stage where you need to keep going from one side to the other to help customers on either side. The most difficult part is you need to cross through the multiple lines of traffic without getting hit. If you are hit by a car, you fly off the stage and have to try crossing the road again. Some stages have ramps that can only be accessed from one side and others have a pipe system that you will have to connect your oil to so it can travel across the stage.

Servonauts is a fun and chaotic title that is a blast to play with friends. If you were thinking of playing it on your own, it’s not the most fun solo as it can be quite difficult to solve the challenges by yourself. If you want something fun and goofy that feels like an Overcooked style game, look no further Servonauts offers a similar experience to that crazy title!