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Alan's Automaton Workshop
Alan's Automaton Workshop is an open-ended programming puzzle game. Start a new business with Alan Turing and his groundbreaking innovation: the Turing Machine. Build unique automatons, and solve all kinds of problems from clients.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-02 · quoted reviews as of 2026-05-13.
What reviewers agree on
39 of the 63 reviews raise this.
“I usually love games in this genre, and this one is a Zach-Like that uses Finite State Automata for its core loop. I personally quite like the gameplay, though I do agree that the UI could have been done better and is a…”
“Big respect to the developers for making a pretty polished product with what I assume were budgetary constraints. Slightly fudged character portraits, backgrounds are just stock photos with photoshop filters, music…”
“10/10 my brain is dripping out of my ears”
15 of the 63 reviews raise this.
“Big respect to the developers for making a pretty polished product with what I assume were budgetary constraints. Slightly fudged character portraits, backgrounds are just stock photos with photoshop filters, music…”
“While the game looks great, I do not recommend it. I love the art and feel of this game, the narrative did not grab me but I only played to level 2-3. AAW uses a variation of block coding, e.g. Human Resource Machine,…”
“I love the look and appeal of this game but just cannot cope with the UI. I want to program Alan's Automatons, but I just can't really stand how long it takes to drag out lines and connect them. I'm an actual programmer…”
12 of the 63 reviews raise this.
“Big respect to the developers for making a pretty polished product with what I assume were budgetary constraints. Slightly fudged character portraits, backgrounds are just stock photos with photoshop filters, music…”
“I'm over 4 hours in, and so far I really like it. It's not perfect, but it has nice puzzles, and trying to optimise everything is really fun, each puzzle having predetermined target values to perfect a level. It also…”
“This programming / puzzle game is very well presented, with a little historical / fantasy story that perfectly fit the progression of the problems during the 5 chapters, and hints at a few interesting questions. The…”
6 of the 63 reviews raise this.
“If you're a fan of defunct Zach Tronics games, especially Shenzen IO and TIS 100 this one will get your gears turning. Difficulty is nice, understand relatively tough (except chapter one, which is easy), chapter two is…”
“The Dark Souls of Zach-likes*. Looking at games from TIS, over Exapunks to Human Resource Machine I'd say this one is on the very-hard end of the difficulty curve. Levels take longer to complete, require more clicking,…”
“Was playing the demo before, very challenging and interesting! Always trying to optimize every bit. The art & sound design are also top notch, super juicy.”
5 of the 63 reviews raise this.
“Was playing the demo before, very challenging and interesting! Always trying to optimize every bit. The art & sound design are also top notch, super juicy.”
“This programming / puzzle game is very well presented, with a little historical / fantasy story that perfectly fit the progression of the problems during the 5 chapters, and hints at a few interesting questions. The…”
“If the dev team is reading this: Please remember to record the robotic machine in this game and make it into a ASMR video on your Youtube channel with the nice animation of all those ticking gadgets. You might find a…”
12 of the 63 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“I usually love games in this genre, and this one is a Zach-Like that uses Finite State Automata for its core loop. I personally quite like the gameplay, though I do agree that the UI could have been done better and is a…”
“While the game looks great, I do not recommend it. I love the art and feel of this game, the narrative did not grab me but I only played to level 2-3. AAW uses a variation of block coding, e.g. Human Resource Machine,…”
“TL;DR: I'm sad to say that I really can't recommend Alan's Automaton Workshop. I absolutely adore programming games of all kinds, but I'm struggling to find much to like in this one. ------ Right away, we need to…”
11 of the 63 reviews raise this · 10 of them still recommend the game.
“TL:DR I would conditionally recommend this game solely for the sandbox, which according to the developer is available on completion of the second chapter...once it's actually implemented. As for the actual campaign…”
“Pros: Nice graphics Cons story is nice but does not help at all and could be removed to improve the flow of the game. Dialog tells you nothing. Doesn't make a lot of sense the way the programming works. Any help is…”
“if you like logic puzzles that employ real world circuit engineering. I'm stuck on binary multiplication for several months now.”
7 of the 63 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“I usually love games in this genre, and this one is a Zach-Like that uses Finite State Automata for its core loop. I personally quite like the gameplay, though I do agree that the UI could have been done better and is a…”
“While the game looks great, I do not recommend it. I love the art and feel of this game, the narrative did not grab me but I only played to level 2-3. AAW uses a variation of block coding, e.g. Human Resource Machine,…”
“after having played 3 hours on stream, this game is not all its hyped up to be. it lacks a good understanding of what good programming is and rely on exploiting the trashy interface and very weird command interactions…”
7 of the 63 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“TL;DR: I'm sad to say that I really can't recommend Alan's Automaton Workshop. I absolutely adore programming games of all kinds, but I'm struggling to find much to like in this one. ------ Right away, we need to…”
“The UI feels more challenging than the puzzles. Trays slide in and out randomly. Devices blend into the busy background and are too large to see all at once. Manipulating edges, conditions, and actions starts to feel…”
“The game would be fun if it wouldn't be so tedious to build logic in it. The UI is garbage unfortunately, everything from zoom to the huge non-functional nonsense cluttering the screen. The complexity in this game is…”
7 of the 63 reviews raise this · 1 of them still recommend the game.
“While the game looks great, I do not recommend it. I love the art and feel of this game, the narrative did not grab me but I only played to level 2-3. AAW uses a variation of block coding, e.g. Human Resource Machine,…”
“TL;DR: I'm sad to say that I really can't recommend Alan's Automaton Workshop. I absolutely adore programming games of all kinds, but I'm struggling to find much to like in this one. ------ Right away, we need to…”
“The UI feels more challenging than the puzzles. Trays slide in and out randomly. Devices blend into the busy background and are too large to see all at once. Manipulating edges, conditions, and actions starts to feel…”
Counted across 63 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 83.1% positive rating · as of 2026-05-13
“Finite State Automata: the Game If you're a computer science or computational mathematics major, the processes will look very familiar very quickly. And if you're a fan of "Zach-likes" (logical programming-esque games in the same style as those made by Zachtronics), you'll find…”
— a player, Steam review · 8 hrs played“I'm very happy that lately I've come across different niche games that are different from the usual games of different genres. This game is one of them. Very interesting level design and game style that attracts attention. No less interesting puzzles come across on your way.…”
— a player, Steam review · 1 hrs played“I love Zach-likes. A satisfying programming puzzle game works my brain like almost nothing else -- only programming is like it. Any tension in a Zach-like should come from the mechanics; in other words "how the hell do I do that?" Unfortunately, AAW is a game where I can't tell…”
— a player, Steam review · 2 hrs playedAchievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-09-19.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-08-12. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Regional prices at last sample, in local currency — Steam sets each region's price independently.
Cheapest → most expensive, converted to USD at ECB reference rates (2026-09-25). Relative comparison only.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Alan's Automaton Workshop OST
Hello fellow engineers! It's June 23rd again, and that means it's Alan's birthday! But this year, we're celebrating this special day in a slightly different way -- by releasing the Alan's Automaton Wo
Sandbox Bugfixes and Improvements
Hello fellow engineers! We are excited and extremely grateful for everyone's submissions to the Automaton Newsletter! Your levels are really awesome - there are very challenging ones, cleverly designe
The 'Sandbox' Update
Hello fellow engineers! Sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long. Today, we are thrilled to announce that the Sandbox mode of Allen's Automaton Workshop is officially launched here, today! 🤩🏖️📦
The 'Full-Frame Diagram' Update
Hello fellow engineers! Sorry about the delayed update. The Steam Cloud sync issue on Mac took us more time than our expected. Currently the issue was solved under Steam Team's help. For engineers pla
First Anniversary of AAW!
Hello fellow engineers! Today is the first anniversary of the launch of Alan's Automaton Workshop. It has been truly an amazing, fulfilling, and very busy year for us. This is the developer, Alimen sp
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-13.
| Genres | Simulation |
| Player tags | Education · Programming · Steampunk · Automation · Puzzle · Sandbox · Logic · Building · Simulation · Singleplayer · 2D · Indie (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Steam Trading Cards · Steam Cloud · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Simplified Chinese |
| Achievements | 6 |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: OS *: Windows 7 SP1 Processor: 2.0 GHz Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 1GB VRAM DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 2 GB available space