Automachef: Robot Cooking For Beginners (2024)

Automachef is a resource management puzzle game which requires you to build a fully automated kitchen, which will cook and deliver a range of different dishes to customers. As you progress through the levels you’ll unlock more machines, allowing you to build more complex kitchens.

Each level plays like a puzzle, requiring you to manage orders, ingredients and power, in order to fulfill the level criteria. While some machines are easy to use, others have a learning curve to them. Here are some tips to get you started.

Understanding Basic Machines

Most of the initial machines are self explanatory. Dispensers will dispense, conveyor belts move ingredients, grills and fryers cook them and assemblers put all the ingredients together. A dumb robot arm will move any ingredient in front of it, while a smart one can be configured to just move something specific, most commonly a cooked ingredient.

The first complex machine you’ll encounter is the order reader. This can be configured to dispense ingredients to the correct machines.

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To use an order reader, click on it and select the recipe you wish to detect. You can then click on the machines associated with that recipe and set them to dispense the correct amount of ingredients for one order. Initially this will be one item but more complex recipes will require different amounts of each item, so make sure you check the recipe.

Saving Space

In order to be more efficient, and to pass later levels, you’ll need to learn how to save space. The best way to do this is to eliminate as many conveyor belts as possible. Many of the early machines can be produced using either very limited conveyor belts, or even none at all.

Robot arms can take items directly from dispensers to grills or fryers. They can also pick up food straight from a food processor. After food is cooked, you can use smart robot arms to move it directly into the assembler. The only conveyor belts you will need for producing basic recipes, like burgers and hot dogs, are those which deliver it to the restaurant.

You can also save space by packing machines together. Right clicking on a robot arm will allow you to set options to move items straight, left or right. Once you set these you will see an arrow appear on the arms base when you click on it, helping you to ensure they are configured correctly.

Moving items round corners can help you cluster together machines in blocks, saving space and time. The further an ingredient needs to travel the longer it will take to produce the order.

Conserving Power

Several machines have power conservation settings. Assemblers, grills and fryers can all be configured. They have a standard mode, fast mode and power saving mode. Each one takes a different length of time to cook. The quicker the cooking time, the more power is required. Balancing these settings is essential to get orders out before they expire, without consuming huge amounts of power.

Later levels have a blackout risk. For these levels, conserving power is essential. These settings will help you to do that, as well as to hit the energy level targets for each level.

Conveyor belts can also be configured to move at speed 1-5. As with other machines a faster speed will require more power. The speeds can also be varied to ensure ingredients move more freely if you have several conveyors feeding into one place.

Using Blueprints

Alongside the campaign mode, the game also has a test kitchen mode. Here you can build machines to produce specific recipes, and then save them as blueprints. Once saved the blueprints can be used in the main game, meaning you don’t need to keep building the same sets of machines over and over again.

A large amount of the games challenge is in fitting different things into different spaces, as well as conserving money and power. Not every blueprint will be right for every kitchen but having all the machines a specific recipe needs prepared will still save you time, even if you reposition them.

Testing Your Kitchen

Once you’ve built your machines to produce a specific recipe make sure that you test them. To do this click on the recipe then hit the simulate order button. This will send a sample order through and you can ensure everything works.

Make sure you check each dispenser, ensure your robot arms are delivering ingredients to the correct place and monitor cooked food. You also need to check that all the dispensers are linked to the order reader, and they are delivering the correct number of ingredients.

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The easiest mistakes to make are not configuring robot arms to move around corners, forgetting to set the recipe in the assembler and neglecting to configure the smart arm to only collect cooked food.

Keep an eye out for the red triangles. These indicate that you did not configure an item, such as a dispenser. They can help you avoid mistakes.

Running Your Kitchen

Once you are sure all the recipes can be produced then you can start the level. You will need to hit the order requirement to pass the level, but the power and ingredient targets are optional. You’ll also need to keep your kitchen under budget.

All levels are possible but some are very tight on space or budget. Remember to keep machines to a minimum and pack things as close together as you can.

I’d also recommend doing all the optional levels and tutorials, as these will help you understand different concepts, machines and hazards which you’ll need as you progress.

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