Atomicrops (PC) Preview

The first thing that stands out about Atomicrops is its wacky, colourful graphics and light-hearted, yet at the same time dark, and even haunting music. These play nicely off of each other - for the most part. One of the most common enemies is a big pink rabbit that sticks out like a sore thumb; the design isn't bad, but doesn't really mesh with the mutated, post-apocalyptic vibe of the rest of the art direction.

The next thing that stands out is the way this blends the different genres it pulls from: players plant and care for crops during the day, which requires venturing out into the enemy-filled wilderness to find seeds, while nightfall finds them defending their fledgling farm from waves of enemies. Combat itself comes down to shooting in 360 degrees around the character, while enemies fire back - and boy, do they fire back! There are moments where the screen looks as if straight out of a bullet hell shooter. It's easy to view this as a farming sim, but the farming aspects come across as secondary; basically everything farm-related is either automatic or is mapped to a solitary "do" button.

This brings us to the third thing that stands out about this title: it does everything in its power to stop the player from having fun. That's not a sentence a game reviewer ever wants to write, and it can't be stressed enough that there is a very solid foundation to Atomicrops, but a foundation is all it is at this point. This can be frustratingly difficult on its own, which is expected of shooters, but various other aspects don't play nicely with its inherent difficulty. For example, there are no permanent upgrades. Dying results in all progress being wiped, and players have to start from scratch. This isn't your standard roguelike "just do a little better every time" type of starting over, either. No progress is saved, no upgrades are retained, there are no skill trees; a game over means a game over.

Couple this with the fact that players only get one life and four hearts, and the problems arise quickly. Hearts are nearly impossible to find in the wild (during these review sessions, a grand total of two appeared), and cost multiple roses to purchase, which are the rarest possible currency. These restrictions feel artificial; this is an early access game that likely doesn't have a horde of content in it yet, and it seems like the developers decided to just crank the difficulty through the roof in lieu of readily available content. Beyond that, success is punished almost as harshly as failure. With the game's few upgrades and items both extremely expensive and non-permanent, as well as no apparent story or even overarching theme connecting everything going on, there just doesn't seem to be any real point to it at all.