In the guise of a farming simulator, Atomicrops offers us an intense bullet hell experience and many hours of roguelite fun.
Comparison is one of the most effective resources for talking about a video game. It establishes a frame of reference with hardly any words, so that anyone easily knows what will be found at the controls. It is enough to compare one title with another to discover the genre, the difficulty, the graphic style or the mechanics of the most recent one. Something that helps especially when introducing new indies, smaller games and often unknown to the general public. Although insulted by the excesses that have been made of it, the comparison is decisive in video game journalism. If done right, of course. With Atomicrops, the game that concerns us, it is vital to do it well.
There will be those who compare Danny Wynne’s work with Stardew Valley, for example. Both share a nice pixel-art, elements of the farming simulator and talk about farms, livestock and a calmer way of life. Eric Barone’s work is the first that came to mind when we learned about the existence of Atomicrops because, after all, the connection is obvious. But it is a superficial comparison, which does not go deep and speaks of the roof instead of the foundation. As with Dark Souls and the challenging games, it seems that any work that advocates bucolic is indebted to Stardew Valley. This statement, of course, is as inaccurate as that idea with an air of dogma that everything is Dark Souls. Despite the first impression, if you had to compare Atomicrops with a previous work to understand its tone, its gameplay and its aspirations it would be with Nuclear Throne.
Nuclear potatoes in a hell of bullets
Surprising as it may seem, Atomicrops isn’t your typical flirty and playful farming simulator with colorful vegetables and haystack haystacks. What’s more, we wouldn’t even classify it as a typical farmer simulator. What Bird Bath Games proposes is rather a twin stick shooter with echoes of Nuclear Throne for its post-nuclear setting and Enter the Gungeon for its constant hell of bullets. There is some nuance of simulation of life such as flirting in the town square, but it is a mere dressing. Understanding that Atomicrops owes more to the gameplay of Digital Return than to Yasuhiro Wada is basic because it completely disrupts what one can expect and get from this indie.
Atomicrops was born as a satirical reinterpretation of the farming simulator, as can be seen in its hilarious trailer. We inherited our late uncle’s farm and a neighbor teaches us the benefits of country life. The protagonist discovers a nuclear refuge that he does not hesitate to explore and invites his garden companion to pass. He laughs, because nothing bad has ever happened in the surroundings. They both burst out laughing when a nuclear bomb does the same and flays the farmer, leaving the poor rookie a madman. Banjo music plays and the characters start mutant rabbits, misshapen slugs, and zombie moles. The Atomicrops cover letter tells us that here we have come to laugh and shoot more than to plant and walk. And it is enough to start playing to verify that it is absolutely true.
Four seasons, hundreds of dangers
The roguelite vocation of Atomicrops is made explicit in its structure. Each run is divided into four three-day stations and each day is made up of three phases: morning, night and visit to the town. The first hours of the day are used to plant the odd vegetable and explore the surroundings of the farm that we have just inherited from our uncle. We have around a couple of minutes to accumulate seeds and improvements, water the plants and fertilize the earth with the corpses of your enemies. Each ridge is a trench, and every scarecrow is good for planting a turret and containing hordes of rabid vegetables. Still in the morning phase, the game invites us to explore the biomes close to the east and west, the latter being the simplest and the one that gives us kits to repair bridges and access other biomes. In them, of course, dozens of enemies await and much, many farm tools: seeds, tractors and the occasional weapon. The loot of a lifetime, go. We cannot be charmed, since we have to watch the farm from time to time and return to defend it from mutant attacks. As if you were a hybrid between Rambo and Juliana of the new Animal Crossing, you will soon find yourself shouting things like “nobody touches my turnips” while you pierce the sky with your bullets.
Just when you get used to the rhythm imposed by tasks such as collecting seeds and defending your lands, Atomicrops changes phase and night begins. That’s when things get ugly. Enemies increase in number, size, and difficulty, with sniper bunnies and monster slugs as best examples. And they will not only want your blood, but also your vegetables. Again, saving your life is as important as picking up your crop intact. If you lose one of the two things, start again. If you resist, a helicopter will rescue you and take you to town. You are saved. At the moment.
Visiting the town
Once in civilization, we will be rewarded with a few cashew nuts, the currency of the game, for what we have managed to harvest. You can also hover and flirt for a while – one of the few elements of life-sim that does include Atomicrops – to get a cable defending your farm. With some patience and a few roses, the affinity of our romantic interest in question will increase, we will gain skills, and ultimately add new cash to our garden trench.
The town is also the ideal place to acquire weapons, improvements and new seeds before starting a new day of blood, sweat and parsnips. Nobody gives away cashews and the prices are relatively high, so you should think carefully about what you need. The weapons, for example, only last one day. They are much better than your initial pea launcher and each one has special features that will make our task easier. Especially for the third night.
Every third day of each season, night hordes flock to your farm led by a fearsome boss. Then you will have to face a crazy tractor, a rabbit on the back of a wild snail and many other crazy things. Survive and the mayor, a chattering turnip, will reward you based on the cashew nuts you earned during that season. And then? Summer is coming. Fall. Winter. And more bosses.
A little bucolic challenge
That is the structure shared by all Atomicrops games, the cycle that repeats itself if any choleric mole ends our life and has to start over. Bird Bath Games sets a fast pace in both farm management and gameplay. The variety is provided by the three unlockable characters – we started with Lavender – and the fact that the improvements are not permanent. There are some exceptions, but their impact is minimal and the general rule in Atomicrops is that each game requires you to combine new weapons, abilities and improvements. It never feels repetitive and its progression system trusts that it is the player who improves more than in unlocking permanent improvements until it is a walk. It is not easy to get used to and its difficulty poses more of a challenge, but in return we have a game for a while.
The downside, because there always is, is that the farming component that was promoted so much before the launch pales next to its bullet hell side. Those touches of bucolic play serve more to justify a setting and provide a distraction while fighting, something to defend, than to build an empire of potatoes and watermelons like in Stardew Valley. Hence this criticism starts by pointing out that Atomicrops should not be compared to Barone’s simulator, even if the game’s advertising itself has tried to give it a certain air of farming simulator. As a game of shooting and dodging bullets it does quite well, but it does not come to revolutionize anything either. His argument is simple and everything that moves away from the bullets is quite simple. However, Atomicrops’ will is to satirize pixelated farmers, who want you to have a good time with a solid base and few virguerÃas. Sometimes that is enough. And this is one of those times.
CONCLUSION
If you go to Atomicrops in search of the typical farm simulator with the occasional shooter element, flee. Danny Wynne’s play is just the opposite: a shooting game with fair farmer dressings. Don’t ask for quiet and laid-back routines planting cucumbers like Harvest Moon and his spiritual heirs, but for vibrant moments and real bullet hells. In everything else it goes a tad fair, but without ceasing to be correct at any time. What you will find is a game with a lot of personality, diversity and challenges to enjoy for hours and hours.
THE BEST
- Infinite Replayability: Each game forces you to combine new weapons and abilities
- It offers a challenge at the height of the great twin stick shooters of recent times
- His sense of humor and characters are hilarious
WORST
- Farming simulator elements are too shallow
- The relationships with the characters are flat and only serve to get improvements
Good
It meets the expectations of what is a good game, it has quality and does not have serious flaws, although it lacks elements that could have taken it to higher levels.
