PREVIEW : Atomicrops (PC)
It talks to the uncomfortable balance among humankind’s grief and optimism that we’re all reasonably certain we’re going to bomb one another into obscurity at some point, but that it will further be loads of fun for those who bear the blast, with mutated trees and cool cars and glowing green goop floating everywhere. Atomicrops is 1 such concept of an animated radioactive future, a post-apocalyptic twin-stick plantation game in which vegetables grow to full size in a just few minutes so long as they’re not smashed to bits by mutated slugs.
At the break of dawn each day you’re airdropped into your domain, where you’ve got just a valuable few moments to perform your tasks as a farmer of irradiated crops for the old village. You’ve got a weapon to defend your crops, a pot to water them with and a till for mixing up the soil in preparation for sowing. As the day passes you have to explore some fascinating surrounding wastelands, which lie to the west and east of your small plot of farmable land. Here you’ll discover tents of rebels watching new seeds and pick-ups that support automate growth, grow your plot, increase your yield and protect your valuable veggies.
At dusk, your defenceless small farm is attacked by three swarms of enemies. Mutated rabbits loaded with bombs, angry moles whose faces cut open like woolly buds to spit fireballs at you, and oozy slugs and insect colonies that attack your plants if they can get close enough. Defend them off, cut your fully grown vegetables and by daybreak you’ll be evacuated by helicopter to the village centre to consume your earnings, like Anneka Rice after she discovers some treasure, except the world, has ended so the treasure is a vegetable.
The vegetables you do succeed to harvest are converted into currency to be used on weapons, seeds and accessories that will assist you to fare a little strong the next day, and any infrastructure you’ve created – or animals such as pigs and cows you’ve applied to automatically till and water your tiles – will still be waiting there for you when the helicopter turns you to your field at dawn. So subsequent days start to mould your plot, particularly as some special kinds of seed can turn into trees that bear fruit over and over again, and certain defences take up perpetual positions, like turrets that automatically gun down nearing rivals.
Taken collectively, all of this struggle and cultivation is a lot to handle. Way more hectic than you’d expect from a play about turning mutant singing turnips. Farming sims are frequently placid affairs, where the most mind-boggling components are to do with whether or not you’ll have cooked sufficient bread in time for the country fair. But Atomicrops giddily undermines the farming genre, allowing a skill-based, hectic and challenging with punishing permadeath that requires you to restart from beginning every time you cork it. The game’s arrangements are all meant to pull you in various directions at once: there’s nevermore quite sufficient time to seek for new seeds, plant new crops, fertilise the ones you’ve got, gun down the nightly terrors that fall upon your garden and accumulate enough roses to marry one of the villagers for their special bonus ability.
But it’s when you’re overpowered into multitasking that Atomicrops gets very clever. The game’s control system is designed such that when various things require your immediate attention, you can slip down a cognitive gear. The right button ignites your weapon, while the left trigger is employed for all of the crop growing processes: planting, tilling, weeding and the like. If that farming trigger is solely held down player will do whatever job requires doing in the neighbouring tiles. Sprinkling your crops happens as long as you’re standing near enough to them and have refilled your container at the well. That leaves your quickly blistering brain free to concentrate on next threats, dodging bullets and killing rabbit snipers, while cultivation happens in a broad sense around your feet.
Passive agriculture like this befalls with some compromise. If you can cut out a few valuable flashes to be more concerned about the position of your crops, you can plant similar seeds side by side to turn larger and more precious megacorps. And to maximise your plot’s yield you require to manually treat your plants with the blobs of pink stuff that comes from dead enemies. The more you acquire to grips with the twin-stick shooter half of Atomicrops, the better a farmer you grow by a stint of presenting yourself more time to tend to the needs of your field.
Unlike a game like Spelunky, there’s something about how externalised your farm’s growth is – how your progress over the periods is marked in building a bigger plot of land, a small family of healthy animals, and a border of turrets, for instance – that makes beginning over again feel so dispiriting. The early access version of Atomicrops feels like the amped-up ‘continuous challenge’ mode of another, more leisurely atomic farming game, one without the cruel finish of a game over screen.
Fix that badger feeling that your thoughtful nurturing of a happy cabbage was all for nothing, and what you’ll be left with is a joyously charming, creative and testing twin-stick shooter, with swirling carrots and flying squirrel guns. Atomicrops is an amazing game for as long as you can keep fighting to enjoy it.
REVIEW : Spirit of the North (PC)
