Atomicrops combines twin-stick shooter roguelike gameplay with a farming simulator. It's a game that's visually very exciting. I suppose that's half the reason I picked it up. Looking at the screenshots on the store page, the graphics are quite stylized, and there seems to be a lot going on at the same time. None of that's wrong, but perhaps the busyness of it all is actually a downside.
See, the game gives you a brief tutorial on how to shoot, how to till your fields, plant crops, water them, and then harvest them. That's all fine, but that's a small portion of things that you can do. The game starts off slow with a small patch of land and enemies only appearing at nighttime. It feels manageable, but you quickly realize you can decide to just ditch your land and go to another area to fight enemies instead. You also run out of seeds, because harvested crops don't drop new ones. You don't really know what the right course of action is, and the game doesn't lean you into it either - everything's available straight away, and time is ticking away. Each next day is harder, and each next season is harder, and each next year is harder. Sure, you get some upgrades between all that, but still. So at least I was quicky overwhelmed, trying to juggle somehow getting new seeds, not leaving my farm unattended, planting, watering, harvesting, and defending my crops at the same time, all the while trying to figure out if I might be playing the game entirely wrong.
In the end, after a few failed runs, not that the game expects you to get far at first, I gave up. Part of me feels like I should've stayed for longer to see more of what the game had to offer, but my experience thus far was stressing and confusing, and that's not something I want from a game. I was constantly out of seeds, but I also couldn't go get any because I was always being attacked, and I felt like there was some way to get better crops, but the game didn't teach me any of that, and then every plot of my land was instantly overcome with weeds, or short on water, or in need of tilling, or... You get the point - I always had to do something, and I didn't get much more action speed as the game went on, but I was expected to attend a larger field and defend it from more enemies.
Atomicrops is definitely more of a twin-stick shooter than a farming simulator. I'm not convinced it's a bad game, just a bit unapproachable. So if you're looking for a twin-stick shooter with a twist, then it's possible you'll enjoy Atomicrops. I didn't experience it enough to really tell, so from a personal standpoint I can't recommend it. I couldn't get over trying to do too many things at once, and for a combat-focused game, I can't say I found anything special or particularly enjoyable about the combat either.
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