I love to farm…in videogames, I mean, real-life farming would be a serious chore – my quota of responsible behaviour has been running dry for quite a few years. In a videogame though, all that makes sense. Till the land, plant seeds, spread fertilizers, water them, and finally harvest – the gamified mechanics which over-reward me with in-game items, happy sounds, and bright lights. The slow and unrushed beat of this kind of gameplay, accompanied by calm music lulls you into a sense of being content. Atomicrops drags you screaming out of that lull of misplaced complacency, shoves a gun in your hand, and throws a fuck-ton of enemies at you to send your heartbeat through the roof. You want to be a farmer? Kill everything that threatens your land and crops. Let’s go ahead and see how that commandment affected my life.

Dance Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

If you are looking for a story in this game, you will be sorely disappointed. The game starts off with a beautifully-animated short where you go to visit a country-side farm that you have inherited from your deceased uncle – complete with a ‘cow-house’, ‘corn-bush’, ‘potato-orchard’ and a ‘spooky-hatch’. While you banter about the safety of a bomb shelter with a local redneck Dwight Schrute, a nuclear bomb goes off in the distance peeling the meat-paint off that hillbilly yokel. And that is when you know, this was all a parody. Atomicrops doesn’t care about the peaceful farm-life and the sweet relationships that you might foster with village locals. Doesn’t want you to uncover the secret behind the nuclear apocalypse or the secret hatch. No, sirree! It wants you to grow ultra-GMO crops in an irradiated wasteland to feed a crazy-ass town while battling mutant local wildlife.

After a rickety tutorial, you are thrust into the game – your very first run. And that’s where my problems began – the tutorial teaches you algebra for your calculus exam. You begin with a pea shooter, 4 potato seeds and a watering can – and then it’s time for you to slowly learn what the tutorial should at least have hinted at. The game is structured in this manner – for you to complete a run, you have to survive through 4 seasons. Each season lasts 3 days, and each day has 3 phases – day, night, and a mandatory visit to the town in the morning.

There are 4 biomes in the cardinal directions, and you have to make these supply runs there if you want to survive the night and make some profit on your crops. Each raid into that unknown will get you seeds, extremely handy farming tools and if you are lucky, magical scrolls that will boost your capabilities. The catch – each biome is packed to the brim with enemies. During the day, you raid, collect, and farm. At night you need to protect your land, as manic pests descend onto your crops with an otherworldly zeal to destroy it. On the last and third night of each season, they bring along with them, a big, bad boss. Survive all this and you will be greeted with an impressive song and dance routine back at the town.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Atomicrops is a roguelike bullet-hell shooter that inherits more from its grand-daddy roots of Nuclear Throne rather than from its pastoral cousin Stardew Valley. Some minor farming mechanics aside, the game majorly falls back on the good-old dodge-strafe-shoot of bullet hells and tower defense games. There is a lot of enemy variety – with common enemies like the psycho-bunnies with a blunderbuss or a sniper, or the melee slugs, wasps or beesons. Some enemies only appear at the farm – like the flower faced moles and weed monsters. Lastly, there are some biome specific enemies, like the bats from the plains, owls from the tundra, or the chameleon from the jungle. The enemies telegraph their motion, attack action direction and area of damage in the game – a welcome boon when you get surrounded by a whole bunch of them.

Every third and final night of each season, you will find a boss invading your farm. These bosses will bring with themselves their own unique attack patterns and a horde of minions who will try to overwhelm you from all directions. The Sol Crusher and Corpse-a-copia boss fights should be considered instant classics! While the Sol Crusher in its secondary form leaves behind a whirlwind of bombs in all directions that will have you running helter skelter, the fruit-salad Corpse-a-copia will keep lighting your crops on fire and call in their giant hellish veggie spawn that will deal a fuck-ton of damage. If you manage to save some of your defensive assets like turrets and scarecrows for these epic battles, you will already be on your way to victory!

Now that we are done with the list of stuff that wants to kill you, let’s talk about who is going to help you! You can recruit a whole host of farm animals like pigs, chicken, bees, and cows to do your bidding – these domesticated animals will help you boost crop growth, water them and even remove weed and till your soil. Apart from that, you can also woo a local from the town. If all goes well, and you grow enough roses to give to your partner, you might be able to marry them and get them to fight alongside you. They will provide unique stat boosts and some much-needed help and company in these troubled times!

Live, Die, Rinse, Repeat

The pixel-art graphics are good and the music, though repetitive, might settle in quite well as an earworm. The quirky animation style will make you smile unknowingly – the crops happily bop to the beat and the enemies try to nom-nom your crops. The core loop of the gameplay feels strong, but the other underlying elements like roguelike complexity and farming mechanics are serviceable. Unlockable characters do switch up the game a bit by bringing in their own traits and items (and handicaps too!).

Through the course of the game, you also learn that if you plant four seeds of the same type in a 2×2 formation and fertilize it effectively, it will lead to them combining and forming a mega-crop. You will also get to collect or buy tractors with varied uses like turning enemies into fertilizer and cutting all weed from an area.

Stock available for purchase back at the town seems erratic – it changes every day with no discernible pattern, and might leave you in a tricky spot. Especially, if you were eyeing a particular gun, or need some farming tools. Even if you end up buying a gun you like, it will break after one day and leave you with your pea-shooter. I found this game-design decision puzzling! And may heaven forbid that you have a bad season and you don’t end up collecting enough cashews, fertilizer, or seeds: it will be exceptionally tough to turn the tide further ahead. The tempo of the game seldom allows for a miraculous comeback! There are some permanent upgrades that you can carry over from previous playthroughs, but they are rare and provide only a limited advantage.

Atomicrops is a game about balancing time and action. What you need to do, and when, are important variables to the decision making process. And you need to do that fast, or else you will die. Planning each day carefully is a big step towards staying alive – you need to remember to retreat when faced with insurmountable odds, think about the cashew currency that you might want to spend on a trip to town, and when to use your utilities and upgrades.

Real Talk

Atomicrops is a decent bullet-hell roguelike that boldly tries to bring in elements from farming games and the tower-defense genre but stumbles in getting the mix perfect. Each run, instead of feeling educational and satisfying, leaves you in a mess of RNG-fueled rage. There is always something that you could have done better – bought a Sriracha soaker for the last day, used the Rain Cloud scroll, or not ventured into the Tundra and fight the Ice Mages – but alas, there is no way of correcting that. This game will torture and tease you: but you will keep returning to it for that one dream run that you know might never come.

FINAL RATING: SKIPPABLE

Disclaimer: Game copy received from the developers for review purposes with no riders.