Recent reviews by [SAP]CommanderA

Loving a game is perfectly alright. Wanting to make a game inspired by it is also perfectly alright. Making your game almost completely the same as the one you love, is not alright. I don't mean that entirely from an intellectual property point of view, or a copyright point of view, or anything like that. There are so many games these days that are copies of copies, derivatives of derivatives, what ever.

No, what I mean when I say making this game almost an exact copy of another game, is that ATOM RPG is quite clearly and unabashedly inspired by Fallout 1 and 2, to the point of basically copying all of the bad game designs and mistakes that they had. Don't get me wrong, Fallout 1 and 2 are right up there on my list of favourite games; back from the early 2000s when I picked them up, and they were made back in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Game designers have had nearly thirty years to improve on these games and their formula. They were a product of their time, this game is not.

For some reason the creators of ATOM RPG didn't innovate on the original Fallout formula, they didn't change things that were annoying or that were a problem. They didn't fix the mistakes that were unintentional, or caused by game engine limitations. I don't know why this is. Do they love the original Fallout games so much (so much that they even took the 'a post apocalyptic roleplaying game' for their title) that they didn't want to change anything at all other than the setting, characters, weapons, etc? Did they not have the ability or intellectual capacity to make a unique game (which I find extremely hard to believe as this game is great in it's own way in certain areas)? I don't know what is going on here.

You cannot freely move your camera around like you can in most RPG games now. This can severely limit your ability to see items on the ground, on shelves, and things further away. The latter issue is also compounded by a lack of zooming out. You are often times just way too close to your character, and cannot get a good look at the map and specific angles of it. One of the interesting things about Fallout was being able to recruit companions. This game does the same, however they have barely changed the interface for anything. The most annoying casualty of this is your inventory, where only a small number of items actually show up in the two bars (increased from one in the Fallout games). But for companions, this is awful, as navigating through them and using them is extremely annoying and difficult.

Everything must be done to your companion through dialogue, as you cannot control them in any way. In combat, they will choose what it is they want to do, unless you use the lengthy menu process to change what they do. Melee companions will run right in front of you and take a bullet to the back and die. Or stand there shooting when they should be running, and die; and when they die, they aren't coming back. This is just like the original Fallout games, to the point where many people, myself included, just didn't bother with Charisma and recruiting companions. Yes, they were interesting and could at times be useful, but they were very often a huge liability.

It is the same, if not worse in this game. Now you can spend time and effort gearing them up, leveling up their skills, picking out abilities for them on the ability tree, only for them to throw a molotov cocktail at their feet when fighting a rodent and die instantly. Just, why? Why would you copy all of the flaws and mistakes of the original games? They at least have the excuse of being old and charming. This game has no excuse, other than I guess they wanted to make a Russian inspired clone? I hate to break it to you, but the Eastern European Fallout modding community has been making those for decades now, and they are free.

One of your companions dying can actually softlock the main quest. I would understand is this was say, Morrowind, and it informed you that: "With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created." But unfortunately, you get no warning about this. I love games that allow you to kill NPCs and block you from doing their side quests, or quests with them involved in it. Fallout New Vegas was great for this. You could kill everyone and everything. That freedom of choice is great; but at least more modern games tell you that such a quest has been failed. Even Morrowind did it with side quests, and that was released in 2002.

The tutorial is great and very well done in teaching you how to play the game, and use the outdated controls, but after that information from the game is extremely sparse. What is a useful crafting item, what is sellable junk, and what is a rare and unique item required for something way down to line? Who knows, but you only have a very limited amount of carry weight, so you better decide wisely! Does giving your companions certain perks and abilities stack with your own? Do they even work at all? No information or answers. Is there a place I can go to look at my character and see what statuses and effects they are currently under? No. The uninformative, unintuitive user interface and game design is just carried right over, and unlike the original Fallout games, this game is not popular enough to get a properly filled out wiki or guides.

If you are a massive, massive Fallout 1 and 2 fan and constantly replay those games and don't mind how obstinate they are, how aged they are, their flaws and mistakes; then I would recommend this game, because it basically changes nothing. If you are not a hard core fan of those games, and are looking for a fun post apocalyptic RPG to play, might I recommend to you Wasteland 2 or 3? Especially if you love things that are directly Fallout inspired. But there are just so many other, more advanced and improved RPG games out there. While I do really like the setting, characters, and writing in this game, I just can't recommend it on nearly anything else. I wanted to keep playing to see new people and places and things, but I just couldn't force myself to keep going.

I would highly recommend a game like Desktop Dungeons any day of the week over this game. Unfortunately, this game is all about the grind, and an unfair amount of random chance with little to no variation.

Yes, I know, Roguelike games are supposed to be full of all kinds of random chance, they are supposed to be unfair, and yes there is a charm and a fun in that. This game takes it to a level where, when combined with the grind, it is just not fun. It becomes monotonous, and then annoying.

The game kind of plays like Minesweeper, you click on a pitch black game board to reveal random tiles. Sometimes there is nothing and you get a single soul point (to activate items you find), sometimes you find usable items, and sometimes you step on several spike traps all in a row completely destroying your armour and lowering your health before you even find an enemy to fight. When you do reveal an enemy it is random, which can give massive buffs to any other revealed enemies on the board. So of course, you would want to take it slowly and fight an enemy one at a time right? Wrong, the character you start with and will play with forever, has only one single ability that uses mana, and that ability removes enemy damage based on how many squares are currently blocked off by revealed enemies. So to make any use of your ability, you have to gamble.

Maybe some people might find that a fun prospect, but I don't. Especially when you combine that with the fact that you have a chance to hit around 75%. Are you sure you are going to be able to kill that vampire in that hit, or is he going to take three more when you miss, he hits you back, and regains a ton of his health? It goes that way with every enemy. You can calculate all of your moves on the revealed game board perfectly, and still lose due to the random chance of you missing. Then add in the fact that enemies have a dodge chance on top of this! So even if you collect weapons, armour, and level up your hit chance, you can still miss. So much fun...

Then you can add in the ranged enemies, who will shoot at your from across the map in squares you haven't revealed yet and often times cannot get to. My favourite floor was the one with several archers and mages who killed me in just three turns as I tried to make my way over to them. Yes, you can find a bow and arrow weapon in this game to be able to attack these enemies back at range, but good luck finding one.

Do you want to unlock a different character? What about improve how much health you collect when you find a healing heart? Well, you better enjoy playing this game over and over and over again, grinding out thousands and thousands of gold, when a gold drop is generally less than 10 gold, with (if you are lucky) around 3 or so on a floor. I can't really comprehend this choice, especially considering you can buy items and equipment before and during the run, and they also cost hundreds of gold, but do not persist through runs. It is kind of insane.

I love Roguelike games. Play literally any other Roguelike game than this. Play Caves of Qud, Slay The Spire, Desktop Dungeons, Rinf of Pain, anything that isn't this brutal, unenjoyable, luck based grindfest. Don't buy this game.

I really enjoyed this game, in the campaign, in the scenarios, and in free-play. It is a great mix of action elements with a tower defence and mining/resource gathering base.

You gather metals to build structures, and lumen, a crystalline energy source, to upgrade buildings, research new technologies, and improve character stats. I really enjoy the early game, when you are scraping together what ever resources you can to start on your defences and upgrade your drill and weapons, while running through dark tunnels gunning down bugs and destroying nests to expand your safe zone. Bugs will patrol around their nests, so if you go down the tunnels and destroy the nests it pushes them back, giving you more room to expand your base, your mining operations, and your main defences against the main wave.

The late game is also fun, but not quite as enjoyable, especially when some maps can have 30+ waves in them. This can cause the game to drag on for far too long. Thankfully there is an option you can toggle on your main reactor base to cut down the time between waves, but I feel like when I am doing that I am depriving myself of the chance to get resources and make further improvements, even if I know I don't need them. It is a weird sensation and thought pattern I can't quite seem to get rid of.

Regardless, the gun-play is fun, building your defences and upgrading them is fun, mining and exploring is fun. All around, it is a fun game. It also looks pretty dang good, and sounds good too. It could use some extra tracks for waves/combat, actually maybe just more in general as things can start to get a bit stale after a while, but still not too bad. In the downtime between waves you usually have enough time to put on a video or something to watch. There is no dialogue in the game, so you can really just turn down the game music and replace it with your own.

If some things could be changed, I would say this: the fact that bugs can destroy terrain, and the way that automated mining machines and lumen farms work. For the former, I understand and agree that if the bugs are trapped in an area, they should be able to dig their way out (many nests will not spawn in the corridors, and will instead spawn in the terrain, giving you a nasty but fun surprise while mining). But the fact that if you upgrade your walls too much, or build too many gates to block off a choke point, that they will instead opt to chew through half the map to get at you, is very not fun and unwelcome.

As for the latter, automatic mining machines and lumen farms, they will just spit the resources they create/harvest out and to the right hand side. This is very annoying, as you then have to go and manually collect it all and then either use it or put it into storage yourself. If you want, you can mitigate this by building a storage building beside the mine/farm, but this uses up a ton of space. A lot of the time your base is pretty cramped, and so having the space to do this is a luxury. If these buildings cost a little bit more, but also acted as storage from when you first construct them, I think that would be an amazing improvement. Even if it was something you had to research at the lab, I would still love that.

Another thing I will say about this game, is that it would be ten times better if it had a proper co-op mode. The elements are there with the weird split screen co-op that has been implemented, but does anyone actually play that way, or want to play that way? A proper multiplayer mode for this game would make it fantastic, and I am sure boost the popularity of it.

Overall, a good game. Fun, but not without flaws. I could definitely see a sequel to this game being made, and I would very much welcome it. I would even settle for a DLC that continues where the campaign left off. I would highly recommend this game to both veterans of this genre, and newcomers alike.

This is a fantastic game that I would highly recommend to people who are fans of Roguelite games. It can be pretty brutal, especially at the start when you are still figuring things out. Eventually though, when you understand the game and the mechanics, if you are lucky, you can become unstoppable.

I don't quite know why it has the card game tag. I mean, technically your enemies are on cards in order to more easily convey their stats and abilities, but you don't have cards that you use. Other than a spell book and a scroll, you don't really use anything that could be considered a card.

That aside, the game is a ton of fun. The style is creepy, everything looks awful, and combined with the sound effects and music, creates a dark and heavy atmosphere, which fits with the themes of shadows vs light, ignorance vs realisation. The ring of pain is a cycle that you are going through, and will continue to go through it seems. What that cycle is exactly, I think is up for interpretation, and could really fit what ever the player might be going through in their life. We are all going through cycles of something. Things that we don't want to admit to and talk about, and because of this it just causes more pain. I think that this is rather brilliantly captured in the game, and adds a layer of depth to it as you play through, over, and over, and over again.

I wish I had found this game earlier, but even after five years of release, nothing about this game seems to have diminished in any way. I think it will continue to hold up, and I honestly wish that it was more well known. Again, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Roguelite games, and I would recommend it to people who are on the fence about these kinds of games, or are new to them. I think that this is a perfect entry point for people new to this genre of game, and something advanced and deep enough that it will keep skilled players going for quite a long time.

Sometimes less is not more, and what some people might find minimalist and artistic, is in fact, just annoying and obtuse.

It is difficult to understand what is going on in this game, from the controls, to actually solving the puzzles. Eventually you find your way to the bare basics control list, but even then there is a severe lack of a tutorial. I suppose the name of this game is trial and error, but to be honest, I don't find that very fun or entertaining.

I played and did as much as I could stomach, to try and get my money back out of this game. Thankfully I bought it on sale, unfortunately I bought it on sale a long time ago, so the window to refund it is long gone. Because I would refund this game if I could, in an instant. I like puzzle games; I hate this game.

Don't buy this game.

This is a good game, if you have a lot of time, and don't mind seeing hours of work destroyed in seconds. Sometimes, it isn't even the enemy that destroys your work, but your own team.

The war rages on eternally, both sides fighting to control different parts of the map, and push the other side back into their starting section. Everything that you use to fight, including the ability to respawn, is created by someone in the back lines. The logistics for this game are extremely important, to the point where if there is no one mining and refining resources into guns and ammunition, fighting will grind to a halt. That is one of the tactics in this game, attack behind the enemy lines, destroy their resource production, and limit their front-line fighting capabilities.

If you don't want to do that however, focus on making materials to wage war, there is always fighting on the front lines. Digging trenches, storming trenches and fortifications, hurling explosives at barely seen targets before you are inevitably struck down. The fighting in this game can be brutal when it gets in close, but most of it from what I have seen is just sniping across no mans land. The most fun I have had in the game so far has been to form a team with my friends, build up until we can make ourselves a tank, and then work as a full crew to drive it to the front lines, and die almost instantly.

To explain further what I mentioned up above, about your time and effort being destroyed by allies; I mean that there is a serious problem with people going onto alternate accounts, and committing sabotage. They infiltrate factions and team Discord channels and other methods of communication, and relay information back to their own allies. Everything from sneak attacks to entire front-line pushes can be thwarted this way. If it was actually somehow a part of the game, it might be interesting, if it wasn't so annoying. I have had hours of work destroyed by a 'team mate', and when you then shoot and kill them to stop them, you end up getting warnings and possibly a kick from the server, while the saboteur goes free.

In the end, it can be a lot of fun solo if you like doing logistics, working on making supplies or just driving a truck to bring them to the front lines. You can be a builder which is pretty neat, making much needed fortifications and defences. I found the fighting to be somewhat sub par when I was not with friends or people who communicated well with one another. You will die very quickly, and a lot in this game, with or without friends and good team members, but it is more fun with the latter. What is impressive is that this game keeps getting updates, new guns and vehicles and mechanics, etc.

So, with all that said, and all of the problems mentioned, a lukewarm recommendation.

Sadly this game isn't even worth a dollar, or less, on sale. Don't get it.

It all seems extremely cheap, to the point where there isn't even a volume control for the music. Too loud? Well, you can just turn it off, not down. Graphics and display? Nope. Honestly, the music is so repetitive and boring that in the end, maybe that is why they just went with an off button; and truthfully, it isn't all that much to look at.

I went into this game thinking that maybe I could get a little bit of fun from it due to the cheap price, and despite the mixed reviews. I shouldn't have even bothered with this. I should have just seen that it had mixed reviews and stayed clear. I think that the game could be fun, I can see it, but there is a major problem holding it back, and that is the controls.

You move the snake around normally, with the WASD keys, but tapping them doesn't work. Hold the key down for just a microsecond too long, and well you end up moving two spaces rather than one, ruining your attempt at the puzzle. The fact that your progress all depends on time, and you are constantly slipping and sliding around, just makes me angry and frustrated while playing this game. If the timer was removed so that I could be more cautious with my movement, that could make for a more enjoyable experience.

However, it feels like this was something taken off of a phone or tablet, and quickly and clumsily put onto PC. I can see you moving the snake around with your finger, and it working quite well; but they did not do a good job in making the controls responsive to people pressing buttons, if this is indeed the case. If it isn't, then they just, from scratch, programmed a terrible control system. I honestly don't know what is worse.

Don't buy this game, avoid it completely. Yes, it is cheap on sale and that can be tempting, but it is not worth the dollar it costs. Not fun in any way, shape, or form.

A decently fun little puzzle game. It does not take all that long to figure out and solve each of the different levels and their puzzles, or the secret levels. It is basically like solving a Sudoku, but you only have the numbers one to three available to use. Some levels add in grey tiles with higher numbers that you cannot change. Also, unlike a Sudoku, you don't just solve it on each line by line. There are straight lines of course, but there are also diagonals as well.

Each different level as you move upwards adds in a different little mechanic/gimmick. Some levels have tiles that change all tiles of the same colour equally when you hit them, others have greater or less than symbols and equals symbols splashed in, while others are stranger and hard to describe.

I wouldn't really recommend this at full price, there isn't much to it and some of the mechanics can get a little bit annoying, turning the fun relaxing little puzzles into little frustrations. If you think this is a good game for you, get it on sale.

I would recommend this game, I really like it and the twist it puts on the whole sort of 'Harvest Moon/farming sim' style of game-play.

This game is incredibly sweet and charming. I would say that most of the characters are really well written, and the voice acting is pretty good. Sometimes here and there you can get a dud of a character, and someone whose voice is out of place; sometimes just here and there, while some others are just bad all the time. Overall I would say it leans towards the good over the bad though. The relationships you can build with these characters are really sweet at times, and that itself can keep you playing.

The twist that this game takes on the whole formula, is that instead of farming plants and animals for the purposes of just, selling it for money, you are instead using those things to create and build. A lot of this game does revolve around combat and a particular form of mining and ruin diving, and that is to get raw materials and bits and pieces from the old world to help build useful and helpful structures for the town of Portia and the people there.

I suppose I didn't mention that this game takes place in a post apocalypse, further changing up things and putting in a further twist on the game-play. The old, technological world with robots and AI and advanced technology is gone. All that is left are rebuilding human civilisations, and weird mutant animals (that you also kill to use their parts to make things). You are a Builder, and you are helping Portia to rebuild and expand. Do you side with the scientists who want to go back to the glory days? Do you side with the church, who want to ban advanced technologies? Again, the changes it brings to the whole 'farming sim' genre is immense.

You make everything from personal items like swords and jewellery, to chairs and tables and rugs, all the way to bridges, elevators, and bus stops. The further along you move the main quest, the bigger and more impressive items you build. It never pushes you to move quickly either. You can take your time, establish your farm, your land, gather tons of materials, compete in the town competitions, and have a good time without unlocking really and of the further story elements.

Eventually you do need to move forward however, as the main quest opens up further mines, dungeons, and biomes. While this is going on you can compete with rival builders to see who is the best, all while making tons of money, and dating your spouse with really interesting, actual date, mechanics. A lot of this can rely on how many skill points you put into your social tree. Yes, this game is also an RPG. Every action you do, harvesting resources, killing enemies, making items, completing quests, gives you experience.

You can really focus your character on upgrading skills that pertain to fighting enemies and harvesting raw resources, fill up your storage, then switch to more social skills so you can get more out of giving gifts, completing contracts and quests, etc. It is a really interesting addition to this type of game, and a very welcome one.

While the game looks kind of silly and cartoon like, that really helps it to stay looking good despite the age of the game. It has been future proofed, and I bet will become a classic talked about like the original Harvest Moon. I would highly recommend this game, to both fans of this genre and people who have never played anything like it before. A fantastic game, and when it goes on sale, it goes on sale for a fantastic price! Plus, if you really like it, the developers are working on making further games set in this world.

This is a bit of a mixed review. The game is decently fun, but there are some factors that can cause it to quickly become annoying, and even frustrating.

If you like the first Diablo game, then this is a sort of remake for you. The main plot of the story is the same, with some of the same kinds of characters, bosses, levels; all taking place in a small cursed town outside of a cathedral. It really gave me huge nostalgic vibes back to Diablo, and it does a really good job with these 'new' characters and the setting, including the voice acting. I was expecting it to be terrible, but everyone sounds great, the game sounds great; and it all looks good too.

The game has an interesting paper motif, allowing it to become a bit cartoon like, which helps it to still look good despite the fact that it is getting up there in age. I expect this game will continue to look good in a decade.

The main game-play is interesting. Your character follows a path through the dungeon. Most enemies can walk freely through the dungeon, attacking you from all angles, but you must stay on the path, or move backwards. This is one of the ways in which I find the game becomes increasingly annoying as you play. Enemies can surround you from all sides, some boss enemies even teleport enemies all around you, and even as the warrior, you will likely die to this. If an enemy is just standing on the path, not even attacking you, you cannot move past it. If you do not have the right spells/items/equipment to handle this, you will just die.

That brings me to another point of this game that is terribly frustrating. You do not get spells or items or equipment in any kind of specific order, it is all randomised. Normally that would be fine in a rogue-like game, but without some certain items/equipment/spells by a certain point in the game, you can basically just call the run a day. There are just some drops that are so important, so good, that you will just die without them, and you are wasting your time to go on. I played a Warrior for a great deal of my play time, and after having defeated the final boss and gone onto free-play for several hours, I finally got the last item in the armoury for the warrior.

You will get several basic drops for your class, then the vast majority of drops for your character will be those things with a random (usually unhelpful) magical effect, or cards to let you upgrade those items. This randomisation, this method in which you will easily gain several duplicate items before gaining another new and unique one, really hurts the game, a lot. You should get the vast majority of the armoury for that class before you start getting duplicate magical drops, and it shouldn't be 20 hours into a game that you finally get the last item in the armoury. It is just, really bad design.

Unfortunately the game can get a bit boring as you go on. There are only three levels, with three bosses. There are a good number of different enemies, and the bosses with their randomised abilities and mechanics help to spice things up; but in the end the game can become a boring grind.

Despite these issues, I still had a fun time overall with the game. It looks good, sounds good, is usually fun to play, and brought back great memories. If they could just make a few changes here and there, then I would highly recommend this game. As it is, I only barely recommend it. Get it on sale.