Atomicrops

Fix that nagging feeling that your careful nurturing of a smiling cabbage was all for nothing, and what you’ll be left with is a joyously charismatic, artistic and testing twin-stick shooter, with dancing carrots and flying squirrel guns. Atomicrops is lovely for as long as you can stay alive to enjoy it.

Atomicrops is almost what you’d get if you crossed Stardew Valley with Enter the Gungeon. You cultivate your land and plant crops that hum and sing as they sprout. You acquire farm animals to roam around your untamed pasture overwhelmed with weeds. You can marry a partner, or two, if polygamy is your thing. It sounds like a nicely painted picture, but in reality, this seemingly peaceful farming sim is anything but. In its truest form, it’s a twin-stick shooter with roguelite elements that has you tending a fertile plot of land in the center of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You must grow enough...

On the surface, Atomicrops is a retro-inspired, top-down 16-bit shooter. However, even early stages start to reveal a much deeper experience, filled with love interests, guns, and unrelenting enemies. Perks can become permanent down the road, but the path to getting there is fulfilling and enough to keep you returning after each defeat for more crop production and bullet fire.

Atomicrops is frenetic, challenging and addicting in the way that all the best roguelike/lites are, with a silly streak that helps give the title its own identity. A lack of content does harm the game’s longevity.

Atomicrops is an unlikely meeting of two genres. Set to the backdrop of a post-nuclear apocalypse, Bird Bath Games finds a way to adequately weave together two styles of gameplay that typically shouldn’t work together. Although there are moments where the two primary modes of play feel like they’re stepping on each others’ toes, those moments are few and far between. Bird Bath’s Atomicrops is an excellent addition to PC and home console indie catalogues.

Atomicrops’ wacky tone courses through both visuals – including overall style and enemy design –  but also its soundtrack which, sadly, can get a little repetitive a bit soon. Items, weapons and powerups also begin to repeat as you put more hours into the game but this never becomes bothersome because of how well it’s all paced.  Neither of its elements could stand on its own, but Atomicrops’ mixture of farming sim, bullet-hell game and rogue-lite make it a compelling indie title that’s well worth giving a shot.