Atomine review

Reviewed on: PC

A multi-directional shooter with procedurally generated maps, Atomine tries to bring back the nostalgia of classic games of the style. Atomine simulates the invasion of a hacker attacking a military defense system.

The game’s big goal is to take control of nuclear missiles. Unlike single-screen twin-stick shooters, here you need to explore the interconnected (randomly generated) rooms and look for data hubs where you upgrade your default weapon and evolve your character as you advance.

GAMEPLAY

You can only advance to the next stage after eliminating all the enemies on the map, in this case the security software represented by different shapes and attack patterns that will fire their attacks to hit you. You quickly get overwhelmed if you keep getting hit, which isn’t hard, but there are health points on the maps. Eliminating enemies “drops” green items that represent the experience you need to collect to level up and, sometimes, even drop larger green chunks that will refill part of your energy. When you are destroyed, the game starts over from the beginning, and this ends up being very frustrating, since once you’re dead, all your progress is lost.

Given the way each arena is designed, only three things can be changed: the size of each room, where the blocks are placed in the room and where the enemies appear in the room. The enemies themselves come in only three varieties: some come straight at you, some fire bullets and others do both, but they rarely deviate from this pattern and each always has the same red and black color

AUDIOVISUAL

Atomine has a very distinct graphic style. It uses the contrast of only a few colors, mostly black and white, with a different and occasionally sprinkled color, like green for your weapon attacks, to get the job done.
It’s simple, but manages to provide the feeling of being inside a futuristic hacking tool. The game is quite fast, with sound effects that fit well with the game’s style, and futuristic music accompanies the play.

CONCLUSION

Atomine can be a pastime, but it can sometimes frustrate you if you don’t like hardcore challenges, because due to the “you died, f$#%” you lose everything you’ve leveled up and have to start from scratch; the random generation of the maps doesn’t guarantee that each stage is exactly different, changing only the room entrances or enemies.

Fun: 4
Audiovisual: 5
Gameplay: 5