itch.io

Love it! There's a sense of futility and relentless dread that all things will end. The experience reminded me of taking care of house plants and the changing of seasons. It made me wonder why I constantly obsess over keeping my indoor plants constantly lush and green while I am content with watching the outdoor plants struggle and change with the seasons. I thought of the mouse as a little elf or wood sprite that is desperately trying to keep the oak tree alive, and yet the oak tree wakes up and stares at your struggle with knowing, almost like a grandparent looking at you and wordlessly saying "it's my time little one, it's okay to let go." 

Thank you for the great experience. I really enjoyed playing it and putting up a last stand and helping my last leaf stay alive for as long as I wanted until I was content to let it go. 

This is great! I was half-expecting a jump scare or something spooky but then I realised that's just my natural inclination in the dark. This game managed to draw out that primal fear of the dark for me. I also thought that the flame on the torch would run out if I moved too fast because of the ability to cover the torch with my hand. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience and it made me think back to those walk in the woods at night.

Also reaching the cabin at the end gave me a feeling of relief and calm. I totally got the "and then it ended" feeling. The fade out to white reminded me of the game "The Graveyard" by Tale of Tales too!

Wish I could play this on mobile! Is there a video I could watch of the gameplay?

Awesome! I love action roguelikes. I like that I have to explore for powerups rather than just killing to level up. Finding new power ups and exploring ruins while running from the bad guys was fun! 
Had a fun time and was once trapped in a ruin haha, which was like "I'll make a last stand here then!" 
One life to live makes the game high stakes and I like that even the basic slime can end the run

This is awesome! Love the cyberpunk neon glow aesthetic. My best score was 58! 

Took me some time to get used to controlling the character. Reminded me of the beat-em-up sidescrollers but with a temple run / subway surfer forced scrolling. I like it! Wish there were power-ups. 

I like the gun more than the sword due to the wind-up animation time for the sword. Gun beats sword I guess? :D

Thank you for playing the puzzle cube!

Fun dev note, I was super frustrated with my own puzzle while play testing it too haha. For me it's when I can't find that last right square that activates the final square needed and my patience is running out too.

Great game! Had fun

I am obsessed with sci-fi and space themes at the moment. Really like being a black hole (assumption) that can spit stuff out. Found it fun to time and shoot the green asteroids that were coming at me.

I wondered if the spiral would slowly turn over time. I imagine being able to get power ups in the future. Really like that the matter also blocks the shots, so I have to shoot around them. 

This reminded me of my fav board game - Planetarium, and also ZUMA! an old nostalgic game for me that has a bubble shooter in spiral format

Love the art style! Also love the cards as navigation. While I can only go forward now, I was imagining having cards that are fear based (like the thoughts in your head) or hope based (maybe false confidence / greed?).

REALLY LOVE THE DRAGON. I managed to give the dragon gold and they spared my life. <3

Great game! Really love the drafting of the poker hand. Glad we get two discards per round. Even without animations, I was still imagining how the two castles are preparing and fighting. Very fun, got absorbed into the game loop! 

Best hand I got was a Flush!

All In is a great mechanic that gives high risk but good rewards. I was playing without it at first but the computer was soon quite powerful. So the All-In became useful in stocking up on gold for a big hit!

Great game!! 

Thank you!

Great! Sent you a friend request via steam. Just in case, my friend code is 46945876

Great! I'll  pass you the code for MV

Oh right! I forgot itch.io doesn't have dms. What's the best way to send you the code?

So I got the Humble Bundle to support but ended up with extra copies of MV and VX ACE. Let me know if you need one of them!
1x MV (Steam)
1x VX ACE (Steam) 

If you need a copy of one of them, please comment below. Will dm you the Steam redemption code. 

First come first serve, one copy only per person. 

Yup! It's an arcade game. Would you like it to have an ending?

Thank you!

Cues inception scene - "That's not enough, we need to go deeper."

Welcome to itch.io! (: 

There is something like a watch-list on the top right of every game page - buttons that allow you to follow the creator or add the game to a "collection". The buttons will allow you to receive updates from the creator or game (:

Thank you! The original vision was to make the game overly serious to the point of it being a joke on itself but I think I didn't manage to reach that point during the game jam haha! So I just settled for it being serious. Glad you enjoyed the game! I really enjoyed the videos on your website and subbed on youtube. Really like that you're covering/reviewing indie games (:

Thank you so much! I hope you liked it. I've just added the "casual" game mode to the build and the updates will be up after the jam's rating session is over. The new casual mode will make it easier for the player while the current gameplay has been transferred to "hardcore mode".

If you ever do get the chance to try it out on a 4K monitor + gtx 1080, please do tell me how it goes!

Currently I'm on an 1080p $90 monitor from amazon and a gtx 1050. One day I hope to save up enough to get the latest rig (: 

It also runs well on the "Beautiful" quality setting on my 5 year old HP laptop which uses a NVIDIA Quadro K2100M. 

@CoalFire Thank you so much! I agree wholeheartedly and the furthest I've survived is to the third level (and that was harder than any dark souls run through I've expereinced imo). Currently working on the fix for the difficulty and will upload an updated version once the xkcd jam is over.  More details in the Updates sections above (:

Thank you! 

Yes I agree, the difficulty is way up there! After the jam, I will upload an update that increases your player health so that you have a large health pool, so that you have more time to read the bios. Might also add a game mode toggle that lets you switch between the normal high health or a hardcore low health mode (which is the current setting). 

Thank you! Tried to make the game funny and less serious but my personal style edged the game towards the more serious tones.  

I agree, am still finding a deeper gun tone, the current sound was the deepest I could find on the sound library I'm using haha! Would love it to have this deep bass tone but yet with a sharp crack to imply a tense murder.

3400! Had a really great time playing this~ The drag and shoot mechanic took some time to get used to (was half-expecting an indicator to show up haha) but after that hurdle it got really great as I tried to outshoot the black-hats. Would've to see a score to know where I'm at (: 

Overall, the combination of the music, the graphics and the animation adds up to a really fun arcade time. Great solid game that can be expanded upon!

P.S what's the highest score you've gotten so far?

Awesome! Loved the squirrel on top of the Kalashnikov AK-47. Also loved the mechanic of clicking to shoot and propel yourself. A very bolt-action shot type of machine gun but still fun. 

The poor squirrel must have got squashed over thirty times playing this. Great fun though. 

Also the narrative in the level was great, and can totally agree that sometimes a certain element of game design is the most fun and the rest is a slog. 

Great work! 

Hello there! Did this game jam solo, so thought it would be awesome to do a debrief of my game jam submission with you all. Please do join in and ask questions~

Goals for game jam 

1. Learn more about Lighting in Unity.  

2. Learn more about Behavior Trees and Simple Artificial Intelligence (AI).

3. Attempt to solo make a simple 3D Shooter in 48hrs while juggling University homework.

Yea...I was kind of in over my head haha, but challenge accepted!

So here's a breakdown of the 48 hours per Los Angeles Pacific Standard Time (where I'm currently based).

Friday (17 November)

@04:00 omg the game jam started!  Time to search for an XKCD comic.

@05:00 still searching, some of these are really good, can't believe I missed them

@05:15~ Found it! "FPS Mod" -https://xkcd.com/873/ ok time to sleep.

Saturday (18 November)

@10:00 - Woke up and ok its time to do this! Opens up Unity 2017.2...and it crashes. Apparently the latest windows update corrupted the data files again.

@11:00 - Unity finishes downloading again! In the mean time, searched online to find tutorials and ended up watching Brackeys on Youtube. Here's what I watched:

• Ammo & Reloading
• Shooting with Raycasts
• How to make Slow Motion

@12:30 - Made an FPS Prototype using the above tutorials and added some blocks in but there's something missing. 

@14:00 - Played around with the FPS prototype more but started to lose interest. Went to buy food. 

@15:00 - Continued work on the prototype but played around with lighting instead. Found the following tutorials to be really useful:

• Lighting a Simple Scene
• The AAA graphics of Spellsouls: achieving 60FPS on mobile
• Game level texturing: Bake lightmap in Blender and Unity

@17:00 - Lighting is good and the level is blocked out, let's take a break and play with post-processing effects and shaders! Brings in Colorful FX and Unity Post-Processing Effects. Also, the USC vs. UCLA Football game is on - watches it concurrently on ESPN.

@19:00 - Food and Football + Watching Unity lag while trying to bake the lighting with every change (realized later that I forgot to turn off auto-generate lighting)

@21:00 - The football game ends and realized that there wasn't much work done. Decides to start learning / trying out Opsive's Behavior Tree and Third Person Controllers using their documentation.

@22:00 - The food places at the bottom of the apartment are overcrowded because of the Football game. Proceeds to cook up a simple donburi with japanese rice and ground chicken. 

@23:00 - Woah this is alot of documentation but at least the agents are set up.

@01:00 - Okay, so the agents are running around on a nav mesh and I'm in first person. I can't shoot them and they can't shoot me....

@03:00 - Ok let's just scrap my first person mode and follow Opsive's Third Person Controller Tutorial for the player.

@4:00 - It's kinda broken in all places, but if I wake up early tmr, I should be able to get it done.

Sunday (18 November)

@14:00 - OMG it's 2pm! HOW. Gah. I hate alarms.

@15:00 - Ok. Ok. Let's do this...

@16:00 - Wait, I still need to do homework...nah forget it

@17:00  - YAY! Game is happening. Players can now shoot at each other and things happen. Credits to the Opsive Tutorials - it only took like a day to learn, not too bad....

@19:00 - The start of a long slog fixing bugs and polist

@20:00 - Unity crashes again due to windows corrupting files

@21:00 - Took an Anime destress break while waiting for Unity. Managed to catch up to the latest episode on Season 3 Food Wars.

@22:00 - WHY CAN'T I SPAWN ADDITIONAL PLAYERS

@23:00 - Oh, it's all the startup scripts and managers...

@00:00 - Okay nvm, let's just .setactive everything. Okay now add in the Main menu...

@01:00 - Polish Lighting, add more stuff to build

@02:00 - OMG THE PLAYERS DON'T SHOOT EACH OTHER ANYMORE

@02:30 - Okay. Okay. Let's submit the game first and then fix this bug...

@02:50 -  FIXED IT! Forgot to change a tag name

@03:00 - Screenshot taking time!

Debrief

Did I accomplish my goals?

1. Yes! Learnt more about the Unity Lighting systems and materials. Still a novice at making the lighting pop but managed to optimize my lighting to make it look good + run fast. Also pleased that I can make shadows softer now and remove shadow banding.  

2. Well, yes and no. I tried going my own way but ended up following Opsive's tutorials to get their stuff to work. I realized that I should've used a more open-ended asset. Opsive is still too big a package to handle.

3. Really wanted it to be first person but just couldn't hook it up to the Opsive framework in time. Ended up using their default third-person controller with some aesthetic tweaks. The Jump is still weird but at least it works...

Overall - Learnt that the next time, I won't use Opsive's framework because it has such a high learning curve till the point that I rather would like to spend the time building my own. Unity's upgraded post-processing stack is a beast! Also the lighting is getting easier to use compared to Unity 5.

Hi Dangomountain,

Apologies for the lack of communication. I have been working hard on adding to the Atomica Experience (more songs and visual aesthetics + gameplay variants later in the future) and will reveal more next week. Thank you for your patience (:

Hi letsmaybeLP92,

When the game releases on Steam, there'll be a free week period where previous users will be able to claim the game key (:

Best,

Hi Lukz,

Thank you so much for posting your score! I've added it to the leaderboard on the page. Really glad you like the game and it's true that the game ends super fast once the yellow ball reaches maximum speed. 

Tim

Hi dangomountain! 

Thank you so much for posting your score! I've had my fair share of higher-ups walking in on me too. Wish you all the best and can't wait to see an S score soon :D 

Tim

Hi Yeeeee, 

Thank you so much for downloading and playing Atomica! I understand your pain. As a developer, I should have been able to reach max score but really, it took me forever to get to that S Rank (37 tries actually, I counted each one). I had a friend who played it twice and got an S just like that. This is to me reflective on the struggle of life and though this may be a game,  it is a game that doesn't have a discernible system to break as it is quite random, paralleling life's own mysterious  system.

That said, there are strategies that can be employ to get a higher score. Something that is not yet highlighted in the game is the fact that at 10% Atomic Integrity (your health) or lower, the score is now basically double per hit - which means each time the ball hit a purple box, your score increases by 200. Knowing this, a possible but risky strategy is to bunch up the purple boxes with [space] (activating the gravity well] when Atomic Integrity is low. Doing this will allow for a final "burst" of score when the ball hits the core for that knockout punch.

Hi Hayden,

I agree! A tutorial would help very much and it will come in the future implementations (I've already added it to the list). For now, I have created an anatomy guide for the game to help you get used to all the elements of the game.

For playing the game, all you would want to do is use your (F) Thumpers with your keyboard keys [Z, X, Space] to keep (A)The Ball as far away from the (B) Core as possible so that you can survive longer. By surviving longer, you increase the chance that The Ball hits (D) the Purple Boxes which increases your score, represented by (E) Explosive Yield Score. If The Ball does touch the Core, you will lose life, represented by (C) Atomic Stability, which if it reaches zero, the game ends. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Hi Spoonage,

Thank you so much for playing and recording the game! Loved your commentary and watching you play ATOMICA. Admittedly, this game doesn't do a top notch job of explaining how to play it, so here's some possibly helpful tips:

For a high score, the most I've seen is at a local playtest of around 18,000 and the playtester didn't really know how they got it (which seems to be a recurring theme in this experience haha). From what I can gather, the playtester played defensively once they got to a lower "life" (atomic stability) and used the gravity to bunch up the purple cubes to protect the core. As the cubes give a score on each hit with the yellow ball, the player managed to get quite a numbers boost as the lower the atomic stability, the higher the points earned (up to a maximum of 200 per hit). As such, at 10% stability or less, it is possible to get one large points boost before the explosion which can push the total up to an S. 

The next hotfix will add in more tooltips and UI to help show scoring + how the extra points work based off the atomic stability (:

Tim

Hi dinre, 

Thank you so much for posting about your experience! That little bit about your son really warmed my heart and made my day. You also helped pull me out of a creative burnout too. 

I do apologize for the incoherent gameplay. Much of my daily work centers around making other games coherent (usability wise) and it's an irony that the experiences I create in my free time constantly buck that trend. Many a times, I feel like my brain goes "I spend so much time making games work for others, I think its time I make something that just is...whatever it is".

Over time, I do hope to develop the game more so that it explains itself better. I'm so glad you chose to play ATOMICA! 

Tim

Hi HarryPotter4444,

The current temp audio was from Youtube's Audio Library and here are the details,

Pyres by Broken Elegance https://soundcloud.com/brokenelegance
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/9xMg_xdpa7w

Nostalgia by Tobu https://soundcloud.com/7obu
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/03AKy9bhOMU

HIIOOOOOOOOO~

gnruean nrieuav nreiaoaoak i iii fdoo llll naon o nnnn nao rui bau bi ba a

Oh wow! Thank you so much for posting this Cregina! I'll add your name to the page. For the prizes, please send me a message at https://www.facebook.com/qgamesinteractive to claim the steam key. (Can't post it publicly here and itch.io doesn't have a message system yet) 

Post here for any technical issues/game  bugs that you have run into and I will schedule them to be patched up!

For all those who have played a game of ATOMICA, please post your stories/experiences here! Would love to hear how you felt while playing, why you played it, and what you would like to see in future versions.

Hello beann! For the developer challenge, the prize is a mystery gift but is usually associated with Steam. This could mean a gift card or a game or maybe both? (: