ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game

Full disclosure: I have played around 5 hours. First of all, I am very pleasantly surprised by this game. All I knew going in was that it borrowed heavily from Fallout, but I didn't expect it to have a similar charm to it. Like Fallout, it is filled to the brim with pop culture references and silly humor, combined with sometimes harrowing stories from survivors that make you pause at times. And like Fallout this combination works really well. You can really tell the devs made this game with a lot of love for the genre/setting But it doesn't just blatantly copy Fallout. Atom RPG also adds things like crafting, survival elements (you have to eat, but it is not a constant worry), good 3d graphics and quality of life improvements that come with a modern engine and design philosophy. There is only one quibble I have and that is that the translation has its issues. It is (mostly) perfectly understandable and the actual content of the writing is good, but oftentimes the language comes across as very unnatural. Things from the top of my head like "they went up south" or using the word "interlocutor" instead of the more natural sounding "conversation partner" and using a capital Y for 'you' all the time. Also spotted a couple run on sentences that could do with a bit of shaving here and there. Things like that. I think the devs would be wise to hire a native speaker to edit the text in game. I want to reiterate that it is *not* horrible, just noticeable. I understand that it is an indie game and costs have to be cut somewhere but I think it would really finish up this already impressive tribute to old apocalyptic rpgs.

The game has its charm. The thing is... it's hard to tell if it's its own or just borrowed from the first two Fallout games which are more than inspiration for this one. It's obvious that the devs liked the classics a lot, so much that they forgot that they're making a new game. Replace California with some Russian wilderness, redneck and tribal names with their Slav counterparts, change some of the gear to be more Warsaw Pact but keep everything else pretty much the same... in the end some major details don't fit very well. If you've played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or live in a former Eastern Bloc country, you've seen a painfully accurate depiction of a post-apocalyptic landscape which looks genuine for this part of the world. Compared to it, ATOM looks like a lift and shift of the old Fallouts' landscape to a should-be post-war USSR but the result is somewhere between deliberately nostalgic and forced. When it comes to the RPG part, the dialogues are a major immersion-breaker and whoever wrote them clearly skipped the most important rule when you're telling a story related to the real world - "what would a real person say or do in this situation?" You're listening the tale of a small outpost commander, surrounded by his armed men, how some thug killed his entire family in front of him and one of the responses you can choose is something like "That guy was a hero, you deserve what happened to you". Eh? You've been speaking with a guy you've never met before for 5 minutes and already talking suicidal psychopathic nonsense to him? And that's with a character who has 8/10 Intelligence... There are many such dialogue choices who're there only to blatantly show that you're either a compassionate care bare, a tough guy totally under control of his emotions or a violent lunatic and they all lack subtlety. And then there are always NPCs who're waiting to be asked how's life and what are the rumours... As for the gameplay - it's engaging enough. You've already played Fallout, right?

Disclaimer: I've completed this game on Steam, clocked 70 hours for a single complete playthrough. TL;DR: This game is a must for everyone who loves Fallout 1&2 and old-school CRPGs in general. The name of this game is a bit unimaginative and it made me a bit suspicious that it might be some low-effort Fallout knock-off, but boy was I pleasantly surprised. Obviously this game is heavily Fallout 1&2-inspired, but it stands on its own firmly. The Soviet flavor is fresh and interesting for this kind of a game. NPCs have well-developed personalities and interesting dialogues. Combat system and RPG mechanics are quite similar to Fallout 1/2's ones, but it's definitely not a bad thing. Graphically this game is obviously not very ambitious, but it's decently looking and immersive. There are no voiceovers apart from the narrator in the intro and the outro, which is unfortunate but understandable with indie budgets. It's quite a large game, I clocked ~70 hours for a single complete playthrough. I haven't encountered any bugs whatsover (a problem often plaguing indie projects of such size), which is definitely a pleasant surprise. To sum up, I recommend this game to every Fallout 1&2 fan, and to all people who enjoy CRPGs in general.

From the intro to the game loop, the devs wear their inspiration from Fallout 1 and 2 on their sleeve, but avoid the trappings of ripping off the game and instead took the concept in their own direction. First and foremost, it is set in the nuclear wasteland of a communist Russia, in a world where the cold war turned hot in the 80's, as opposed to the Fallout 50's/60's "Americana" world. The game features no plasma weapons or shoulder mounted nuclear missile launchers, instead focusing on a more realistic approach, filled with soviet era military hardware and a crafting system somewhat akin to that of Fallout 4, where you create rudimentary weapons from scrap you find in the wastes. The story as you set out isn't all too engaging, but the characters and side quests you come across along the way to your main objective is what makes the game engaging. A mix of relatable, quirky goofballs like the "people's commissar" you find training an army of hares to fight for the motherland, to dark, disgusting characters like the ones engaging in human trafficking and prostitution. You are allowed to play how you like. You can play as the "Wasteland Saint" going around doing your best to heal a scarred world, protecting old world values of freedom and justice, or a depraved bastard doing anything for cash, up to and including racially motivated "purges" of undesireables. Or anything in between. After 50 hours, it feels as if I have barely scratched on the surface of what's in this game, and as I understand it, things are still being added. I did have some issues though, mostly with the somewhat strange rules for random encounters, sometimes pitting you against foes you mathematically could not defeat our even flee from, promting a reload from autosave. There were also some issues with quests not updating properly, but the issue I had seemed to fix itself after a patch, and there is some "grind" involved for XP, albeit enjoyable. A solid 4,5/5. Must buy for Fallout 1&2 fans.