ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game

I wanted to enjoy this game, I did. It's great in some places; it's creepy in some, humorous in others, meta sometimes, and choices you make do matter. Unfortunately? The gameplay sucks. Real bad. Nobody played the original Fallout games for the combat, or to initiate combat and be CC'd before you get a turn. In fact, even in the first Fallout game, those moments were rare: it's why knockdowns were largely dislocations instead of 1-3 turns of doing absolutely nothing. The one way you could end up doing this is if you took Jinxed, and at that point every enemy is doing it too. In this game, every single melee attack has a high chance to stun an opponent... for an upwards of thirty seconds of normal gameplay, and it's boring. You'll also be subject to this by the way, and for even less fun it'll often be before you get a turn. The implications on build variety and quality of gameplay are many, and I'll leave it to you to think them through. A final note, this game has some kind of severe memory leak. It's the sole game that has caused my computer to BSoD on me. No Man's Sky at max settings for 30 hours? No problem. X4 for 500 straight? Just fine. Star Citizen? Smooth 75 at max for hours on end. This game? Unplayable on Survival because it could, at any moment, cause my entire system to crash, and sometimes more than once an hour. I'm done. The sole reason it gets two stars instead of one, and why I'm keeping the game itself (and only refunding the supporter packs) is because beneath all the garbage is something with infinite potential. Too bad it'll never be realized.

To start with, there’s the tutorial in the beginning. Maybe my entire problem with the game is some sort of glitch, as after picking up the biscut the game would only allow me to end the tutorial. Could be there’s a bunch of information I was to receive on how to play the game. In the first town I managed to pick up and sell a quest item before I found out it was a quest item; rebuying said item put a dent in my cash. There are a number of skill and ability checks in the first town. I assume that the checks are flat against your scores. I say this because there were two plotlines that I could not advance in at all, despite each having three options to check your stats against to proceed, and another that I’m still not sure why I couldn't advance. Totally fun to be locked out of multiple stories in the first place you arrive at in the game, because you didn’t build your character according to whatever design the folks who made the game had in mind. Because of that lock out, I proceeded into the wilderness. Turned out there’s one place where you can get one of the aforementioned quest items I sold before knowing it was a quest item. Random encounters were all four-on-one against me, so that was as deadly as you can imagine. When I got to the next town I found myself backtracking, as once again I failed every skill check needed to get past a guard. I think there’s a resting mechanic. I developed two stat penalties with no explanation as to what they were from, or how you removed them. I’m assuming there’s some rest mechanic not listed, much as there are several items that list numerical values for your Toxicity, Hunger and other stats, but I can find no way to view them while playing. There's more, but I'm out of characters. Honestly, Atom is a nice-looking game with a neat concept, but seems to have been developed by people with a 1980s adventure game mindset of “Flail about and get frustrated trying to figure out how to do the most basic thing.”

Awesome Game shame there wasn't more publicity for it.

Though this game was targeted for post-soviet players, it still has more to offer for western audience with it humor and soviet retro vibe.

Dope game. Good Plot line. Can't beat it for the price.