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Atom RPG: Old-School Gameplay Gets Up and Atom | BACKLOG.TXT


Today’s Backlog Quest aims at the newest incarnation of Atom RPG, a love letter to the role playing games of old and a gushing homage to Interplay’s first two entries in the Fallout series. Despite the generic title and premise, this is no asset flip or cheeki-breeki knockoff.  Atom RPG does much to improve on the Fallout formula, and adds flavor all its own. Prefer to watch? Click the link above or visit 2 Headed Hero on YouTube!

Atom RPG: Falling Out All Over Again

1997’s Fallout was a strange phenomenon within the game-sphere of the time. Scores of interviews over the years reveal it as a rare example of a truly original passion project – the brainchild of letting a creative group of developers run wild.
fallout promo

Fallout’s lively combination of post-apocalyptic grittiness and atomic age retro-futurism was further highlighted by a nearly unparalleled amount of open world freedom. Many problems had multiple solutions. Many obstacles could be defeated without firing a single shot. With a huge amount of player agency and plenty of toys in its sandbox, Fallout put the “role playing” back in roleplaying game.

Over the years, the Fallout property has been taken to unforeseeable – and disgraceful lows. There’s no denying that the long-running series has cast a long shadow over video games. This brings us to the subject of today’s review.

Alternative Communism

ATOMRPG_Cover
Atom RPG
takes place in an alternative 2005 Russia. After the cold war went sour in 1986, the global superpowers decided to throw hands and chuck nukes at each other… and nothing was ever quite the same. Players customize their own agent of ATOM, a secret militaristic society, and are tasked with finding a wayward General in the game’s vast and hazardous  post-nuclear Russian countryside.

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I hate to keep dragging out the tired comparisons to Fallout 1 and 2, but Atom RPG fully embraces its inspirations. Instead of the 1950s vacuum tube retro-futurism of Fallout, Atom has a dirty 1980s veneer of hard plastic and CRT greens.

Up And Atom

Multinational European developer Atom Team hails from Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Latvia. By all appearances, this seems to be their first game as a team. They picked an ambitious task for a debut release. Atom RPG spent a considerable amount of time in Early Access after a modest, but successful, Kickstarter campaign ended in 2017. The game saw a 1.0 release in December 2018, but didn’t make it on to my radar until a few weeks ago, with the drop of an extensive quality of life update. Improved translation, better interface, better inventory management, combat and gameplay balancing, optimization… mod support?! It’s a big list. Atom RPG, you now have my attention.

 

TR atomrpg shantytown

I’ma loot, I’ma shoot my way outta shanty-town.

In Unity We Trust

Let’s get this out of the way: Atom RPG’s visuals are not much of a standout. Animations are a little stiff. Environments have the occasional nice smoke or fog effect, and there’s some water reflections, but the game looks dated. Still, it’s a cohesive style with some Soviet flavor, and the chosen assets all fit fine.

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There’s some nice fog and reflection effects.

Sound effects are stock. Some of the ambient electronic tracks set the mood well, but there’s nothing here that’s making it onto my Soundcloud playlist. There are a few voiced cut-scenes, which have charmingly amateurish delivery, but decent audio quality. These scenes mostly consist of cleverly filtered stock footage, (like the talking Harry Potter newspaper with Ronald Reagan’s face) but there’s a few transitionary scenes and effects that I really quite liked. (ins first travel cutscene)

Give Me Gameplay

Of course, if you’re reading this installment of BACKLOG.TXT, you’re not here for thrillgasm “triple A” production values. No, dear readers, you’re probably here for the same reason I am. You wanted an old-school, down and dirty, zero-hand-holding, stat heavy, story driven PC RPG. This, dear friends, is where Atom RPG delivers in spades.

TR atomrpg tinfoil

Fashionable Tinfoil Helmet Clubs abound in Atom RPG’s wastes.

There’s so much game here. There is so much possibility. The developers claim it contains 30-100 hours of gameplay depending on playstyle, and that’s totally believable. Save a tiny commune from bandit raids. Or screw em, and join the bandits. Or leave that all behind and meet up with a science cult. Or an actual cult. Befriend wasteland travelers. Or rob them blind. Go fishing, with spider brains as bait. This is only a taste of my first four hours spent within Atom RPG. The game is abound with secrets, choices, hidden loot, and danger galore, and provides a surprising amount of actual opportunities for role playing.

Devils in the Details

Here’s a good example. I was hired by some unsavory characters to enter a vault and scope it out for loot. Upon trying to leave, they tried to rob me, and shot me to death in seconds when I resisted. So, I restored a save and figured I would hide my stuff inside the bunker. I dropped my gear inside the vault, walked outside, and got ambushed once more. Except this time, the robbers actually got angry when they found out that I didn’t have anything, and glommed onto the fact that I stashed all my stuff in the vault. And then they killed me anyways. It’s this type of attention to even the most minor details that truly elevates the Atom RPG experience.

TR atomrpg context

Getting All Up In Your Interface

Interface seems to be a focal point for the 1.08 patch’s improvements, and I found it to be quite intuitive. While I can’t vouch for the prior state of the game’s control scheme, Atom RPG now uses a simple left click to move and interact. Left click and hold brings up a context menu to use your skills. Inventory items can be easily sorted and dragged around between your companions, and trading works… well, pretty much the same way as it does in Fallout, if we’re being honest.

TR atomrpg trade

Even the dialog and trade interfaces borrow heavily from Fallout 1 and 2.

Turn-based Wastes

Adversaries abound in Atom RPG, and before long you’ll be battling bandits, behemoth bugs and malformed mutants. This all takes place in turn-based tactical encounters. The early game is melee-intensive, and due to scarce ammunition, you’ll need to keep a knife or two on hand. Later encounters waste no time ripping you apart with machine gun-toting thugs. Fortunately, several early side quests and some skillful scavenging will net your ATOM agent what they need to survive.
TR atomrpg combat2

The Art of Crafting

Thanks to a bigger focus on crafting and scavenging, Atom RPG’s world has a much more DIY feel. Three-barreled shotguns and homemade tire armor are pretty common in the wastelands. I personally loved this look. A post-nuclear world would rightly be short on usable firearms, and the homemade guns and rusty pistols you do manage to find are prone to failure. This gives combat encounters another level of tension, especially when a finishing blow is waylaid by a badly timed weapon jam.

Close Encounters

Not all of your interactions will be hostile, of course. Each wastelander has a little bit of personality, and their own dialog trees. There’s plenty of referential humor (ins cult conversation), and this is all colored a bit by the translations. To be clear, translations aren’t perfect here. Some might find this to be an immersion breaker due to the large amount of text. I found it charming. Atom RPG’s vast Russian wasteland often feels like a Bizarro-world Fallout, and I couldn’t be more pleased at this.

TR atomrpg map

A vast and mysterious map is laid out before you from the game’s start.

After The End

Atom RPG is a great entry into the sandbox-style role playing games of old, and would be right at home alongside those cherished titans. It’s clear that Atom Team loves Fallout, but it’s even more apparent that they care about Atom RPG. Another huge content patch was announced recently, and I eagerly look forward to further travels in this alt-future wasteland.

In my long years of scavenging the gaming wastelands, I’ve found a few true treasures. This labor of love stands tall among them.


Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (Early Access) | BACKLOG.TXT


Today on Backlog Quest, we tap into Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS for short). This balloon-physics warfare game from quirky Stockholm-based developer Landfall recently hit Steam Early Access on April 1, 2019. Looking back, it seems Landfall makes a habit of annual April Fools Day releases that poke fun at industry trends. Want to find out more? Check out the video breakdown on 2 Headed Hero!

Totally Awesome Balloon Slaughter

stampy

Feast your eyes on Stampy, the world’s greatest mammoth. Isn’t he adorable?

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator’s release was met with major excitement from a growing group of core fans, who have helped nurture Landfall’s charming physics battler since it began development in 2016. Like TABG before it, content updates for TABS are frequent, but the roadmap is much more ambitious. New unit packs and balance tweaks have already started rolling out, making the path to 1.0 much more exciting.

So, what in the wild World of Warcraft is the game even about? I’m glad you asked.

armor

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a deceptively simple game that presents an arena of foes. The game then challenges players to defeat them by spending limited points on placing units of their own. The two sides charge each other at the tap of the start button, and attempt to clumsily bludgeon and spear their rubbery opponents until one side emerges victorious.

Typically Angular But Smooth

spearboi

Pictured: an early prehistoric earbud prototype.

The low-poly look here is clean and charming, and enhances the game’s cartoony feel. I especially appreciate the silly googly-eyed stares on all of the units. There’s some surprising detail to the shadows, and the simple characters and environments still have a sort of softness about them – no harsh or jagged edges here.

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The game also ran without a single hiccup on my midrange rig – at least, until I tried to choke it by throwing down a few hundred units. Still, it’s quite encouraging – especially considering the dicey landscape of Steam Early Access. The physics-based movements and animations are the real star of the show, and it’s impossible to contain a laugh after seeing the two sides of the fight mosh-pit into action.


Combined with the comical squawks and shouts of the combatants and intentionally ironic soundtrack, TABS’s overall presentation is just plain fun.

Trying At Basic Strategy

stampy2

Stampy rides again! Get em, boy!

In its current form, TABS is mechanically simple. Spend your allotted points to plop down a bunch of units on the field, click Start, and watch the chaos. Each batch of units has a time period theme. There’s a half dozen or more represented in each era – resulting in wide variety. Units have an extremely basic AI, often just charging at each other blindly until one side falls down. A later update promises the ability to directly control one of the floppy balloon soldiers, but at this time, positioning and unit choice are the only tools a player can use to their advantage.

It’s a simple premise, but by no means easy. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each unit and smartly placing them to take advantage of the terrain becomes something of a puzzle, and later levels sometimes require unexpected solutions. The developers also employ some sneaky tricks. For example, one early level hides a horde of halflings in tall grass – making it appear that you’re up against a small number of enemies when the opposite is true.

shieldboy

It’s like a Renaissance painting at the end of every battle.

Each victory (or defeat) in a TABS level is capped with a freeze-frame finish. This is the perfect opportunity to scour the maps for secrets, which unlock hidden units when discovered. Along with the game’s robust roadmap and skirmish mode, there’s already a lot of replay potential here – especially for an Early Access title.

That’s All Brilliantly Silly

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a great pick-up-and-play title, and it’s wonderful for a long laugh after a hard day. Although this channel doesn’t often cover Early Access, it hit all the right notes for the both of us. I look forward to its development with keen interest.


Block Pooper 9: Popcannibal’s Poop Cannon Brawl | BACKLOG.TXT



Today’s BACKLOG.TXT jumps into the new free competitive couch brawler everyone’s been talking about. No, not Super Smash Bros Ultimate. We’re talking about Block Pooper 9, of course – the new exciting excretion game from Popcannibal!

Prefer to watch rather than read? Click the video above – or check out the animated episode on 2 Headed Hero’s YouTube Channel. 

Block Pooper 9 : Popcannibal’s Poop Cannon Brawl

BP9
Block Pooper 9 came out on December 4, 2018 and flew under the radar. This bowel movement brawler is the brainchild of veteran indie development team Popcannibal. The early-access boat builder Make Sail, the dating puzzler Girls Like Robots, or the space exploration novelist game Elegy for a Dead World all fall under the umbrella of their recent endeavors.

popcannibal_HEADER

Headed by programmer Ziba Scott and joined by artist Luigi Guatieri, Popcannibal is known for a variety of strange, creative, and experimental titles.

Whatever Became of Block Pooper 1-Through-8?

While the fate of vaporware prequels Block Pooper 1-8 may be lost to history, Block Pooper 9 is a tiny and endearing multiplayer physics game with a silly concept. Players take control of weird block-pooping cat heads (or are they wombats?), facing off to see who can hit the high score and bury their opponents under a deluge of diamond-shaped dookies.

jetpoop1

While basic, the look is cohesive, and it’s easy to read what’s happening during a match.

Graphics: Poocasso-Approved

Visuals in Block Pooper 9 have a simple,scratchy pen-and-ink style.  Little details like the facial expression changes of the cat heads really help add to the silliness factor here. The interface is likewise simplistic, but allows you to see the status of your remaining cat heads, score, and how much, uh, “business”  is left in the chamber.

True Minimalist Sonic (Sh)artwork

Audio design here is pretty minimal, with only a few subtle fart noises and impact queues. Even so, the solitary song in the soundtrack fits well and has a nice groove. The sound design of Block Pooper 9 all lends itself to a couch multiplayer atmosphere. With this in mind, it’s clear why the developers went for an understated direction. An intricate soundscape would be wasted on a group of loud players laughing while literally shooting the shit.

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The Gameplay Doesn’t Stink

Playing Block Pooper 9 is simple enough to get a handle on, and the pregame options screen describes it succinctly. Poop blocks, avoid skulls, and protect the weird fetus heart. To win: do all these things better than everyone else.

Block Pooper 9 dumps players into a singular arena with one of two slightly different game modes. The cat heads are controlled sort of like a rocket ship, and are directed by spraying square waste in the opposite direction you wish to propel. Button two on the controller blasts a radial poop explosion, or can be directed sort of like a shotgun (shart-gun?) blast to send forth a directional cascade of butt blocks that buries opponents.

Points appear to be made in two ways: by feeding those pointy poop nuggets to the skulls that pop up from the level corners, or by snatching up the coveted hams that flop out of the terrifying sky-mouth. The hams are worth beau-coup points. This gives players something further to compete for as they diarrhea dance around the level.

Once the heart dies by getting bitten by too many skulls, the round ends, and the player with the most wins after 3, 5, or 10 rounds takes home the tournament trophy. Alternatively, if all other players exhaust their lives, the last player standing gets a 30 second timer. With enough skill, the last player can to try to take the high score and snatch victory for the current round.

What Is Up With This Weird Fetus Thing, Though, For Real?

skullFor REAL, though. What IS that thing?

The heart mechanic can also be turned off completely. This makes Block Pooper 9 into a fun bite-sized Battle Royale game.  This significantly changed the dynamic, switching the focus from competitive tower defense into an all-out waste war.

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Turn off the heart for a simplistic Bowel Royale.

While Block Pooper 9 is a ton of fun, there’s a couple minor issues. One was performance. On occasion, the late game would suffer a bit of a slowdown due to spawning so many blocks and skulls. Still, this seems like something that could be tweaked.

Online play and some additional arenas would be welcome. It would also be nice to be able to choose player head colors at the beginning, rather than it being assigned. For Block Pooper 9’s asking price of zero dollars, these are more wishlist items than complaints.

Butt What Is The Final Verdict?

Overall, Block Pooper 9 is a great example of a lighthearted party game. While the concept is a bit juvenile, the game is hilarious proof that sixth grade humor and poop jokes never die. They just get made into games. Best of all, the title is completely free on Steam.

With a bunch of controllers and a few bored friends laying around, Block Pooper 9 is a good little game to fart around with.

Just… don’t forget to wash those hands.


 

Remembering Moonbase Commander | BACKLOG.TXT


https://youtu.be/BD49QTp8Mk8

Prefer to watch? Check out the in-depth episode of Backlog Quest over on 2 Headed Hero!

Get ready to dust off the skinny jeans and blast some Nelly! Today we travel back to 2002 and examine a forgotten PC cult classic: Moonbase Commander.

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The mid 90s and early 2000s were some of my favorite times in gaming. Adventure games were on the decline due to the rise and fall of Full-Motion Video games, but still had many strong and memorable entries. Fast-paced and flashy multiplayer games such as Half-Life and Unreal Tournament were now viable due to advances in 3D acceleration and networking technology. Hardcore gaming purists grouped together to experience the blazing speeds of the Local Area Network, forming “LAN parties” in basements or community centers.

dreamhack-night-shot

In turn, these small LAN parties grew and blossomed into the modern Esports movement.

A LAN Party Throwback

I can recall discovering one turn-based strategy title that holds a special place in my shriveled black heart while spending late nights at long-ago LANs. Part artillery game and part turn-based territory control, Moonbase Commander is a casual turn-based strategy title that pits up to 4 players against each other.

shield1

“Shields up! And make sure it looks like a big blue butt.”

A Studio Steps Outside Its Comfort Zone

Moonbase Commander was quietly released by Humongous Entertainment (a studio known for adventure games like Putt Putt Joins the Parade) in 2002. A turn-based strategy game was quite the departure from its normal catalog of child-oriented edutainment adventures. However, Humongous had also previously  housed the sub-brand Cavedog, known for the real-time strategy classic Total Annhilation. It’s not a big stretch to imagine that both the Cavedog and Humongous teams shared some notes on what goes into a good strategy title.

Looking at Life On the Moon

While captured footage shows the original 4:3 aspect ratio, the game has no native widescreen support. This makes everything look stretched out. Still, the 2D graphics are clean and simple, making maps an easy read. Terrain restrictions and building functions can be gleaned at a glance. There’s not too much repetition in the tilesets, and even the simple water effects are a nice touch.

Scorched Moon

explode1 moonbase commander

“You Mauled My Moonbase!”

The game added a pair of unique rules to the standard base-builder: One, that each new building is connected to the hub from which it was built by an immobile energy-tube, and two: buildings are launched, not merely placed. A misfire leading to an overlapping building or tube causes the launched building to fail and explode. This twist (likely inspired by classic artillery games such as Scorched Earth and the Worms series) gives Moonbase Commander the feeling of a dexterity game. Strategy is important, but your plans can be dashed by poor aiming or timing, keeping tension high.

Skirmishes have a singular goal: destroy all competitors. For gamers that want to go it alone, bots can be substituted in for skirmishes,. There’s also a single player challenge campaign that mixes up the objectives, and rewards your success with medals based on your performance – a feature that we now see often in mobile games.

 

Game-shy

gamespy

Gamespy shut down back in 2014.

Once upon a time, Moonbase Commander’s online multiplayer was exclusive to the now-defunct Gamespy service. Despite several tools being written to sidestep this shortcoming, getting the game working still took about two solid hours of messing around in arcane forums filled with dead links and outdated utilities. Moonbase Commander Console seemed to be the most competent and easy to use of the choices available, and came with some additional features such as map randomization.

We were finally able to get the most recent version of Moonbase Commander Console working in conjunction with Hamachi – a software used to simulate LAN connection.
After jumping through these networking hoops, the game worked pretty much as remembered – warts and all.

Bring Back Moonbase Commander!

Moonbase Commander is a fun but sadly forgotten novelty title with a well-deserved cult following. While this title still stands up even today, it would really benefit from some TLC. I have a feeling that a community would easily reignite for this game if a patch was released to reinstate proper online play and add some modern operating system support.

nightdivelogoNightdive, I’m looking at you guys again. Maybe in the next go-around, consider giving Moonbase Commander some love, like you did with the excellent updates to System Shock and Nocrtropolis.

A mobile version of Moonbase Commander would be a stroke of genius.  Imagine an asynchronous setup like Words with Friends, where your turns await your spare moments and you can have multiple games running at once. Fans of strategy that want a casual title free of micromanagement should definitely give this classic a go-around.


Dragonsphere: A Study In Design DOs and DON’Ts | BACKLOG.TXT


https://youtu.be/WRYwtuPwWdk

Today’s BACKLOG.TXT tackles the 1994 adventure Dragonsphere. Prefer to watch 2 Headed Hero‘s extended riff on what many DOS gamers call a cult classic? Then stagger on over to our YouTube channel!

Dragonsphere: Adventure Game Design DOs and DON’Ts

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Many adventure-gamers of old are quick to trot out the titanic duo of developers that brought the genre into the forefront – Lucasarts and Sierra titles still generally hold up as quality experiences to this day. The success of iconic series like Monkey Island and King’s Quest caused lesser-known developers and publishers to hitch their wagons to the genre.

Some of these hidden games contain a surprising amount of gaming joy. Others were over-reliant on the advent of the brand new CD-ROM technology to dazzle with graphics and voice-overs. Still others landed somewhere in between – containing rough puzzle and gameplay design while having expertly-made visuals.

Developed and published by Microprose in 1994, Dragonsphere is considered by some to be a cult classic. Many DOS gamers hold this title dear to their hearts, citing its detailed animations, unique story twist, and full voice-overs as impressive features (for the time, anyhow).

I’ll freely admit having a special place in my heart for games from this era. Adventure games? Doubly so. Unfortunately, while it shouldn’t be considered a total failure of the test of time, Dragonsphere failed to enamor me in the same way as those old golden classics.

In recent years, new indie titles like the fantastic (and FREE!) Heroine’s Quest have brought forth a new renaissance for a nearly-forgotten genre. Today we attempt to see what makes point-and-clickers tick by using Dragonsphere as an example of what to do- and what to avoid- in an enjoyable adventure game.

DO include an Intro button.

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Look closely and you’ll see a feature many other games took years to catch onto.

This is especially important if your game has a long cutscene full of exposition right at the beginning. No one wants to sit through this again and again. Dragonsphere conveniently allows the player to get right back into the action from the menu screen.

DO take the time to include detailed pixel animations.

dragonsphere beast

WHAT ARE YA DOING IN MY SWAAAAMP?!

This speaks for itself, and is probably the largest reason Dragonsphere still visually holds up. The game reads well, and despite some pixel hunting, adventure game lovers found its look to be pleasing for years to come.

DON’T put in a painfully slow walking animation for your lead character.

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The hero Callach is really “dragon ass” throughout the game.

And if you DO, please don’t put a maze in your game. No gamer has ever uttered the phrase “Oh boy! The maze section is coming up – my favorite!”

DO include an easy to understand interface, and a smart cursor feature.

This keeps the game’s pacing at a better flow rather than making the player stumble through all the possible verbs and items at every point of interest. DON’T include an overwhelming plethora of actions and items unless you plan on using all of them often. The “use-every-action-on-every-item” style of trial-and-error puzzle solving gets old quick. If you can avoid it, please DON’T put in some warped moon-logic puzzles that can’t be solved without the aforementioned trial-and-error strategy.

DON’T ever, EVER make a pixel-hunt puzzle…

dragonsphere_faery…where you have to pixel-hunt through a dozen identical tiny faeries that wiggle around and change color, hoping that you click on the right one at the right time.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!

DO include fully voiced dialog, when appropriate.

DO include some verbose text and voiced descriptions of the environments and characters, as this increases immersion and helps players learn more about the lore of the lands. But DON’T write long dialog sections that sound like an instruction manual for the puzzles, because it’s really boring to listen to. Also, DEFINITELY DON’T do this multiple times in the same game.  Also, DON’T record your voiced dialog on a thirty dollar mic in a bus station bathroom. A lot of voiced games from this period skimped on audio quality, and it’s painfully apparent. 

And really DON’T use cheap and cheesy pitch shifting effects on voices, because it sounds about as pleasing to the ear as stepping on a wet bag of turds.

Finally, please DON’T include trial-and-error puzzles that require you to repeat dialog trees. It’s exhausting and tedious.

DO include a scoring system that provides players with a ridiculous title.

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This likely means I’ll be reincarnated as a dog.

DON’T blindside the player with sudden unavoidable deaths.

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DO include a lower difficulty level that avoids these instant deaths for baby-men that are terrible at adventure games. Like, uh… me.

DO include dinosaurs and wizard fights whenever possible.

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DO pander to your audience by adding some cool dragon and wizard imagery that would be right at home on a late 70s stoner shaggin’ wagon.