Atomicrops was made for gamers who crave a little more action on their farm than typical farming sims usually offer. Sure, there’s the obligatory mining area or cave filled with monsters to kill, but that’s only if you have time after watering all your crops and milking cows. It's a little more intense with its arcade-style having you protect your precious plants from all manner of enemy trying to eat the damn things, and they’re a little weird themselves.
It’s retro bullet hell meets farming. You thought you were just inheriting another relative’s farm to rebuild? Wrong. You came at the wrong time, just when a nuclear explosion rocked the once quaint little town and now mutant animals and weeds with guns are out to steal your crops. It’s up to you to defend them. That’s Atomicrops.
The game starts with a quick tutorial on how to grow, take care of and harvest crops and how to shoot. After that, you’re thrown into a great interactive menu screen to select a new game, a daily run or one of the other common options like settings. The main game doesn’t have you making it to your third year for the town or ghost of a relative to see how the farm is coming along but instead plays arcade-style, seeing how long you can survive on your apocalyptic homestead. It plays by arcade rules – you keep going until you die with a break between the action to return to town for supplies and upgrades.
A farmer’s day starts with digging up dirt to plant crops, planting them, watering and harvesting them once they grow. It doesn’t take too long and it's safe during the day, so you don’t need to worry much about mutants showing up to munch on your crops. It’s a good time to explore the surrounding area. There’s only one way to go initially but more unlock once you purchase items to repair other bridges. It’s dangerous outside the homestead, full of enemies coming at you or shooting you from afar. However, rewards and seeds await you by saving smaller animals and finding flowers.
Grown plants act as power-ups, items and currency to keep you surviving longer, so they’re important to get. Once night arrives, it’s time to protect the crops. Mutant pests of all kinds will roll in to try and eat your crops and kill you. This is where most of the bullet-hell comes in as you take down the intruders in waves with your gun until dawn. Sometimes bosses appear, which are more difficult to take down but usually drop extra items. This cycle continues as you buy better guns, power-ups and eventually farm animals, which help you out with farming.
The game is very arcadey in that you keep going until you die, unlock more the longer you survive and the shooting is very much like Asteroids moving a cursor or joystick to aim. It’s a widely different take on farming and a fun one with great retro graphics, reminiscent of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, a SNES classic.