Atomhex
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[I've been meaning to comment on Atomhex for a while now, truth be told I was holding out to do an interview with Mark Incitti for Rodent before commenting. Fear not, the interview is something I still intend to follow up with once the Emulation issue and my interview with Ooki Bloks coder (and co-creator of the glorious and essential Fren-Ze) MattV has gone live. Having recently reminded myself of the game in a recent RPS comments thread I figured a few "wise" words upon the game were long overdue.]
Grab Your Sticks
Ah, the arena shooter. I know, dear readers, a lot of you are probably already quite sick to the hind teeth of the buggers since the Great Geometry Wars Explosion a few years back (yes, I know one of my games is in that list, shush and see here) and I must confess that I too have become a little jaded. In the same way that running Retro Remakes will eventually give you an incredible dislike for Asteroids or Tetris because there’s just so many of the buggers, being a shooter fan exposed to roughly on average 400 arena shooters a week over the past 2 years (stop exaggerating - Ed) I can understand the dismay at yet another arena shooter hitting the market.
For the PC at least, the spark of brilliance that began the craze was seemingly never to be replicated. The moment of genius that was Grid Wars 2 has been cruelly removed from the internet [1], Weibo’s excellent take was released in a time limited state, Bizarre Creations official Geometry Wars:Retro Evolved barely managed to stand on its own two feet when making the transition from console to home computer [2], Everyday Shooter found its way onto PSN and the incredibly promising (and praised by Bizarre Creations) Veck 2:Veckscosity never emerged - despite being a fabulous and mental piece of work.[3]
And so we’ve been left with a whole lot of generica and little in the way of inspiration. Whilst it may have felt like we were on the verge of a great arena shooter renaissance, instead the arena shooter flolloped and farted its way to become the genre of choice for those who just fancied a bit of coding practice with scant pickings for the average gamer looking for some dual stick thrills. Things got a little bit stale quite quickly, even Mark Incitti having made such a promising start with Grid Wars 2 failed to repeat the feat with his next offering, the lacklustre and poorly thought out contract piece (See here for sterling information on why) Polarity+ [4]
Get Set…
Luckily, shooter fans - this brings us (fast forwarding a year or so admittedly) to Atomhex. Yes, it’s another arena shooter and yes, it’s by Mark Incitti only this time he’s free to experiment and make his own decisions. Unsurprisingly, this is a good thing although initially it may not seem it.
If you’re anything like me, when you first dive into Atomhex your first reaction will be befuddlement. Ok, so we have a grid made up of hexes. There’s some atoms! Brilliant. What now?
The initial confusion can be a bit off putting and I recommend that if it doesn’t click first time - turn the bugger off, go and do something else for a while - put the kettle on, have a wank, anything. Once you’ve freshened your weary brain, duck back in and it’ll all start to fall into place.
The core concepts of the game are really simple - there’s some atoms on a grid of hexes (we’ve established this already - Ed), each atom is a different colour. There’s also some white atoms that float around. When a white atom collides with a coloured atom it becomes part of a shielded colour thingy lark (technical term). In order to destroy the shielded colour thingy larks you need to collect a coloured atom to change your bullet colour. You know there’s a but coming along any second though, don’t you?
But! You don’t necessarily want to destroy the shielded colour thingy larks as once enough white atoms have collided with it, it goes “atomic” and you’re transported to a bonus round - think EEEE boss rounds but assaulted by a bunch of burly painters. Unfortunately, leaving the shielded colour thingy larks to their own devices means you’ll fast have an alien infestation problem as they piss out nasties in your general direction. Take it too far and you’ll find your bullets path blocked and unable to reach your desired target and your ship constantly under the threat of death.
Go!
Everything about Atomhex is about carefully balancing risk to earn greater rewards and survive. You can choose to constantly wipe the alien hordes from the screen and collect all the atoms but that elusive high score will take a while to achieve. You can choose to nurture the atoms and attempt to survive long enough for one to go atomic. Ideally, you’ll be wanted to land somewhere inbetween. This is, of course, easier said than done. You really didn’t think Atomhex would make it easy for you, did you?
Oh, but it doesn’t end there. In a similar manner to Grid Wars 2 you can change the size of the arena. Choose a small arena and you’ll rapidly find yourself in a clusterfuck of alien badness, choose a larger arena and reaching those crucial atoms takes a whole lot longer. It’s all quite clever for a seemingly dumb shooter. If I were trying to be smarter than I am - at this point I’d be waffling about hidden depths. I’m not going to do that though. It’d be silly.
Visually, rather than go for the all out glowing particle craziness we’ve come to expect of the genre, Atomhex is a far seedier affair. If Geometry Wars:Retro Evolved is the fireworks over London, Atomex is a grime infested alleyway in Soho filled with piss and shit. There’s a darker, nastier vibe that’s helped in no uncertain terms by the mix of arcade style sound effects, goth soundtrack (not that nasty new goth emo stuff, think Peter Hook basslines, Bauhaus etc…) with an almost unappealing aesthetic.
Avoiding the nod and wink “we’re lo-fi” of all those cheeky hipster kids, Atomhex presents you with the real deal. It means it, maaan. It’s an ugly, ugly game but not to its detriment. Fuck it, if the look doesn’t appeal, then all the files are there for modding so you can change them yourself. It’ll make you completely wrongfaced if you do but I guess I can’t stop you.
Finally, the all important price. I can’t leave this review without mentioning that the game uses the Radiohead Model for sales. You can pay whatever you believe the game to be worth. It’s a brave move on Marks behalf and one that I sincerely hope pays off for him, if only to break the malaise of “you must charge xxx dollars for an Indie game” that’s so prevalent in the industry, never mind that Atomhex is deserving of any discerning punters hard earned cash.
Download and Play
Go on, support an Indie developer today and buy Atomhex. It’s a little bit different, a little bit brave and more than a little bit special. Did I mention it’s got achievements and an online score board too?
[1] sort of…
[2] admittedly not helped by being premiered as a fudged Vista only build at an extortionate price.
[3] that’s not to say it won’t appear at all this year somehow. No promises though…
[4] an advergaming company trying to ride on coat tails of a great game is never going to end well.
Speak your brains
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Mersey Remakes is the home of Retro Remakes administrator Oddbob.
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Recent Comments
tim on 
Very nice review! It’s good to see some more indepth reviews of indie games from time to time. Most of the time we see a mention of the game and a donwload link and that’s it.
I’ve played the demo of this game for some time and it’s pretty cool. Graphically it’s nice as well and seems to be a mix of ‘programmer’ graphics and cool effects.
Oh, and I hope to make some better progress on my game as well, and trying to make some additions to the arena-shooter type game as well.
Atomhex is better than whatever you think it is.