Game Reviews

Atomic+

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Atomic+
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| Atomic+

There's a striking modernity to Atomic+ that makes it hard to dislike. All stark white lines and twanging electronic soundtrack, it's a minimalist video game with none of the fuzz of Super Hexagon.

But it's from Terry Cavanagh's shape-shifter that the game draws its major inspiration, though in this case you have to navigate concentric circles, collect boxes, and avoid dots-of-death in a quick-fire arcade blast of twitch and dodge.

Atomic numbers

The game is all about nabbing boxes to score points. They pop up on circles randomly, and it's up to you to grab them while avoiding the hail of dot-fire that's spewing out of the centre of the rings. Take a hit and you'll take some damage, grab a square and you'll heal some. Take too many hits and you'll die.

There's a variety of control schemes at your disposal. The easiest lets you control everything with a single finger, pushing down on the screen to change the circle you're orbiting on.

Hold down for long enough and you'll be on the farthest circle - release and you'll move back down to the closest. Every time you grab one of the squares you swap direction.

You can swap that for one of two two-finger approaches. One lets you tap on the left of the screen to increase your radius and tap on the right of the screen to decrease it, switching direction automatically again.

The other lets you change direction by holding a finger on the left, and alter your radius by pressing and tapping on the right.

The different control methods make for an interesting experience, as you try and figure out which one suits your style of play the best. Whichever you choose the action is fast and frantic, with an emphasis on quick reactions and dangerous last-second evasions.

Sub atomic

Atomic+ understands that there's a swagger to the twitch genre, and its mixture of bullet-hell pattern weaving and hyperactive box stealing makes for an intoxicating brew of ideas.

This is a rich arcade experience that might not stand out for being particularly original, but has enough bite in its simple gameplay to keep you engrossed for hours.

Atomic+

A great twitchy arcade blast, Atomic+ strikes the perfect balance between accessibility and challenge
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.