I’ve just hit 36 hours with Atomicrops and only yesterday did I discover one of the other persistent upgrade characters so now I have two at the hub. I think I should have discovered them earlier but… well, there’s a lot of different things to be juggling and balancing in Atomicrops!
There’s day time and exploration (as well as factoring in tunnels to get back quickly), growth time, sowing, expanding your plot, weeding, watering, fertilising, harvesting, tractors, pigeons, defending and of course the overarching days, seasons and storing cashews and roses for upgrades so you’re ready for the bosses. It’s Nuclear Throne with breakneck high pressure resource management. There’s a lot more to this game than meets the eye.
At 36 hours and counting, I think it’s fair to say I’m loving it, but it takes a while to get into the very particular rhythm of the game. Once you start getting a feel for the different items and potential synergies the binary upgrade options (this farm animal or that one, this item or that, this weapon or that one) start to feel a lot more meaningful. One of my best runs was with weed wacker (cut weeds faster) coupled with vinaigrette (weeds can be harvested) so I was able to dash around energised, weeding and racking up cashews, seeds and fertiliser. I play with a controller, by the way.
The visuals are busy and there’s the odd time when I’m not sure what hit me but for the most part they strike a good balance between lively and discernible, somehow. It’s pretty insane.
I don’t think you’ll need to look at the wiki because I don’t feel like the game has many hidden tricks. There is perhaps one very basic but key thing that they may have added to the tutorial since I played it: sowing four of the same seed (or tree) in a square and using enough fertiliser will combine them into a mega crop.
Today I managed to beat year 3 and, just now, year 4, so I’m very happy with my progress!
A few things from the update: the new weapons and items are excellent and add a lot more variety. I’m really looking forward to trying out the new character I just unlocked too. My favourite major change is switching heart beets to heart beet seeds. Before, killing enemies or looting would randomly drop hearts that instantly healed you. This was fine but it was fairly random and meant risking your life to heal up. The new system means you can store your heart beet seeds and plant them when you need to heal (and with the tip above there’s a risk/reward element at play here too).
Oh and @TurinTur you did very well to get to the tractor in 3.5 hours!