qaStaH nuq Codex!
I'm AtomBoy and you might know me from such posts as: "ATOM RPG: Help us get that Greenlight" and "ATOM RPG: Help us get that Kickstarter $$$" both of which are actually this one post. Today, as you might already know thanks to the wonderful Codex admins that posted a news article about us on the front page thank you thank you thank you our little old turn-based Post-Nuclear Wasteland-inspired, USSR-set cRPG is taking yet another step towards maturity in this - the "ATOM RPG: Released on Steam Early Access Today!" post!
It has been a long and arduous journey, filled with bug fixing, writing, translating, and intro making, but we managed to create a good representation of what is to come in 2018, when we finally release the full product - a cRPG that's both a nod to the beloved classics and a breath of fresh air, much needed for those of you, who spent too much time in the company of more blatantly Fallout-esque games than ours. And believe you me, that full version is coming. I had the confidence to promise that when we had zero funding and nothing more than a rickety demo. I sure as hell feel confident promising it to you now, when we have a stable Early Access version that's been beta tested by a whole team, and contains much less flaws and a a fair bit of new content.
Why Early Access? Well, we covered it on Steam, but that's way too official, so here's my interpretation:
1. As simple folks, who are not used to getting crowdfunding money from people we don't know, we simply *need* to show everyone that it was spent on something tangible, something real, something you can already get your hands on to, something you can already have fun with. I think we did a good job showing constant updates on our forum pages / Kickstarter page. But a written update is a written update, - good, but not comparable to grabbing the thing and playing it for yourself to see whether we have really improved.
2. Getting the community involved. We're enthusiasts, we're people that first fell in love with the cRPG genre, then got ideas of their own, and only then taught themselves to make video games. That makes us very close to our player base, made up of the same kind of enthusiasts. And that, in turn, makes our player base's ideas and advice hit home more often than not. We love getting pointers, ideas, wishes, and yeah also bug reports from those who chose to follow our project from such an early date. Everyone will be listened to, everyone will have a chance to leave a mark on that dusty, irradiated husk which is ATOM RPG.
3. Last, but not least - it's the funding. I believe I first said it before we even hit Greenlight - the full game will be there, even if we'll have to work for free, like we did for the first few years of the project. Still, money helps. What we accomplished in half a year thanks to the amazing Kickstarter support, would've taken us much more time and hysterical tantrums otherwise. Each purchase of this Early Access version keeps the terrible, ugly beast known as the Day Job further away from our main crew, and eases the burden for those of us that still contribute for free.
And now to the things you'll be getting, compared to the old Kickstarter demo:
- Looks less like a demo.
- Now we've got a female protagonist, with some unique dialogue options.
- A scripted intro with multiple choices!
- Better graphics with more options.
- MUCH more animations.
- Guns are better. You can also shoot both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun at once, and do it properly! I always wanted that function, because it's cool. You got two barrels, so why use one at a time?!
- More combat induced states.
- A totally original cinematic, not at all reminiscent of Fallout 1!
- A much better UI.
- No more placeholders - everything in the art / sound departments is completely original.
- An update to the survival mechanics.
- More ways to die.
- Around 200 items, which means around 200 cool icons! My favorite is the duct tape!
- Sometimes - battle taunts! And check this out - they're original for each type of encounter. Like, if a woman hits a woman in the stomach, the game will pick a taunt from a completely separate list of phrases than, for example, in case a man punches a woman in the face! Some Dwarf Fortress-like attention to detail over here, amirite?!
- Words of wisdom appear on the death screen!
- An update to the battle system, with an even better update to the battle system soon to follow!
- Crafting - exciting for some, skipable for others!
- Sexy-time music plays during hot coffee moments.
- There's a character named Beetroota. She is named after a beetroot.
- Much more music in general (15+ tracks).
- When playing as a male, with some effort, you can become a homosexual in the Bandit Camp (req. CHA 11).
- More quests (20+, and some of them take A WHILE) Also - some hints to the future of our replay-ability - some of the quests in the Early Access version you can get only if you completely skip some others and vice versa.
- You can friendzone a problematic male NPC.
- More characters - some of them so special, you have like a 10% chance to find them at all, one of them has a trained pig but you can't ride it.
- Much more locations. Some still empty, but good for exploration and larping. The one with the big ship is my favorite! It's gonna be like this cool floating fortress for merchants and mercenaries and totally original too!
- A better translation of the new dialogues.
- A lot of corrections done to the old dialogues.
- 7000 LINES OF DIALOGUE!
- 100K WORDS AND THEN SOME!
- A much more developed world. It's really shaping up to be a unique place, guys. I'm 50% of the writing team, but it managed to surprise even me. It's really there, you know? This weird, funny, crazy place, part brutal, part naive, completely filled with mystery, madness, eldritch horror, some bad lines of dialogue which survived the correction purge, but most of all that good old soviet nostalgia. It'd be an honor if you check us out.
TL;DR - A fair amount bigger than the demo. A lot more polish. A lot more tech improvement.
Na zdorovie, Atomboi!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/552620/ATOM_RPG_Postapocalyptic_indie_game/
laughed to tears