KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

[razvedchiki]

if the detective dies in the end of the woodpecker fight, and i import that save to trutograd will he appear there?

 

[Alphons]

if the detective dies in the end of the woodpecker fight, and i import that save to trutograd will he appear there?

He doesn't appear either way.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

if the detective dies in the end of the woodpecker fight, and i import that save to trutograd will he appear there?

He doesn't appear either way.

Can't remember if I complained about this or not to Atomboy
I assume it's something they forgot.

 

[Jermu]

starting my second playthrough never finished original game for some reason

few questions:

best difficulty is probably the hardest one?

how useful is speech?

 

[Bigg Boss]

starting my second playthrough never finished original game for some reason

few questions:

best difficulty is probably the hardest one?

how useful is speech?

Useful enough to put some points in.

 

[jackofshadows]

best difficulty is probably the hardest one?

The hardest (ironman) is a tad extreme since there's a few legit difficulty spikes and the same old crit hits randomness means that sometimes it's hard to predict the maximum incoming damage number (plus you'd want to grind somewhat to gain that hp pool in the first place). The second hardest is the default one I'd say, no reason to pick lower. If you'll decide to pick any companions it'll be cakewalk minus aforementioned spikes eitherway.

how useful is speech?

The most useful skill aside from combat ones I'm sure.

 

[Stavrophore]

Everyone know this that ATOM is good rpg, but there are still some quirks after i've played few hours.
1. After i've uncovered informant and promised him to not tell anyone, i've wanted to backstab him and report him to the village leader, but i couldn't tell him to stand in village, and after he flees you can't progress the quest further.
2. You can easily bring critters or enemies to encampments entangling the guards and inhabitants in the fight - moreover some of the people can die, and no one holds grudge against you that you brought enemies into the camp who killed their buddy.

I recall playing this early beta years and years ago and was there a keyword dialogue system or im misremembering things?
Every NPC has dialog, they might be boring and ordinary, but at least its believable - as rusty_shackleford said, it's anti-PoE approach where every npc was written pompously and very verbose/eloquent.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

It has a magnificent and decidedly Slavic feel to it.

 

[Stavrophore]

I've just finished ATOM RPG and it's expansion or rather a whole new game - Trudograd. These two are tough games to judge, because on one hand you feel they are devs love child on the other hand you see that they are rough around the edges aka. eurojanky. Trudograd definitely feels newer and better desigend from QoL standpoint than original ATOM. First installment is severely lacking in QoL and has bad perk system which was addressed by Neutron mod and helped a lot from my testing. Due to the fact that beforehand i had read Trudograd need clean saves to import, i've finished ATOM without any mods enhancing QoL or unfucking the perks. My opinion is solely based on vanilla game experience on normal difficulty, the default one. I will first review ATOM RPG and then move to Trudograd.

ATOM starts typically for many of the games of the genre. You were a hero, got amnesia or was betrayed/beaten and then lost everything starting froms scratch. So nothing really original there. First quests revolve around learning the game with your typical trash mobs thrown against you and some fetch quest. This already proves a problem, if you had specced your build too low in endurance, strength and dexterity you will have to run back to village to get help from guards in order to fight the creatures. This is a recurring theme of the game, where certain skills and builds will just fail, the balance is geared heavily toward certain skills and optimal builds. Endurance and dexterity is king in a world of stray bursts and killing enemies in one round, one by one as they come. Gambling and stealth is useless, pickpocketing, tinkering can be completely avoided, technology is used in few places. On the other hand automatic, rifles, speechcraft are bread and butter of the game, with melee being subsided at the half of the game when you get access to assault rifles. This brings the problem of balance, the game is not well balanced. Certain encounters, especially random can be either easy peasy or reload inducing. This and many other problems of course are due to ATOM being a carbon copy of Fallout 2, down to the very little details with only thing changed is the setting of the game in eastern europe. Coming back to build variety - as i mentioned perks are compeletely fucked by their cost progressing each time you level up, and there are clearly obvious choices to take. Even at level 30 which is only obtainable by hardcore tards/autists, you wont have even 1/4 of perks. Maybe the lack of perks you can take, is precisely due to the fact that only few of those are worth it? You can say that the game force you to make tough choices, but there's really no choice, the optimal play is to choose rifles or automatic rifles, and some supporting perks for armor/health. Any other choices can be considered challenge runs because they will make your experience harder.

The game presents you with open world for you to explore but there are clearly optimal choices and railroading. Yes, theoretically you can go to bunker 317 from the start, enter it due to certain help and then learn about the fate of atom troops. But you will be underleveled and the resolution of the quest will still point you to a certain city, a place where you would also be naturally pointed following the usual questline with a certain mob boss you are sent to, and also in the process got access to necessary place that you will need later in the relevant questline for the a certain cult. Game create illussion of choice and freedom, where in actually there is railroading - you need to do things in certain sequence anyway, as certain quests are intertwined with each other. So go ahead, travel around map, locations won't magically open for you their riches, not only because you are underleveled, can't fight for shit -the early game checks for speechcraft are so high, you will spend every point on barter and speechcraft, leaving combat skills in the gutter, but because locations open up due to quests. You see that old man sitting at the campfire at certain location? Well unless you started a quest, he will just sit there, giving you a hint as seasoned rpg player, that this NPC will be useful for later. Most quests aren't super interesting and consist of fetching stuff, but there are some highlight and interesting quests like organizing elections! Big plus is that there are no super convoluted quests in the game that would make you scratch the head and find totally obscure stuff to combine with other totally obscure stuff in order to push the "main" quests, if they are they are relegated to being easter eggs.

Combat is as most of the things in this game a direct copy of fallout with all it's irks. High alpha damage, bursts and one shots are bane and problem of this game when you face human enemies. The great example is the final fight, where depending how you utilize doors and hold position for your companions, you can either pass this without single medkit, or be completely trashed in one burst. This kind of cheesing is necessary with this system and gets pretty stale, when your only options of opening a fight is either outsmarting AI due to their incompetence in tight passages and lack of utilities like flashbangs, or start the fight from afar opening with sniper rifle and waiting till enemies come, with hiding behind obstacle as they come.

Environment interaction and puzzles are pretty good - would like to see actually more, albeit some skills are underused like technology, but they are needed where it matters. Actually without lockpicking and technology you can be softlocked in certain part of the game if you didn't found 100% gas mask and can't kill the mobs. Is this a good design considering that this particular gasmask can only be randomly found in caravans and shops? Speaking of shops and caravans - this system is poorly designed, where in early game you can have a lot of money, but the traders won't have any serious rifles in their inventory due to a level requirement for their stocks. So you can be lvl 6, have 5-10k roubles, want to buy SKS? Sucks to be you, because trades will have crappy nagants and pipe rifles. Traveling on the world map and inside maps is painfully slow[sadly you get car at the endgame] with lots of random encounters, which are unbalanced and annoying sometimes[dead city says hello].You can use cheat engine to speed things up and pump your survival skill[naturally, not by cheat] to skip it. Speedhack is solely needed if you don't want to waste 1/3 of the game time for the lack of QoL from developers. Game would feel much more at home if it didn't copy the fallout/steppe feels of the worldmap and locations to be honest. More forests, less mad max feeling of desolation - maybe it was due to technical constraints, as trudograd improves MUCH more in this regard.

Dialogs and choices, oh boy the dialogs, the single most important thing in RPGs. So every NPCs has something to say, but it's mostly a trash talk. Due to the fact that every NPC can give you quest, you just go from one npc to other, push the buttons until something unusual happens and get a quest. Don't get me wrong - the stories of people are interesting at the beginning but then become stale and you see more and more cringe inducing shit, even more than in fallout 2. The references are constant, whether russian literature, american postapo culture or right wing, even quests[hello pizzagate]. One thing that is cool is the ruthless and charming atmosphere of decaying socrealism of late gorbachov years. If you like comedy and grotesque you will like the game dialogs, as the game doesn't take itself seriously, one npc can be dead serious, and the other can talk you gibberish breaking the fourth wall. As with many RPGs your choices doesn't matter immediately, they matter at the ending slides of the game, trying to give you a closure of whatever you did in the game. I would prefer no voice acting to be honest than poor voice acting.

In the end i would rate this game as 6/10, being a faithful fallout 1 clone, when it comes to plot -unity and master replaced with communism and le ebin lenin was a fungus, it's sadly quite predictable. It's more of a combat fag game than trudograd for sure with more open world feel and choices.

 

[Technomancer]

cringe inducing shit, even more than in fallout 2. The references are constant, whether russian literature, american postapo culture or right wing, even quests

So much this. With idiotic difficulty-hooked perk progression system design, those are my biggest gripes with the game. I know atomboy loves his references but it's too much. There needs to be a sense of "enough", its unprofessional, annoying, reeks with amateurism. Kinda feels like writers in Atom use it as a crutch when they have a hard time coming up with regular dialogue. Don't know what to say? Slap a reference.

 

[Wunderbar]

Two Atom Team members (lead game designer in the upper left, and lead QA in the upper right) were guests on a gamedev-related podcast of some guy from tinyBuild publishing, where they basically did a postmortem on Atom RPG.



tl;dw

- the project originaly started in 2008 on a proprietary engine, but due to the lack of experience they messed it up and had to start from scratch;
- there was no external funding - the game was made on developers' own money, kickstarter backing, and the money they earned by selling the game on early access stage;
- initial sales were pretty weak, but game started selling like hotcakes in 2019 after they announced Trudograd and released a Switch version (i assume the news about Trudograd and Switch version have increased the visibility of the game);
- ATOM RPG was made by 15 devs (11 core devs and 4-5 testers), Trudograd was made by ~30 devs. For task managing purposes they were using Trello;
- devs keep saying that Atom RPG is not a Russian Fallout

- every random dev brought some new idea into the game. The team didn't have a creative director who would've defined game's vision, instead all of those ideas were discussed and decided by the entire team;
- they don't have a community manager on the team, devs were posting on forums and answering all the mailed questions by themselves;
- the community was participating in the development - devs actually listened to their fans and later implemented their ideas into the game (one example of such idea was perfume/cologne as a charisma-boosting item);
- lead game designer mentioned RPG Codex as one of the vital sources of valuable feedback;
- devs jokingly called themselves socialists because they could've sold Dead City as a dlc instead of giving it away as a free patch;
- they decided to sell the game for 14.99$ because they wanted it to be as accessible as possible - the cheaper the game, the more people are going to buy it, the higher the chance of a positive word of mouth. Greedy Tinybuild guy was chastising them for selling the game too cheap for like five minutes;
- devs tried to contact various publishers early into the development. No one was interested because back then the RPG genre was nearly dead (it was before the successes of PoE1 and Divinity OS);
- Tinybuild guy was shocked with how they managed to pull off so many different versions - pc windows, linux, mac, android, switch, etc. Devs said that the hardest part was adapting UI for touchscreens and gamepads, while porting and managing different builds wasn't a big deal. They got access to devkits through their friends on Cyprus;
- Devs didn't expect console versions to sell well, they only made them 1) to gain experience for the future projects, 2) because the community was asking to make the game available on as many platforms as possible;

- Trudograd's development started around July of 2019, and took roughly 2.5 years of time;
- Trudograd was originally meant to be a simple DLC that integrates into the base campaign. Then it turned into a separate campaign (but still a DLC). After adding a ton of changes into the engine (fancy weather effects, etc) they realized that there would be no way for them to combine it with Atom RPG without messing something up, so they made a decision to turn it into a standalone game.
- The feature/content/scope creep didn't end there. Since Trudograd became a full blown new game, devs felt obliged to add some new mechanics in order to differentiate it from OG Atom. Addings those mechanics took time, so they had to postpone the game's release date twice. Another complicating factor was that a half of the team was busy with porting original Atom to consoles;
- The last time devs actually met each other face to face was in December 2019, after that their attempts at meetings were ruined by covid;
- devs did a lot of engine improvements for Trudograd, most of those improvements were meant to be an investment into future projects;
- devs crunched a lot - the crunch period started after they released Atom RPG into early access, and ended only after they finished with Trudograd. One of the reasons for that was that all of the devs were working remotely, and there was no one to say "leave the office and go home already". Everybody was really into the project;
- dude on the upper right is only 25 yrs old, extensive crunch made him age prematurely;

- Significant chunk of the dev team lives in Ukraine, and because of the war all of Atom team's projects were put on ice;
- Atom Team still exists and they have enough resources to stay afloat for the time being, no one got fired or laid off;
- Devs didn't say what they are going to do after the war ends (if it ends). Lead gamedesigner jokingly said they may try to make a battleroyale;
- Tinybuild guy said that any future projects set in Russia may get shunned for political reasons, devs didn't rule out the possibility of changing the setting of their next game for a different country (Atom spinoff set in Yurop, China or even USA?);
- Devs also didn't rule out the possibility of making a game in a different genre (lead designer mentioned a platformer, lead QA - city builder);
- the podcast ended with devs asking tinybuild guy some questions. He didn't say anything particularly important, but he mentioned that Meta Publishing (WotR's publisher) is nearly dead and they had to lay off most of their members back in April.

 

[Stavrophore]

- the community was participating in the development - devs actually listened to their fans and later implemented their ideas into the game (one example of such idea was perfume/cologne as a charisma-boosting item);

This is actually terrible, considering that we have like three items that can double stack, so after drinking two vodkas, two joints and two colognes, you can get a whooping +6 to personality, so starting with 3 personality, you can boost it to 9 and pass every check ingame.

 

[Wunderbar]

- the community was participating in the development - devs actually listened to their fans and later implemented their ideas into the game (one example of such idea was perfume/cologne as a charisma-boosting item);

This is actually terrible, considering that we have like three items that can double stack, so after drinking two vodkas, two joints and two colognes, you can get a whooping +6 to personality, so starting with 3 personality, you can boost it to 9 and pass every check ingame.

community didn't ask for a ton of different stat-boosting consumables.

Devs said that they wanted to have a dedicated CHA-consumable, but didn't know what kind of item it would be. Fans suggested to use perfume/cologne.

 

[Alienman]

- the community was participating in the development - devs actually listened to their fans and later implemented their ideas into the game (one example of such idea was perfume/cologne as a charisma-boosting item);

This is actually terrible, considering that we have like three items that can double stack, so after drinking two vodkas, two joints and two colognes, you can get a whooping +6 to personality, so starting with 3 personality, you can boost it to 9 and pass every check ingame.

Just how it works in real life, but only on yourself.

 

[Technomancer]

This is actually terrible, considering that we have like three items that can double stack, so after drinking two vodkas, two joints and two colognes, you can get a whooping +6 to personality, so starting with 3 personality, you can boost it to 9 and pass every check ingame.

Indeed, you never should allow stacking stat boosting because it defeats the whole point of Fallout like stat system with limited attribute points.

 

[Krivol]

This is actually terrible, considering that we have like three items that can double stack, so after drinking two vodkas, two joints and two colognes, you can get a whooping +6 to personality, so starting with 3 personality, you can boost it to 9 and pass every check ingame.

Indeed, you never should allow stacking stat boosting because it defeats the whole point of Fallout like stat system with limited attribute points.

Well, yes and no... You are right, that you can dump END (you can raise it by 10 with just consumables IIRC), STR (1 training, 1 item, 1 healing in hospital, 2 with consumables) and PER (2 joints, 4 perfumes if you are a woman), focusing on INT, DEX and LUCK (which is really useless, to be honest) and be ready for last fight with something like 9/11/11/9/8/10/10 char.

But! - it's fun to build character like this and it's rather tedious to during coffee every time you camp and remember to eat that sweet bread before some fights. Some consumables can give you annoying (just annoying, mind you!) addiction or drawbacks when they stop working. It's actually fun to have MORE rather than FEWER possibilities.

'I want to be a charismatic trader, but I hate to remember about this joint bullshit and looking for perfumes the whole game!' - sure, pump charisma, why not?
'I want to be strong and endure but I want to get as much from dialogues as possible, and high dex is a must!' - well, pump DEX and STR/END a bit and use consumables when needed.

It's like a rest system in BG-ish games. You don't like it? Don't use it.

You will be angry with the 'save anywhere' system one day... oh wait!

 

[Technomancer]

But! - it's fun to build character like this and it's rather tedious to during coffee every time you camp and remember to eat that sweet bread before some fights. Some consumables can give you annoying (just annoying, mind you!) addiction or drawbacks when they stop working. It's actually fun to have MORE rather than FEWER possibilities.

I guess I prefer limited design. I remember wracking my head sitting in the char creation screen in AoD, thinking of what I should sacrifice. Because with metaknowldge I was perfectly aware how badly I need some stats for specific content and combat was just brutal enough that every missing point in physical stat felt.

In Atom I play more or less the same, since I know I can boost myself with crap and there are like 5 permanent attribute upgrades through the game (which stacks with more from trudograd), diminishing weight of original choice even further.

 

[Krivol]

Fallout 2 had like 8 perma att rises (cards forr 6 and fou could rise Luck by 2 with hubologist in NCR IIRC, also 1 exploit for luck with a dog, but I never used it so not sure if it works) + Power Armour + Buffouts/Mentats + gifted. There are guides about finishing the game with almost 10 in everything, so...

 

[nimateb]

Been thinking about replaying this, is there any 'secret' ending?

 

[jackofshadows]

Been thinking about replaying this, is there any 'secret' ending?

You can become chaos agent (basically kill most of NPCs in the process) so the ending will be unusual, sort of.

 

[Technomancer]

Fallout 2 had like 8 perma att rises (cards forr 6 and fou could rise Luck by 2 with hubologist in NCR IIRC, also 1 exploit for luck with a dog, but I never used it so not sure if it works) + Power Armour + Buffouts/Mentats + gifted. There are guides about finishing the game with almost 10 in everything, so...

Doesn't mean it was good design or it should be emulated. Fallout 3 had an end game perk that would raise all stats to 9 and you could delay collectibles to get 10 in every stat, which is beyond retarded. Hence, why you will rarely see such broken shit in RPG. But take New Vegas for example, where people behind did spent some time thinking about balance.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People who read guides on how to play games before even playing them get the experience they deserve. I didn't even realize I could double-stack effects until two thirds of the way through the game.

 

[Wunderbar]

I didn't realize that I could double-stack effects until I read this thread. Not that you could regurlarly double-stack perfume, it's a rare item anyway.

 

[Technomancer]

I didn't realize that I could double-stack effects until I read this thread. Not that you could regurlarly double-stack perfume, it's a rare item anyway.

Eh, some traders always sell it, guaranteed infinite supply, only need to wait for restock counter. Worst thing is, they accumulate it the longer you play, so you can buy in bulk later.

The hospital chick for example.

 

[Sykar]

Fallout 2 had like 8 perma att rises (cards forr 6 and fou could rise Luck by 2 with hubologist in NCR IIRC, also 1 exploit for luck with a dog, but I never used it so not sure if it works) + Power Armour + Buffouts/Mentats + gifted. There are guides about finishing the game with almost 10 in everything, so...

Drugs do not count. Sure, you could start with gifted and reach 7 in all stats, +1 if you want to wear Mirrored Shades and +2 IF you were lucky to get the bonus, which is not guaranteed to happen.
That character would not be great though. 7 Agi and 7 Int for a gifted are pretty sub optimal. 7 Strength is sort of a waste too unless you are melee. 7 Endurance is nice but only really interesting to have 5+ Endurance on no-reload runs, where you would actually go for 9 or 10 from the get-go. Also, those upgrades are not cheap. Unlike with merchants you cannot barter for something else, they only take a lump chump of change. The dermal implant reduces
Power Armor is also very late game; you get the first one the normal way San Fran. By that time the game is 85% over and little else is left to do unless you exploit the game and just bee line to San Fran for if you have enough to barter for it, which is basically is nothing but meta the shit out of the game even harder.

Here is the thing though, outside of 10 Agi and int at 7-8 the rest of your stats are not all that important. Far more important are your tagged skills and whatever you feel you want to go along with it like lockpicking or steal.

I didn't realize that I could double-stack effects until I read this thread. Not that you could regurlarly double-stack perfume, it's a rare item anyway.

Eh, some traders always sell it, guaranteed infinite supply, only need to wait for restock counter. Worst thing is, they accumulate it the longer you play, so you can buy in bulk later.

The hospital chick for example.

But here is the question. Why would you do that in a RPG? Obvious flaws like that can be easily avoided if you have an ounce of restraint. I always laugh at that retardation when people seem to be worse than unsupervised 5-year-old toddlers in a candy store.