Man this is some of the most fun I had with a game in a while. Needs music and weapon switching, but super satisfying, can't wait to annoy my friends to play this one so they can get to feel the satisfaction of this marvel! Consider me a sale when the game is done!
Me and my friend have been playing this a lot together and it's really fun. We've beaten the picnic a lot and can consistently do it easily together and alone now (I've soloed it with every different weapon), and I wanted to share some of the thoughts we've had in case they help you develop the game.
- the Assault Rifle is essentially the best weapon because upgrades can make it do anything the other guns can do but better, and it spits out so many shots that procs & damage boosts make it basically broken. I'm a sniper rifle player and I can do really well with it but even I find the AR makes the game so much easier, I can wipe waves before the next one even spawns with explosive shot which turns it basically into a grenade launcher with range. And the damage ramp up from bullet heat makes it better against bosses than the shotgun or sniper rifle.
- the other guns need better bonuses to balance out their weaknesses, the shotgun and grenade launcher are useless against the flying enemies near the end, and don't have enough DPS at close range to catch up to how much damage AND range the AR can spit out. Same with the sniper because it fires so slowly and doesn't do enough damage even with bonuses to catch up to the DPS of the AR. Maybe the bosses and enemies need weak spots that make the Sniper Rifle more useful? and maybe there needs to be damage drop-off at distance for the AR. Similarly, maybe the shotgun should have knockback and the grenade launcher have knockdown or something, so enemies might get stunned by it.
- the Assault Rifle also has an advantage when breaking the little crystals to get money or health because ammunition is much more valuable for the other weapons (especially the grenade launcher), and their fire rate is so much slower that it "costs" a non-AR player more to break a crystal than an AR just having to tap it with a bullet
- the enemy pathing gets easily confused and can be gamed, maybe that's on purpose because it allows the players to use strategy, but we've found it very easy to get the Little Macs stuck to kill them easily, or get them stuck trying to choose between 2 players and just standing there turning around
- since all the players upgrade at the same time and don't unfreeze until eveyrbody's picked, maybe the game should just pause when everybody levels, that way you don't get swarmed by enemies while leveling, it almost makes leveling bad in some situations
- there should be a way to communicate with players quickly, like "come here" "spread out" etc... just simple commands would be pretty effective
- players in the room should be visible on the HUD so we know when somebody leaves the game, sometimes it's hard to know if you just haven't seen a player lately or if they've left and you should change your strategies to accommodate for fewer people
- players in the game should be visible from distance, it's hard to know where anybody is when we're all running around trying not to die and it would help a lot to be able to see where players are with a little marker that's visible even at range or knowing the general direction they're in if you're not looking at them
- it would be nice to have some sort of tank class or protection for snipers so sniping becomes more viable
- a healing/support class might be a nice addition in the future for people who want to help the team but aren't big on shooting? maybe besides healing, support could also buff teammates or debuff enemies, like giving temporary speed boosts to teammates might be pretty cool as an idea for a future power
- the low health damage boost perk should be much greater given that it's much more dangerous to be at low health and you're more limited in optimal moves with it, currently the bonus damage at full health perk is far superior as it gives you the bigger damage boost & it's a lot easier to stay at full health with the vampiric shot perk & picking up health, while to get the bonus for low health consistently you have to never take vampire shot & avoid all health pickups
Anyway, I just thought you might like to know what we thought about the game after playing it almost non-stop together for a few days. Even in this early stage, it's really fun, and the colours, graphics, and character design are really appealing. We can't wait to see what's to come and I've been encouraging everybody I know to play and to support the development of the game.
one more suggestion: either the ability to join games in progress or at least to see games in progress in the team join screen, so at least people know that there's an active playerbase. I worry that a lot of new players are discouraged by a blank game list and assume the game is dead and quit out rather than make a lobby and wait for people to join.
Thanks a ton for the incredible comment, makes us really happy when we see someone take so much time to write what they think about the game :)
First of all I just want to introduce myself, I'm the game's Creative Director :)
I've read both of your comments entirely, they surely are insightful but let me address some points.
- Weapon Balancing: all the issues you've pointed out with AR, Shotgun, Launcher and Sniper we're taking a look at. Weapon balancing is not something that's done in a patch and it's over, it's something that we'll be refining for a long time since gameplay is expected to change a lot as we develop the game. But rest assured that I agree with some of your points and we'll work on them :)
- The same above applies to Upgrades balancing, we will keep rebalancing them as we go :)
- Enemy Pathing is still a work in progress. AI Code, Enemy Design and Level Design. We're still refining these important pillars of the game, and as we work on this I expect issues like enemies being stuck will be solved. But these take a long time to fix and develop so please don't expect one patch and all issues will be over, it's a very very hard problem to solve :(
- Pause system is something we will work on when we get back in the office after the break. It's definitely on the top of the list :)
- Better ways to communicate and see what your team is doing is coming. We've just released a prototype Ping System that works when you ping Health or the Boss. Expect this system to expand in the future. We also have plans to make other players more visible for you.
- Join games in progress is something we can't support due to the nature of the game, but we will improve the UI and make that entire Room experience better. This UI is just very prototypy and will definitely be completely remade from scratch. I completely agree with the blank list of games comment and that's also something we've been thinking; although the game is not really something that's multiplayer only like fortnite or valorant it can feel pretty bad to see an empty list of rooms to join.
That's all!
Thanks a ton for taking time to write a very cool comment like that! :)
the idea is quite interesting, the visuals of the game are quite pleasant, i liked everything that i saw on my screen) thanks to this game i wanted to play the same games with a similar upgrade system - thank you very much!
thank you for making this! I've been waiting for a horde coop game that has to do with the swarm survivors genre. I finished a couple rounds with my friends and I gotta say it will be a looker in the future for sure. I can't wait to see what you guys do with it.
the one main gripe is having enemies especially little mac's right up on you when you're trying to upgrade. I also feel like more graphical settings to lower could be implemented as when theres a lot of enemies it will inevitably drop frames ( to be expected from a horde game lol)
I joined the discord so im excited to see the progress :)
The enemies getting close to you during level up is our biggest complaint right now and it's something we will work on as soon as possible early next year when we're back from recess.
There have been some requests for lower graphical options and better graphics card support, we'll also look into this, although its currently not a priority. We are doing some optimizations and that work is ongoing of course, meaning during development we'll do our best to optimize parts of the game to make it run better.
Thank you for joining our discord! We will keep posting updates as they happen
I really love the game but i can't play with friends due of the connexion when i create a room i have no problem but my friend does have and when he create i am the one to have problem and he have nothing
Unforunately we know about those connection issues, we will focus on fixing them early next year. Right now the team is on recess due to the holidays. But rest assured we will work on this ASAP :)
Hey! I streamed your game last night. Overall, I think the game looks promising, but yes, it is indeed quite clearly an early build.
First, to begin with technical aspects of the game, it had several crashes. The game's frame timing and performance seems fine, but the overall stability seems to be quite rough. I crashed twice while waiting in the menus, and then another crash near the end of my run with the game. (since it seems you are collecting hardware info, I will post it at the bottom of this review - sorry for the wall of text!) An additional annoyance is the requirement to connect to a server in order to play. For my own streams I often download the games I will play in advance, this became a nuisance because it wouldn't let me play unless I had the latest version, but updating to the latest version still resulted in an empty lobby of no other games, making the whole ordeal just sort of feel like a waste of time. I'm aware you recommend using Itch's client to resolve this issue. For marketing purposes, I would recommend just having a "Play Single Player" button front and center at the title screen. Even if its functionality is exactly the same as "creating a lobby", at least those whom wish to try your game aren't immediately turned away when the see empty lobbies, and hopefully it would bypass the requirement to re-download the game.
Now, to move on to game itself: The graphics are nice, with a clear and clean aesthetic to them. I was surprised to see that this was a Unity game. While I am aware Unity's lightning can look nice (especially if you use the HDRP) often out-of-the-box Unity looks dull and flat, so this tells me care was put into the rendering of the game. Combat is rough in my opinion. I'm typically not a fan of rogue-lite games, but actually I didn't find them too horribly intrusive here. What I did find obtrusive were enemies. Enemies were way too damage sponge-y, and the optimal tactic often boiled down to kiting them in a circle. Movement, dodging, and shooting never offered the sense of feeling powerful or getting a leg up on the enemies, it just felt like mindless repetition with enemies that take way too many shots to down. All of this mindless repetitious of: run backwards while shooting, grapple to get a lead on the enemies, repeat - was made all the worse with the lifelessness of no soundtrack and no ambience. While I am aware this is an early build, it's also a public build released to garner attention, and so I think you are doing yourself a huge disservice by not including, at the very least, placeholder royalty free soundtracks - there's good stuff out there for free or cheap, so don't hinder your game so much! (You're also welcome to use my own music, though it wouldn't fit your game 🤣)
The best part going for this game is the graphics, and to a lesser extent the mild RPG/rogue-like elements. I can only hope that you don't lean in the direction most rogue-lites go where you start feeling gimped and, with luck, maybe you will build up to feeling mildly competent. It would be refreshing to have a game start with the player feeling competent and building up to feeling powerful.
If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.
Here are the hardware specs: Win10 Ryzen 2700x GTX1080Ti 16GB RAM
edit & p.s. Itch's comment section is just heinous with the amount of spam. Glad to see you cleaned it up, but I'm sure it's an ongoing battle.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an amazing feedback!
As the Creative Director of the game, let me address some of your concerns :)
First about the tech issues, yes we're aware of those. We did what we could to fix a lot of them before our holiday break, unfortunately some issues got through the cracks, some crashes, disconnects and visual glitches. We will be back early next year and we'll promptly work on fixing as much issues as we can.
About the game being always online, it's not really as simple as just pressing a button :/ The game as it stands assumes the player is always connected. We had to make this choice because developing a single-player experience and a multiplayer at the same time is effectively like developing two games at once and our team is SUPER small (we're currently less than 10 people!). So in order for us to deliver a good experience we decided to focus on multiplayer and making that feel great (although a bit buggy right now, sorry). A single-player 100% offline mode is not out of the picture tho, and we may work on that later on during development, I just cannot make a promise that this will be a thing :/
We are working on private lobbies and a better single player experience, tho :)
About the graphics: yes, our art team is amazing and we've taken the hard path of customizing Unity's rendering.. by A LOT. And it's not over, we'll keep customizing the rendering as we develop the game to make the game even prettier.
I really like and respect your comments about the combat and it's something we've been discussing internally, things like ways we can make the combat a more defend/attack or push and pull, introduce more variety and more interesting decisions. You can expect A LOT of improvements on that front as we develop the game, especially early next year. This is a priority for us, making sure the combat is great and the game feels amazing to play and you feel stronger as you progress.
About OST. We're currently in the process of rewriting our entire sound engine from scratch, this is the main reason there's no music in the game yet. Work on OST and SFX will be ongoing and as soon as we release an update with the new sound engine, we'll remix the entire game, add more sound effects and a soundtrack.
Will definitely watch you playing later :)
Feel free to join our discord.gg/bitcake to interact with me and the rest of the team and learn what's coming to the game! :)
PS: Yeah, we've been monitoring this comment section a LOT to delete those pesky bots.
Yeah, everyone that has been on Integrated graphics has some issues. Unfortunately :/ Right now we'll need to investigate and see what we can do, but we'll be going into recess today and will be back 3rd week of next year.
Привіт! Unfortunately, we didn't know how to speak Ukrainian and used Google Translate, but we want to tell you that your idea about the shield is great and we like it a lot! 😁
It's like fortnite + risk of rain 2 with genshin impact graphics, i love it.
the controls feel smooth, i like the zig zag when you quickly shift from left to right.
I like the graphics and map desgin,
The hook and flash abilities are fun.
I don't like how the enemies can get close to you when you level up,
i think the shop should be a safe area, where no monsters can damage you. Maybe even make it spawn at the end of every round or so, also in a more accessible area, like the middle of the map,
wasn't really testing for bugs, but found that running in and out of the starting portal will respawn you in space, maybe force everyone to spawn in the map after a certain amount of time, that can be determined by the lobby host,
would prefer if some level up upgrades were only specific for certain weapons (like "pierce" for the launcher weapon is useless),
would love to see more characters with different abilities,
Overall, great work! i'm excited for a full release.
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC! This is one of our very first builds and we're fixing bugs as soon as they're reported! 😁 Your ideas are great, how about sharing them with our Discord community? Feel free to join us at https://discord.gg/BitCake
Completed so far a couple runs and gotta say it still has a loooong way to go.
Encountered millions of bugs and exploits, getting under the map, finding spots where enemies cant follow, making enemies not able to move at all, making the whole island dissapair.
But at the end its not all that bad, if seen worse... (...insert horrible flashbacks). Givin thats an Early Alpha Game, its playable and has a potential to get to the same highs then games like Risk of Rain did.
Hopefully the Coop experience will be much more evolved in the future so i have finally something new to play with friends or strangers.
Thank you for your feedback on ATOMIC PICNIC! We are bug squashing as we speak right now and keeping up with patch notes at our Discord server, feel free to join and report any additional bugs you find on your way! https://discord.gg/BitCake
This game is really fun and has alot of potential! I love the core loop of destroying, level up and destroying more. I managed to beat the game solo using sniper and had quite an enjoyable time! However since this was an alpha or early preview, I can see the jank and bugs during the run.
One would be the spawning bug where enemies spawn in buildings so they can't really chase me and I sometimes can't kill them! I also actually cheesed the final boss because of it's navigation AI. Other than that had alot of fun and would love to see where the game goes moving forward!
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC! We are bug squashing as we speak right now and keeping up with patch notes at our Discord server, feel free to join and report any additional bugs you find on your way! https://discord.gg/BitCake
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC! This is one of our very first builds and the tutorial will definitely come at some point in the future! Your ideas are great, how about sharing them with our Discord community? Feel free to join us at https://discord.gg/BitCake
Hahaha, thank you for your feedback, DivergentDreams! Some of our players really love the Launcher, you can reach out to them at our Discord at https://discord.gg/BitCake 😉
This game looks amazing, and I'm very happy I ran into it; Just one thing...
It crashes at around 10 seconds in. If you could add more options to the graphics settings, instead of three very broad choices, that'd be great.
Other than that, it's wonderful.
(And I'm really starting to get pissed because people are going 9-year old Fortnite-Kid mode and claiming that this game is entirely unoriginal or stolen.)
Heyo! Creative Director of the game here :D we're currently investigating all crashes that have been happening, does the game crash with a warning or are you just being booted to the main menu?
Also, who's saying those things? We've been hard at work making this game from scratch for more than a year :/ I'd be happy to clarify any misunderstandings that those people might have :)
Hello Excursor, thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC! We are still in a very early development stage so expect way more improvements (including voicework) coming in the future!
Way to go, Dabzord 😲 Thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC, now how about you share this with our community? We have a screenshot channel at https://discord.gg/Bitcake
Hi. I'm working on a project that requires gathering a large number of generic game snapshots. The snapshots aren't meant to display any specific copyrighted content, and they aren't very big - all of them are 416x110 pixels. I wanted to ask your permission to use some of your images to create some of these snapshots. Thanks!
Hey Phil, we are flattered by your interest in featuring ATOMIC PICNIC on your project, but we would like to better understand your project before allowing the use of said images. Can you hit us with an email at your earliest convenience?
I'm developing a new Windows game launcher that makes it easier to set up controllers and play PC games in a living room. This launcher will be able to run any game, right from the first day, so it doesn't have a "greenlighting process". However, since there's no greenlighting process, that also means that games won't automatically inject information about themselves into the menu system (like the name of the game, or a snapshot). Users will have the option to enter in the name, or upload a snapshot, or both. In theory, if the launcher were to become popular enough, developers might start taking the initiative, by including the name and snapshot of the game themselves - however, I only want that to be an option, not a requirement. I also want users to have the option to download "generic snapshots" which are images that don't specifically tie to a particular game, but instead "look close enough" to what's in the game. For example, a snapshot of Diddy Kong would not be a generic snapshot, but an image of pirate ship, or palm tree, or a barrel would be. The more generic images I amass, the better the initial experience will be. If you have "scrap content" from a game that didn't make the final draft, that might be useful for building a generic snapshot as well. Let me know if you can produce anything. Thanks!
Hey, give it a test drive, and let us know your impressions 😁 Both ATOMIC PICNIC and Risk of Rain 2 might share a genre, but both are pretty unique in their own way!
I loved the game! Very good to play together with friends.
I found it a little short, playing with only 2 players we finished the game relatively quickly. I think it would be nice to make the enemies difficulty progression a bit slower and add more waves and bosses, this solves the problem of the difficulty escalating too quickly with few players and extending the gameplay. XD
Congratulations to the devs, it was an excellent experience! Looking forward to the release on Steam!
Hey Jhone, thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC! Oh, we totally get it, but this version is just an "Appetizer" for what's to come! If you can't wait for the main course and want to stay tuned, feel free to join our community at https://discord.gg/Bitcake 😉
I feel the game needs better mobility options. Maybe cut the dash distance in half but having two charges also maybe lower the cooldown too they seem to be too long I would say 5 or 6 seconds would be a better one. The grapple and dash should be separate skills with their own cooldowns and the character should have a second weapon to use while reloading the main one.
I honestly think this change would make the gameplay much more juicer.
Swarm Survivors is characterized by non-stop waves, lots and lots and lots of enemies, leveling up by killing enemies and roguelite mechanics and progression!
Since we are very early in the development process, we can't say yes for sure. But it would be great if we could port ATOMIC PICNIC to every platform available!
Finished it in 35 minutes! Thanks to Little Mac for getting stuck twice cuz this guy is no joke
Excited for the future of this game, if there would be something I would like to point out for future patch notes:
- Get upgrades stronger
There's a few upgrades that could be good but the odds of their effect hapenning is so rare, like the vampiric (lifesteal) upgrade or the ricochet upgrade (odds is just +1%/tier)
- More nerd stats for upgrades like cooldown reduction (I would like to know by how much my cooldown is getting reduced)
- Pause when level up OR the pannel to chose an upgrade can be triggered by pressing a key after leveling up (I have often found myself leveling up during mid-fight so I had to chose quickly)
I would remove the random pick if you take very long to pick an upgrade. Instead, at least make it pick the upgrade my mouse last hovered on. I find myself reading the descriptions kinda slowly and it won't let me finish reading it because it picked a random upgrade.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Man this is some of the most fun I had with a game in a while. Needs music and weapon switching, but super satisfying, can't wait to annoy my friends to play this one so they can get to feel the satisfaction of this marvel! Consider me a sale when the game is done!
Thank you so much for the comment! We will continue to make the game even better in the future! :D :D
Me and my friend have been playing this a lot together and it's really fun. We've beaten the picnic a lot and can consistently do it easily together and alone now (I've soloed it with every different weapon), and I wanted to share some of the thoughts we've had in case they help you develop the game.
- the Assault Rifle is essentially the best weapon because upgrades can make it do anything the other guns can do but better, and it spits out so many shots that procs & damage boosts make it basically broken. I'm a sniper rifle player and I can do really well with it but even I find the AR makes the game so much easier, I can wipe waves before the next one even spawns with explosive shot which turns it basically into a grenade launcher with range. And the damage ramp up from bullet heat makes it better against bosses than the shotgun or sniper rifle.
- the other guns need better bonuses to balance out their weaknesses, the shotgun and grenade launcher are useless against the flying enemies near the end, and don't have enough DPS at close range to catch up to how much damage AND range the AR can spit out. Same with the sniper because it fires so slowly and doesn't do enough damage even with bonuses to catch up to the DPS of the AR. Maybe the bosses and enemies need weak spots that make the Sniper Rifle more useful? and maybe there needs to be damage drop-off at distance for the AR. Similarly, maybe the shotgun should have knockback and the grenade launcher have knockdown or something, so enemies might get stunned by it.
- the Assault Rifle also has an advantage when breaking the little crystals to get money or health because ammunition is much more valuable for the other weapons (especially the grenade launcher), and their fire rate is so much slower that it "costs" a non-AR player more to break a crystal than an AR just having to tap it with a bullet
- the enemy pathing gets easily confused and can be gamed, maybe that's on purpose because it allows the players to use strategy, but we've found it very easy to get the Little Macs stuck to kill them easily, or get them stuck trying to choose between 2 players and just standing there turning around
- since all the players upgrade at the same time and don't unfreeze until eveyrbody's picked, maybe the game should just pause when everybody levels, that way you don't get swarmed by enemies while leveling, it almost makes leveling bad in some situations
- there should be a way to communicate with players quickly, like "come here" "spread out" etc... just simple commands would be pretty effective
- players in the room should be visible on the HUD so we know when somebody leaves the game, sometimes it's hard to know if you just haven't seen a player lately or if they've left and you should change your strategies to accommodate for fewer people
- players in the game should be visible from distance, it's hard to know where anybody is when we're all running around trying not to die and it would help a lot to be able to see where players are with a little marker that's visible even at range or knowing the general direction they're in if you're not looking at them
- it would be nice to have some sort of tank class or protection for snipers so sniping becomes more viable
- a healing/support class might be a nice addition in the future for people who want to help the team but aren't big on shooting? maybe besides healing, support could also buff teammates or debuff enemies, like giving temporary speed boosts to teammates might be pretty cool as an idea for a future power
- the low health damage boost perk should be much greater given that it's much more dangerous to be at low health and you're more limited in optimal moves with it, currently the bonus damage at full health perk is far superior as it gives you the bigger damage boost & it's a lot easier to stay at full health with the vampiric shot perk & picking up health, while to get the bonus for low health consistently you have to never take vampire shot & avoid all health pickups
Anyway, I just thought you might like to know what we thought about the game after playing it almost non-stop together for a few days. Even in this early stage, it's really fun, and the colours, graphics, and character design are really appealing. We can't wait to see what's to come and I've been encouraging everybody I know to play and to support the development of the game.
one more suggestion: either the ability to join games in progress or at least to see games in progress in the team join screen, so at least people know that there's an active playerbase. I worry that a lot of new players are discouraged by a blank game list and assume the game is dead and quit out rather than make a lobby and wait for people to join.
Hey Ami!
Thanks a ton for the incredible comment, makes us really happy when we see someone take so much time to write what they think about the game :)
First of all I just want to introduce myself, I'm the game's Creative Director :)
I've read both of your comments entirely, they surely are insightful but let me address some points.
- Weapon Balancing: all the issues you've pointed out with AR, Shotgun, Launcher and Sniper we're taking a look at. Weapon balancing is not something that's done in a patch and it's over, it's something that we'll be refining for a long time since gameplay is expected to change a lot as we develop the game. But rest assured that I agree with some of your points and we'll work on them :)
- The same above applies to Upgrades balancing, we will keep rebalancing them as we go :)
- Enemy Pathing is still a work in progress. AI Code, Enemy Design and Level Design. We're still refining these important pillars of the game, and as we work on this I expect issues like enemies being stuck will be solved. But these take a long time to fix and develop so please don't expect one patch and all issues will be over, it's a very very hard problem to solve :(
- Pause system is something we will work on when we get back in the office after the break. It's definitely on the top of the list :)
- Better ways to communicate and see what your team is doing is coming. We've just released a prototype Ping System that works when you ping Health or the Boss. Expect this system to expand in the future. We also have plans to make other players more visible for you.
- Join games in progress is something we can't support due to the nature of the game, but we will improve the UI and make that entire Room experience better. This UI is just very prototypy and will definitely be completely remade from scratch. I completely agree with the blank list of games comment and that's also something we've been thinking; although the game is not really something that's multiplayer only like fortnite or valorant it can feel pretty bad to see an empty list of rooms to join.
That's all!
Thanks a ton for taking time to write a very cool comment like that! :)
the idea is quite interesting, the visuals of the game are quite pleasant, i liked everything that i saw on my screen)
thanks to this game i wanted to play the same games with a similar upgrade system - thank you very much!
Hey Gladiator! Thanks a ton for enjoying the game! It'll only get better as we continue development :D
Join our discord to keep in touch with us and the rest of the community at discord.gg/bitcake
amazing!
Thank you! :D
system requirements??
MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: i3 4130
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 2 GB available space
RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: i5 6500
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 2 GB available space
thank you for making this! I've been waiting for a horde coop game that has to do with the swarm survivors genre. I finished a couple rounds with my friends and I gotta say it will be a looker in the future for sure. I can't wait to see what you guys do with it.
the one main gripe is having enemies especially little mac's right up on you when you're trying to upgrade. I also feel like more graphical settings to lower could be implemented as when theres a lot of enemies it will inevitably drop frames ( to be expected from a horde game lol)
I joined the discord so im excited to see the progress :)
Hey Giodyne!
Thank YOU for playing and enjoying the game :D
The enemies getting close to you during level up is our biggest complaint right now and it's something we will work on as soon as possible early next year when we're back from recess.
There have been some requests for lower graphical options and better graphics card support, we'll also look into this, although its currently not a priority. We are doing some optimizations and that work is ongoing of course, meaning during development we'll do our best to optimize parts of the game to make it run better.
Thank you for joining our discord! We will keep posting updates as they happen
Cheers!
I really love the game but i can't play with friends due of the connexion when i create a room i have no problem but my friend does have and when he create i am the one to have problem and he have nothing
Hey Atomix!
Unforunately we know about those connection issues, we will focus on fixing them early next year. Right now the team is on recess due to the holidays. But rest assured we will work on this ASAP :)
Hey!
I streamed your game last night. Overall, I think the game looks promising, but yes, it is indeed quite clearly an early build.
First, to begin with technical aspects of the game, it had several crashes. The game's frame timing and performance seems fine, but the overall stability seems to be quite rough. I crashed twice while waiting in the menus, and then another crash near the end of my run with the game. (since it seems you are collecting hardware info, I will post it at the bottom of this review - sorry for the wall of text!)
An additional annoyance is the requirement to connect to a server in order to play. For my own streams I often download the games I will play in advance, this became a nuisance because it wouldn't let me play unless I had the latest version, but updating to the latest version still resulted in an empty lobby of no other games, making the whole ordeal just sort of feel like a waste of time. I'm aware you recommend using Itch's client to resolve this issue. For marketing purposes, I would recommend just having a "Play Single Player" button front and center at the title screen. Even if its functionality is exactly the same as "creating a lobby", at least those whom wish to try your game aren't immediately turned away when the see empty lobbies, and hopefully it would bypass the requirement to re-download the game.
Now, to move on to game itself:
The graphics are nice, with a clear and clean aesthetic to them. I was surprised to see that this was a Unity game. While I am aware Unity's lightning can look nice (especially if you use the HDRP) often out-of-the-box Unity looks dull and flat, so this tells me care was put into the rendering of the game.
Combat is rough in my opinion. I'm typically not a fan of rogue-lite games, but actually I didn't find them too horribly intrusive here. What I did find obtrusive were enemies. Enemies were way too damage sponge-y, and the optimal tactic often boiled down to kiting them in a circle. Movement, dodging, and shooting never offered the sense of feeling powerful or getting a leg up on the enemies, it just felt like mindless repetition with enemies that take way too many shots to down. All of this mindless repetitious of: run backwards while shooting, grapple to get a lead on the enemies, repeat - was made all the worse with the lifelessness of no soundtrack and no ambience. While I am aware this is an early build, it's also a public build released to garner attention, and so I think you are doing yourself a huge disservice by not including, at the very least, placeholder royalty free soundtracks - there's good stuff out there for free or cheap, so don't hinder your game so much! (You're also welcome to use my own music, though it wouldn't fit your game 🤣)
The best part going for this game is the graphics, and to a lesser extent the mild RPG/rogue-like elements. I can only hope that you don't lean in the direction most rogue-lites go where you start feeling gimped and, with luck, maybe you will build up to feeling mildly competent. It would be refreshing to have a game start with the player feeling competent and building up to feeling powerful.
If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.
Here are the hardware specs:
Win10
Ryzen 2700x
GTX1080Ti
16GB RAM
edit & p.s.
Itch's comment section is just heinous with the amount of spam. Glad to see you cleaned it up, but I'm sure it's an ongoing battle.
Hey Nolan,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an amazing feedback!
As the Creative Director of the game, let me address some of your concerns :)
First about the tech issues, yes we're aware of those. We did what we could to fix a lot of them before our holiday break, unfortunately some issues got through the cracks, some crashes, disconnects and visual glitches. We will be back early next year and we'll promptly work on fixing as much issues as we can.
About the game being always online, it's not really as simple as just pressing a button :/ The game as it stands assumes the player is always connected. We had to make this choice because developing a single-player experience and a multiplayer at the same time is effectively like developing two games at once and our team is SUPER small (we're currently less than 10 people!). So in order for us to deliver a good experience we decided to focus on multiplayer and making that feel great (although a bit buggy right now, sorry). A single-player 100% offline mode is not out of the picture tho, and we may work on that later on during development, I just cannot make a promise that this will be a thing :/
We are working on private lobbies and a better single player experience, tho :)
About the graphics: yes, our art team is amazing and we've taken the hard path of customizing Unity's rendering.. by A LOT. And it's not over, we'll keep customizing the rendering as we develop the game to make the game even prettier.
I really like and respect your comments about the combat and it's something we've been discussing internally, things like ways we can make the combat a more defend/attack or push and pull, introduce more variety and more interesting decisions. You can expect A LOT of improvements on that front as we develop the game, especially early next year. This is a priority for us, making sure the combat is great and the game feels amazing to play and you feel stronger as you progress.
About OST. We're currently in the process of rewriting our entire sound engine from scratch, this is the main reason there's no music in the game yet. Work on OST and SFX will be ongoing and as soon as we release an update with the new sound engine, we'll remix the entire game, add more sound effects and a soundtrack.
Will definitely watch you playing later :)
Feel free to join our discord.gg/bitcake to interact with me and the rest of the team and learn what's coming to the game! :)
PS: Yeah, we've been monitoring this comment section a LOT to delete those pesky bots.
Looks very promising! Looks quite similar to Banzai Escape II, but more polished and in a different style!
However, the game always crashes in the first 3 minutes of gameplay, on Windows 11.
Thanks for enjoying the game and for the feedback, Eglaios! About your crash, what's your PC configs? CPU, Ram and GPU mainly?
Hey, I am having the same problem on:
OS: windows 11 64 bit
CPU: Intel core i5-8265U 1.60GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
RAM: 16GB
Running this on a laptop, could it be possible that the crash happens because the game is unable to run on integrated graphics?
Yeah, everyone that has been on Integrated graphics has some issues. Unfortunately :/ Right now we'll need to investigate and see what we can do, but we'll be going into recess today and will be back 3rd week of next year.
Pretty much the same thing for me. Laptop win 11 integrated graphics.
Класна демка.
Хочу
більше зброї
більше персонажів
більше мап
більше рандому
і найголовніше. під час підвищеня рівня хочу щоб навколо персонажа з`являвся захисний щит на 15 секунд .щоб спокійно можно було обрати бонус.
Привіт! Unfortunately, we didn't know how to speak Ukrainian and used Google Translate, but we want to tell you that your idea about the shield is great and we like it a lot! 😁
and by the way. I finished all the waves sitting on a tree.
second half of the video
It's like fortnite + risk of rain 2 with genshin impact graphics, i love it.
the controls feel smooth, i like the zig zag when you quickly shift from left to right.
I like the graphics and map desgin,
The hook and flash abilities are fun.
I don't like how the enemies can get close to you when you level up,
i think the shop should be a safe area, where no monsters can damage you. Maybe even make it spawn at the end of every round or so, also in a more accessible area, like the middle of the map,
wasn't really testing for bugs, but found that running in and out of the starting portal will respawn you in space, maybe force everyone to spawn in the map after a certain amount of time, that can be determined by the lobby host,
would prefer if some level up upgrades were only specific for certain weapons (like "pierce" for the launcher weapon is useless),
would love to see more characters with different abilities,
Overall, great work! i'm excited for a full release.
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC!
This is one of our very first builds and we're fixing bugs as soon as they're reported! 😁 Your ideas are great, how about sharing them with our Discord community? Feel free to join us at https://discord.gg/BitCake
Completed so far a couple runs and gotta say it still has a loooong way to go.
Encountered millions of bugs and exploits, getting under the map, finding spots where enemies cant follow, making enemies not able to move at all, making the whole island dissapair.
But at the end its not all that bad, if seen worse... (...insert horrible flashbacks). Givin thats an Early Alpha Game, its playable and has a potential to get to the same highs then games like Risk of Rain did.
Hopefully the Coop experience will be much more evolved in the future so i have finally something new to play with friends or strangers.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you for your feedback on ATOMIC PICNIC!
We are bug squashing as we speak right now and keeping up with patch notes at our Discord server, feel free to join and report any additional bugs you find on your way! https://discord.gg/BitCake
This game is really fun and has alot of potential! I love the core loop of destroying, level up and destroying more. I managed to beat the game solo using sniper and had quite an enjoyable time! However since this was an alpha or early preview, I can see the jank and bugs during the run.
One would be the spawning bug where enemies spawn in buildings so they can't really chase me and I sometimes can't kill them! I also actually cheesed the final boss because of it's navigation AI. Other than that had alot of fun and would love to see where the game goes moving forward!
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC!
We are bug squashing as we speak right now and keeping up with patch notes at our Discord server, feel free to join and report any additional bugs you find on your way! https://discord.gg/BitCake
please add lower graphics option
You can already lower your graphics by pressing Esc and changing the options there and resolution :O Do you need lower graphical options than that?
yes...
i do. please add an option to remove particles and grass and other non essential graphics
bro we need more 3D games on itch io
This game looks fire wth
🔥
:>
This game has high potential.
Still there need to be some things adjusted (not based on the upcoming patches) such as:
- short introduction/tutorial
- more varity for the player like several abilities (not only in movement, but also in fight/defense)
Ideas:
- decreasing the map as the game runs so it gets more intense
- sliding
- more movement animations so the game doesn't look to boring or "its like always the same"
Hope this helps.
Clxppy
Thank you for enjoying ATOMIC PICNIC!
This is one of our very first builds and the tutorial will definitely come at some point in the future! Your ideas are great, how about sharing them with our Discord community? Feel free to join us at https://discord.gg/BitCake
I've done two runs so far and I'm LOVING this game (Launcher sweep btw)
Hahaha, thank you for your feedback, DivergentDreams! Some of our players really love the Launcher, you can reach out to them at our Discord at https://discord.gg/BitCake 😉
هذه اللعبة مذهلة
لكن اتمنى لو تكون لديكم نسخة للاندرويد
Requirements System??
This game looks amazing, and I'm very happy I ran into it; Just one thing...
It crashes at around 10 seconds in. If you could add more options to the graphics settings, instead of three very broad choices, that'd be great.
Other than that, it's wonderful.
(And I'm really starting to get pissed because people are going 9-year old Fortnite-Kid mode and claiming that this game is entirely unoriginal or stolen.)
Heyo! Creative Director of the game here :D we're currently investigating all crashes that have been happening, does the game crash with a warning or are you just being booted to the main menu?
Also, who's saying those things? We've been hard at work making this game from scratch for more than a year :/ I'd be happy to clarify any misunderstandings that those people might have :)
Cheers!
Will this game have any new voice work added. From monsters to characters?
Hello Excursor, thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC!
We are still in a very early development stage so expect way more improvements (including voicework) coming in the future!
Whenever you plan on hiring VO work, I'll send an audition if you wish. Good luck
that's some fine game right there ;)
Thank you, Matheus! We really appreciate it 🥰
Is this what Risk of Rain 3 would look like if they had the chance?
Looks verry nice and even so better then Risk of Rain itself
Good luck with the game.
32 bit pls
Launcher rules
Way to go, Dabzord 😲
Thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC, now how about you share this with our community? We have a screenshot channel at https://discord.gg/Bitcake
Hi. I'm working on a project that requires gathering a large number of generic game snapshots. The snapshots aren't meant to display any specific copyrighted content, and they aren't very big - all of them are 416x110 pixels. I wanted to ask your permission to use some of your images to create some of these snapshots. Thanks!
Hey Phil, we are flattered by your interest in featuring ATOMIC PICNIC on your project, but we would like to better understand your project before allowing the use of said images. Can you hit us with an email at your earliest convenience?
I'm developing a new Windows game launcher that makes it easier to set up controllers and play PC games in a living room. This launcher will be able to run any game, right from the first day, so it doesn't have a "greenlighting process". However, since there's no greenlighting process, that also means that games won't automatically inject information about themselves into the menu system (like the name of the game, or a snapshot). Users will have the option to enter in the name, or upload a snapshot, or both. In theory, if the launcher were to become popular enough, developers might start taking the initiative, by including the name and snapshot of the game themselves - however, I only want that to be an option, not a requirement. I also want users to have the option to download "generic snapshots" which are images that don't specifically tie to a particular game, but instead "look close enough" to what's in the game. For example, a snapshot of Diddy Kong would not be a generic snapshot, but an image of pirate ship, or palm tree, or a barrel would be. The more generic images I amass, the better the initial experience will be. If you have "scrap content" from a game that didn't make the final draft, that might be useful for building a generic snapshot as well. Let me know if you can produce anything. Thanks!
So it a lot simular with risk of rain series. But whats different?
Hey, give it a test drive, and let us know your impressions 😁
Both ATOMIC PICNIC and Risk of Rain 2 might share a genre, but both are pretty unique in their own way!
I loved the game! Very good to play together with friends.
I found it a little short, playing with only 2 players we finished the game relatively quickly. I think it would be nice to make the enemies difficulty progression a bit slower and add more waves and bosses, this solves the problem of the difficulty escalating too quickly with few players and extending the gameplay. XD
Congratulations to the devs, it was an excellent experience!
Looking forward to the release on Steam!
Hey Jhone, thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC! Oh, we totally get it, but this version is just an "Appetizer" for what's to come! If you can't wait for the main course and want to stay tuned, feel free to join our community at https://discord.gg/Bitcake 😉
I feel the game needs better mobility options. Maybe cut the dash distance in half but having two charges also maybe lower the cooldown too they seem to be too long I would say 5 or 6 seconds would be a better one. The grapple and dash should be separate skills with their own cooldowns and the character should have a second weapon to use while reloading the main one.
I honestly think this change would make the gameplay much more juicer.
That's interesting feedback! We're definitely looking into it, thank you 💖
I am just curious what makes swarm survivors different from the already established horde genre?
Swarm Survivors is characterized by non-stop waves, lots and lots and lots of enemies, leveling up by killing enemies and roguelite mechanics and progression!
will this ever be on mac?
Since we are very early in the development process, we can't say yes for sure. But it would be great if we could port ATOMIC PICNIC to every platform available!
THIS GAME IS DOPE!!!!
Thank you for playing ATOMIC PICNIC and feel free to join our international community at https://discord.gg/Bitcake
THIS LOOKS AWESOME!
Thank you! Please let us know your feedback on what we can improve in ATOMIC PICNIC 😁
Great action packed game with a bright future ahead, looking forward to its updates!
Thank you for your support, Rafa! 💖
Finished it in 35 minutes! Thanks to Little Mac for getting stuck twice cuz this guy is no joke
Excited for the future of this game, if there would be something I would like to point out for future patch notes:
- Get upgrades stronger
There's a few upgrades that could be good but the odds of their effect hapenning is so rare, like the vampiric (lifesteal) upgrade or the ricochet upgrade (odds is just +1%/tier)
- More nerd stats for upgrades like cooldown reduction (I would like to know by how much my cooldown is getting reduced)
- Pause when level up OR the pannel to chose an upgrade can be triggered by pressing a key after leveling up (I have often found myself leveling up during mid-fight so I had to chose quickly)
Good luck for the development of the game!
Hey Aragosta, thank you for your input, we really appreciate it and are definitely looking into it!
In the meantime, feel free to join our community, play with them, and report on the Atomic Picnic channels at https://discord.gg/Bitcake 😁
I would remove the random pick if you take very long to pick an upgrade. Instead, at least make it pick the upgrade my mouse last hovered on. I find myself reading the descriptions kinda slowly and it won't let me finish reading it because it picked a random upgrade.
Thanks for the feedback! We'll discuss solutions for this issue :)
damn so cool.
Thanks!
I really liked the game, can't wait to find a group to try it multiplayer.
My only feedback is to make the shop press instead of holding, it's hard to clean every monster surrounding it after 5+ minutes to buy stuff.
Thank you for liking the game! We'll keep improving the UX based on everyone's feedback! :D
<3
<3