PREVIEW: ATOM RPG Trudograd

ATOM returns with a new game, this time set in a smaller but much more compact setting

Overview

ATOM RPG Trudograd is the sequel of ATOM, a role-playing game with an isometric-styled view heavily inspired by the first two Fallout games and Wasteland. The title is set in a post-apocalyptic Soviet Union, more precisely around Trudograd, a large city with tons of people to speak with, encounters and secret to uncover.

Standalone Expansion

Those who played the original ATOM game will immediately feel at home in ATOM: Trudograd: besides the tighter spaces of a city, as the game remained rather similar to its predecessor. When starting a new character, with the possibility to choose for a pre-generated or to create a brand-new one, you’ll be asked to answer some questions: these happen to be the main events of ATOM RPG and, based on the answer you’ll give, the game will set up properly accordingly to the version of the story you’ll give to him.

ATOM RPG: Trudograd, for those who don’t know, uses real-time movement during exploration and turn-based combat based on square tiles, while dialogues really remind of those of Fallout before it got the “Sarcasm” option. Overall, the whole system is very classic and brings nothing new to the genre, but it’s well implemented and I’ve yet to find some problems in it.

A Third of a City in Ruins

Being in Early Access, the city of Trudograd isn’t fully explorable, as only the outer layers of the city are implemented in the game at the current state. You’ll begin your journey right outside the city and have access to the very first areas, in which you’ll be able to complete the first two main quests and a whole lot of secondary ones, which can often get interesting and complicated in their resolution. Trudograd itself isn’t the most wonderful of the places, it’s a big city, yes, but most of its inhabitants live in crumbling structures and streets are filled with debris from collapsed buildings. The center of the city should be richer, but it has yet to be implemented, so we’ll see how it looks in the future updates.

As in its predecessor, the game’s map is divided in multiple areas, reachable by a general view showing Trudograd in all its post-apocalyptic fashion. Each area is interconnected with the others by passages, which can be found at its edges, whereas entering buildings doesn’t require any loading (but most of them are composed of just a bunch of rooms, so it’s quite normal).

SKS Time

As I’ve already said, combat in ATOM is turn-based and uses squares as tiles. The huge customization of the character’s attribute lets you choose how to shape it, which includes how you approach your enemies. Both ranged and melee builds are available and I went with the former, as I generally dislike to play melee characters in games which feature guns. Speaking of guns, just like in its predecessor, ATOM: Trudograd features a number of old soviet guns, like the SKS and the Makarov my character has currently equipped.

During combat, the AI seems to be capable of taking up a fight and I liked the interactions that happened during some sessions, like the guard that came to help me during my fight against the terrible slimes.

Future Developments

Trudograd has still a long way to go: the game has a lot of areas that have yet to be implemented, along with its story, secondary quests, characters and so on. With an Early Access period of only six months, the developers will have to work hard to implement everything and maybe do some optimization work on some areas, which frequently dropped from 60 to 35-40 fps on my rig.

Verdict

ATOM RPG: Trudograd, in its current state, doesn’t have a lot of content, but I’m confident that the dev will put a lot of work to complete this standalone expansion in time. Apart from that, there’s really not much to say: if you don’t like cRPGs, you won’t like this one, while if you like them I’d say play the predecessor first. Trudograd is, as of now, for those players that played the original ATOM game and can’t wait six months to continue their adventure in the soviet wasteland.