Digitalchumps had a chance to chat it up with Atlas Reactor Senior Producer, James Karras, as well as his compadre Lead Designer, Will Cook. Both seem very passionate about the game’s continual progress and both were ready to tell DC all about the closed beta that is currently in progress as of April 14th.
If you’re not familiar with the game, you should definitely look into the closed beta at this time. For those of you who don’t have time, or want to know more about the game without lifting a lazy finger, let me indulge your precious time a bit.
Atlas Reactor is essentially a top-down, action turn-based, strategic game that sprinkles in elements of role playing and elements, be it hard ones, of competitive gaming, much like the DOTAs of the world. You select from a number of different characters/freelancers, with Elle being the latest addition to the badass bunch, choose your mode (practice, solo, versus, custom ranked) and go on your way to go against a set of other players. You can play the game with friends or against them, or against/with strangers. Online or solo, you have a variety of roads to go down.
As you progress through the game, you unlock more material, such as different costumes, as well as upgrade in other areas to make your character a bit stronger. When you reach level 10 in the game, you unlock the season option of the title, which adds a narrative to the foundation of the gameplay. Something to spice things up a bit to paraphrase Cook and Karras. Season also provides the opportunity to shift from a level 10 cap to start earning player season XP, which has its own set of rewards as players progress.
Speaking of rewards, there are a boatload of them.
As you progress in the game, you can add challenges and quests to the adventure. By completing such things, you are rewarded quite handsomely. You get cosmetic items to spruce up your character, material to gather for crafting (yeah, that’s part of the gameplay too) and other substantial rewards that make you feel like your efforts were worth a damn (some games don’t respect a gamer’s efforts). In short, there’s a lot to be excited about, as Trion has begun to expand the boundaries of a simple turn-based competitive game a little bit.
Now, one area of concern, at least for me, is how much additional content is going to be missed by the gameplay community through microtransactions. As you may or may not know, some companies tend to kill their customer’s wallets through microtransactions to the point where the player is frustrated to play the game. Even worse, sometimes developers like building an impenetrable wall for non-paying customers to force them to pay up to continue playing the game. Thankfully, that is apparently not the focus of Trion when it comes to Atlas Reactor. The gameplay progress might be slowed a bit in comparison to players who fork out the dough to get a leg up, but the gameplay goals can be achievable from both free and pay players. In addition, if you end up buying a game pack from the developers, you’ll get community rewards from the developers — regardless of pack purchased.
You can’t ask much more than that from a developer, as business is indeed business, good folks.
Anyway, the closed beta version of Atlas Reactor is quick, precise, ever-expanding and surely showing a hopeful future for the little game that could. With its art style in the same vein as Borderlands, as well as its attitude, there is much to like about Trion’s competitive action title. Hopefully, we’ll soon be graced with the final Atlas Reactor product, but until then, there is something to be excited about in this game, so keep an eye out for it.
