A heavy-steeled room, identical to those around it, is where I awaken in ATMOSFAR, Apog Labs’ wildly ambitious sci-fi survival title. I’m a prisoner on Pearl Island. Less colloquially called, the PACE Extraction and Rehabilitation Location. I’ve been offered the chance at redemption as long as I fulfil a quota of scrap collection to earn my freedom. A guard drone forcibly tells me to get back to work, so I grab my Extractor and head for the mounds.
Just moments into my work, obtaining a substantial and baffling 1,000,000 Voltarite in scrap, a strange weather descends. I panic, momentarily, before I realise it’s an opportunity to flee as the guard drones around me disable under the electric clouds.
Pearl Island is merely the holding cell amongst an expanse of floating islands of planet Tycos. I’m tasked with uncovering the fate of humanity’s final outpost away from the constraints of the prison, so I board a flying vessel to escape. Aptly named the Wasp for its obnoxious buzzing, I’ll quickly learn that’s not the only obnoxious trait this zippy vehicle possesses, its volatility one of its great weaknesses, needing repeated repair from any donk or blast. Even a sniff of damage and it also gets increasingly hard to fly.
But, it’s my ticket to exploration of which ATMOSFAR sends me a prompt invitation in its early access state. And, as I land in an abandoned camp, I realise that while it’s been weirdly cozy in pace thus far (even the escape not overly hurried), the threat of the environment is unrelenting. Flora and fauna attack me if I get too close. While I’m travelling along looking for a missing PACE lever, a plant decides to spin me out intoxicated until I fall off the side of a cliff and lose 20% of my inventory to respawn.
Another venus-fly-natured plant snaps me within an inch of my life. And don’t even get me started on the creatures that emerge in ATMOSFAR, like the Maratus that can only be dodged until you find the Stunner. Even then, you can stun, but they bounce back almost instantaneously with new vigour and devastating attacks.
With a backpack in hand and an ever-expanding arsenal of tools, I have everything I need to navigate the floating isles (as long as I stay out-of-reach of pesky plant life). You’re given a built-in jetpack, electricity to power tools, and fuel to transfer to vehicles. It’s a multi-functional piece of kit that’ll serve me well, if I feed it what it needs. But, not everything is contained here.
In ATMOSFAR, you also need a Camp Hub that straps onto the back of your Wasp before travelling anywhere. This hub is expansive, once you build it out, with means to refine hydrogen into fuel, cook up tasty meals and so much more. Fair warning, if you leave your Camp Hub somewhere, you’ll need to go and retrieve it yourself. Extra fair warning, when you strap your Camp Hub to your Wasp, like a fair few things in ATMOSFAR, it’s fiddly business. It won’t compound nicely into one unit, but will instead force you to move the camp in its full expanse to the back of your Wasp.
Everything about this game asks you to protect yourself, but it also doesn’t give you much more guidance than that. When you get missions, you’re given little to no instructions on how to carry them out. And while at times this felt like a fun challenge, it often left me feeling defeated. Especially when the devastating drones started to reappear within moments as I tried to infiltrate a research base, even though I’d extracted all of their parts beyond repair.
And while I can’t fault a game that labels itself earnestly as survival when it tries to hunt me down and kill me, I can say that not even giving players an in-game map with such a sweeping expanse of islands is some sort of cruel torture. Navigation? Don’t know her. As ATMOSFAR takes on the feedback of players during early access though, I hope it’s willing to get acquainted.
Navigating this aerial world is an interesting offering and entirely necessary if you are going to survive. And while I’ve moaned about the Wasp’s noises and fragility, I had varying degrees of fun with it. Maintaining its fuel quota, restoring the engine, loading up my Camp Hub and riding off into the distance were all highs. Breaking down in the middle of a pit of drones, less so. There’s room on board, too, for friends and I could’ve done with some friends, but for my preview, I was entirely alone.
The Wasp in its utility state is just the beginning of traversal across ATMOSFAR’s lands. There’s multiple options like the Hauler Wasp, an alternative class that’ll transport heavy scrap for you. Or the Cloud Cruiser, the vehicle megalodon of ATMOSFAR. A buildable base, I only scratched the surface of its customisation, but it definitely left me excited to see how far you could go with crafting a world aboard a ship – and to travel around with it.
Unfortunately, as the size of the ship increases so does its inability to offer camera angles. For the Cloud Cruiser, they’re virtually non-existent. For the Hauler, you’ll be buried in walls as you try to send down your magnetic cord. But, while there’s no upgrade to fix this slightly frustrating experience, there is plenty of opportunity to craft upgrades from extracting PACE data and building out entirely new sections of my Cruiser for heartier and troubling travels.
But, as I stood on a cliffside contemplating where to travel next amongst the islands available in ATMOSFAR, I wondered how much freedom I actually have to explore. One such ambitious expedition saw me quickly run out of fuel. Another saw me disappear amongst the clouds, adrift in fog. Perhaps exploration is further down the line, but I noticed a distinct push towards a path it wanted me to follow and thus attempts to head out on my own were often unrewarded. Instead, I was met with a few more devastating inventory losses to punish me for my efforts.
Extraction is also another very important building block of how well your life will go in ATMOSFAR and a skill that you certainly don’t leave on Pearl Island. In fact, you’ll struggle to complete any expeditions if you’re not well-equipped with rusty scraps and an abundance of pipes, wires, and circuit boards.
But, as the EA gameplay trailer readily taught me, “What this planet deals in danger, it makes up for with abundance. Scraps, minerals, plants, outposts to scout and abandoned facilities to plunder.” And that’s what I found myself busy with, collecting all types of scrap to craft into upgrades for my Wasp, Camp Hub and just to keep me living. Once I’d stuffed my pockets full of resources from one place, it was onto the next. The concept is simple; find piles of scrap, extract it and use it. In execution though, it’s just a little off.
As I held the trigger to extract, the pile of scrap would begin to vibrate away from me. If I lost my hold, I’d have to start all over again. When you do finally successfully extract your scrap, the parts can bounce off in different directions which at times sent me scrambling across geyser fields and into crevices that I struggled to climb out of. Considering extraction is a huge part of the game, it began to feel less enjoyable as I anticipated each pile of scrap.
Survival games are meant to be tough and I’m happy to report that ATMOSFAR is suitably challenging. You need to manage your resources, fulfil missions and ultimately, protect yourself. But, there’s a fine line between feeling like it’s challenging you and feeling like it didn’t actually work.
Launching in early access is always an opportunity to adapt and I’d agree that it’s where ATMOSFAR should be right now as I came up against some teething pains. I found myself completely turned sideways, transported randomly elsewhere and even stuck to my Wasp when hopping in and out. Despite these gripes, I’m looking forward to seeing ATMOSFAR patch up its minor bugs and expand its vision. I’ll be flying alongside the updates with my buzzy Wasp companion to see what’s next.
