RoguedexPart 2 (May 2024) · #5 of 13 in that tierWatch the moment (0:12:02)
Atomicrops
- Developed by
- Bird Bath Games
- Published by
- Raw Fury
$14.99
A twin-stick, bullet-hell, roguelite where you must cultivate and defend the last farm in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Farm mutated crops, upgrade your weapons, marry townsfolk, and kill every mutant creature that tries to invade your homestead! Yee-haw!
Consensus
B74.8/100
Steam players92% positiveVery Positive6,352 reviews
Metacritic ↗78/100Users: 7.1/10
OpenCritic ↗75/100
VG Insights estimate ↗≈191K copies · ≈$1.7M gross
What creators say
Ranked Apr 2023 · #7 of 16 in that tierWatch the moment (2:03:54)
What players say
A twin-stick bullet-hell roguelite by Bird Bath Games (published by Raw Fury) where you farm mutated crops by day and defend the farm from mutants and bandits by night, across a 12-day year with bosses every third night.
Atomicrops is well loved by the players who stick with it (Steam: Very Positive, about 92% of roughly 6,350 reviews) and received a solid-but-not-glowing critic reception (Metacritic 78 from 9 reviews, OpenCritic top-critic average 75 with 69% recommending). Critics and players agree the farming-plus-bullet-hell juggling act is original and addictive, with great pixel art and music. The recurring caveats are a brutal, poorly explained first few hours, visual clutter, thin meta-progression, and a fixed map that repeats. It left early access on Epic and launched on consoles in May 2020 (Steam release listed Sep 2020), got a free crop-system update and the Halloween Deerly Beloved DLC in 2022, and several 2025-26 Steam reviews say the game has gone roughly two years without a patch while fans ask for a sequel or co-op.
Players love
- The core hook: juggling planting, watering, harvesting and shooting at the same time works as a tower-defense/bullet-hell/farming hybrid, which many reviewers say should not work but does
- Very addictive one-more-run loop; Steam reviewers report hundreds of hours and repeat returns years later
- Pixel art by Toby Dixon and the quirky, catchy soundtrack are widely praised (though music is a minority complaint)
- Build variety and item synergies, such as weed-cutting, slow-bullet and farm-animal combinations that turn a bullet hell into bullet time
- Distinct playable characters (Robusta and the DLC characters are named favorites) that change pace and difficulty
- Humor, marriage/polygamy mechanic and memorable bosses give the wasteland a lot of personality
- Lots to unlock and high replayability with late challenges like deeper years and cat/kitty modifiers
- Tight controls in the Binding of Isaac / Enter the Gungeon mold, with a plant-defense feel compared to Plants vs Zombies
Common complaints
- Poor onboarding: the tutorial and item descriptions explain very little, so early runs feel confusing and unfair
- Visual clutter and low readability in later years, making it hard to tell friend from foe or what hit you
- Weak or slow meta-progression; critics and players call the unlock tree (ant colony) close to pointless or just a list you eventually exhaust
- Economy and shop balance: weapon shop prices and weapon upgrade costs feel punishing, and runs can hinge on affordability luck
- Fixed repeating map layout (the same handful of fields) with little randomness, which some feel is not level design
- Difficulty spikes in late years (around year 9) with off-screen charges and poorly telegraphed attacks
- Performance and framerate problems reported at console launch, and some scrolling judder complaints on PC
- Permadeath clashes somewhat with the theme of growing things, per one critic
Can feel tedious
- Constant multitasking under a timer feels stressful or chore-like to some players, who expected a chill Stardew-style farming game
- Accidentally uprooting turrets or using the wrong tool in hectic combat, and losing items when airlifted away
- Grinding for unlocks across the same five fields and same music tracks; a few players say full unlock takes very long
- Repeated early restarts while learning the game, since little carries over between runs early on
- Sameness of runs for some, with two dominant build styles and shops that restrict purchases
- Some dislike the music, art style or camera scrolling and feel the game is too chaotic visually
What's unique
- Farming sim time management fused with nightly tower-defense bullet-hell waves, all in one loop
- A seasonal calendar structure: a 12-day year across four seasons, bosses every third night, and runs continuing through successive years
- Crops double as currency and health economy, so farming decisions directly affect survival and upgrades
- Marrying townsfolk (including multiple spouses) gives run-altering perks
- Farm animals, cats and other allies, plus tool and turret placement, change how you defend the farm
- Health is scarce and hard to replenish, pushing a risk-management style unlike typical twin-stick roguelites
Players want
- A proper tutorial and clearer in-game explanation of items, economy and farming rules
- Better visual clarity and enemy/projectile readability, especially late in a run
- More meaningful meta-progression and more weapon and shop variety
- Rebalancing of characters, weapon pricing and upgrade cost scaling
- More map or level variety (or randomization) plus an endless mode, which some users request
- Co-op multiplayer and a sequel or further DLC, frequently asked for in recent Steam reviews; ongoing patch support
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
ActionIndieRogue-likeFarming SimBullet HellAction RoguelikeRogue-litePixel GraphicsTwin Stick ShooterSurvival
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Tier list Part 2 (2024)
Atomicrops is a top-down bullet-hell shooter fused with a farming sim, where you plant and harvest crops while fighting at the same time. He had not played it before this video and found it surprisingly deep, with a large pool of unique passives and builds. His main complaints are the poor tutorial, the overwhelming simultaneous farming and fighting, and the lack of any pause or time-stop for planting and choosing pickups. He considers it a really solid game that he would not recommend broadly, and places it in A tier.
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