Atlas Reactor Impressions

I got to try out the new game Atlas Reactor by Trion Worlds and it's pretty interesting.  Atlas Reactor is a turned based competitive multiplayer game.  The way the website puts it, "TURN-BASED MULTIPLAYER WITHOUT THE WAITING AROUND"  The game plays out it four phases.  Prep, which lets players lay traps.  Dash, which lets players move before attacks happen.  Blast, which is when the attacks play out.  The last phase is Movement.  It takes a bit to get used to but it's easy to use.

I was interested in the game because of it's simultaneous turns which work really well.  To play the game well you really just need to predict where the enemy is going to go.  I played a game as each of the four starting characters which all play entirely different from each other.  Each character has a few skills that fit into the four different phases of combat.  The are multiple skills under each phase for each character so there are a lot of options for picking the right skill for the right situation.  The character designs are neat and each one has a fair amount of personality, at least among the human characters.  At this point in the game the environments are basic but provide all the of the extra strategic game play they were set up to provide.

The game made a good first impression for the early stage that it's in, although I had a few issues.  Getting into multiplayer games takes a little while to load, which is probably something they'll fix in the future.  I also found the decision time for turns to be a little too quick.  I know they wanted it to be a game with no waiting around but they already solved that problem with simultaneous turns so 20 seconds per turn feels a bit short.  Another minor problem was having the movement phase at the end.  I found it harder to attack with the melee character because by the time I got to move, all the other characters had moved away.  Most turn based games have characters move then attack and it was hard to get used to it being the other way around.  I know they did it to give the characters a Dash ability but it felt limiting in a bad way.  Which brings me to my last minor gripe: The ability cooldowns felt too long.  After I did two or three moves I would not have much to do for a turn or two.  I realize it's in place to balance abilities, but for a fast paced game I would like to see more frequent, weaker abilities then powerful, slow abilities.

All in all, I had fun with the game and would like to play more of it.  The game tries a bunch of new ideas which work to make something new.  The game is quick and free so if you can find a way to get the game, I would recommend giving it a shot.