Atomic Jam by The Digital Fish

Time Played: about 4 minutes

Overall Gameplay (6.5 / 13 points)

Comments: Props for the unique concept - I always appreciate seeing a game try to do something new and creative. I'm sorry to say that, while I thought it was an interesting challenge to take on as a player, I also found it more frustrating than entertaining. Playing around with and learning the mechanics was fun, and completing the first few easy-mode levels was fun... but after that, every level felt like a tedious exercise in trial-and-error to a brutal degree of precision. The "atom" levels were especially draining, as they were only asking me to do exactly what I had just accomplished earlier, but strictly harder. Nothing else about the level changed - the game space and mechanics were identical in each level, I just had to optimize my actions even further. The late levels contributed to my frustration as it seemed impossible to do anything to avoid collisions between my electrons other than pray. The molecule levels helped alleviate the "chorey" feeling of the atom levels by mixing up the game space and objectives, but the difficulty of those levels ramped up really rapidly and I just quit on the second or third level. I would've really loved to see some similar change in game dynamics in the atom levels rather than simply linearly incrementing the required number of electrons. I think introducing some obstacles, or moving elements, or some other extra mechanics to add some variance in gameplay would've done a lot to enhance this game's entertainment value.

Theme Inclusion (6 / 6 points)

Comments: "Elements" was the clear and obvious focus of the game, nothing much to comment on here.

Overall Presentation (6.5 / 10 points)

Comments: Audiovisual presentation stuck to a nice, consistent theme. I thought both the interfaces and the graphics were a bit barebones and could've used some extra styling. Electrons had a nice trailing effect, but it made it tough to precisely track their positions - I would've liked a bigger and more concrete representation of those elements. Sound effects and background music were really nicely done.

Final comments: In terms of production, this was a well-built, complete video game based on a unique concept. Unfortunately it just didn't feel much like a video game to me. I really thought it needed some extra gameplay elements to make it shine.

Total Score: 19 / 30