OTK Network, a collaborative group of streamers and influencers, established its publishing label, Mad Mushroom, earlier this year. This week the publisher announced its first game: Atomic Picnic. Congrats to them!
The game is being made by Brazilian dev BitCake Studio, and it looks like a bright and breezy co-op roguelite with bullet-heaven elements. I’ll drop a trailer at the end upon which to feast thine eyeballs – that will give you a good idea of what it’s all about.
The presser that started my interest noted a limited-time playtest starting today, December 11, which will run through until Dec 18. You should be able to access it via the game’s Steam page.
There you’ll also find out more about the game, including its focus on verticality and movement, which certainly sounds it could unlock plenty of systemic gameplay moments (something that’s alluded to in the marketing), and its early access plans.
Don’t worry kids, the end of the world looks fun!
The cartoon art style is also rather chipper, isn’t it?! You can really feel the Fortnite influence throughout the visual design, and the setting here sounds about as bonkers as the one in Epic’s multiverse. Here’s the official description pulled from Steam, to give you a bit of flavour:
Mountains started flying, old men grew young, and some kids were born with rabbit ears. 95% of the human population was wiped out in an instant, and the now uninhabited areas of the world were filled with dangerous monsters and mysteriously powerful artifacts.
I certainly like the notion of battlefield-size enemies and gun battles with robotic mutants. Indeed, the surreal end of the world setting sounds like it could kick up a few interesting design ideas, across both enemy types and environments.
Atomic Picnic’s four-player co-op
The focus on quick movement and bold, colourful visuals also reminded me of another game that was recently announced, Motion Twin’s follow-up to Dead Cells, Windblown.
The press release mentions that solo and co-op play are both supported, but it looks like co-op is the focus here. Atomic Picnic has online multiplayer that supports up to four so-called Loners.
Just because you’re a Loner, however, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have friends. When players team up together they can head out on the game’s titular picnics – scavenger hunts, basically – in search of loot.
Once out and about and facing down hordes of robotic mutants, players will have to use their “air gear” to navigate the game’s environments – I’m guessing there’ll be moments where we’ll be zipping all over the place.
It all sounds rather exciting and I’ll take a look if I can. In the meantime, a date for the dairy. Atomic Picnic is hitting Early Access on Steam in spring, 2024.
Well, that’s not really a date, it’s more of a season. It’s all we’ve got for now, though.
I do enjoy a good co-op roguelite and this one has definitely piqued my interest. If you want more of the same, hit the link for a selection of excellent multiplayer roguelikes and roguelites.
This article was updated with dates and other small details.
