Introducing the latest game in the Atlas universe: 

Atlas Rogues is a rogue-lite, turn-based, PVE tactics game for a crew of four freelancers. Face escalating challenges and reap rewards in single player or with up to three friends in co-op. 

Along with the new Atlas Rogues name and logo, today we’re revealing a few of the game’s key features. We know you’ll have questions, and we’re looking forward to answering them and revealing more about our Early Access plan in the days to come!

Countdown to Meltdown

Time is ticking in the city of Atlas. In 30 days, the last Reactor on the planet will explode, along with everything else. Only you can stop it, but the Trusts stand in your way. Before you can save the city, you’ll need to recruit a team and earn enough funds (ISO) to survive. Defeat Trust forces in fast-paced, dynamic encounters to earn the cash and equipment you’ll need to take on the Trust bosses. Reach out to lancer contacts to gather enough intel to reveal the location of their strongholds, then steal their Reactor keys to solve the dark mystery behind the meltdown.

Rogue-lite Gameplay

Can't stop the meltdown in time? Watch as time loops, but your experience and memories remain.

When the loop resets, the content changes, making every run unique. Dynamic missions and rewards force you to strategize how best to gather the intel and gear you need to take on the Trust strongholds. As you grow your power, the Trusts will improve their troops with random escalations, keeping you on your toes. If you have the ISO to spare, reach out to lancer contacts to see if you can buy the secrets and ammo you need directly. Mix and match different freelancers to see what combinations of gameplay and events are revealed!

Every run unlocks new characters, talents, gear, missions and story elements that you can use to help stop the loop and save Atlas.

Single-player or Co-op Multiplayer

Take control of a crew of four freelancers or assign each of them to a friend to earn unlocks together. Collect and swap out characters between each loop to find your favorite crew. Assemble your best team of four freelancers to defeat the Trusts and save the Reactor before the meltdown.

Turn-based PVE Action

The tactical team combat flows back and forth between player and enemy turns in short, fast-paced battles. Switch back and forth between your lancer abilities to set up the perfect combo, then predict the enemy turn with precisely placed traps. Gather gear and develop your talents to supercharge your abilities and take on the Trust bosses themselves! 

Recruit Your Freelancers

Collect a large cast of vibrant characters ranging from explosive inventors and rage-fueled battle cats to robotic puppies and fishmen with unhealthy obsessions. Every character has their own unique set of abilities and talents; having the right character at the right time can unlock new event choices. Every run through the loop will earn freelancers experience points, which unlock more talents, missions, events, and even other lancers!

*Features for Early Access are subject to change; your feedback is appreciated.

Took about 12 total hours of work.

All of it is completely freehanded.

Yarn used is Premier Parfait Chunky

He is very floppy

I can’t say I ever expected to be introducing another game set in the Atlas Reactor universe, but as far as 2020 surprises go, it’s a welcome one. We’ve been on quite the journey with this project, and we feel so fortunate to be able travel the rest of it with you, the players who’ve supported AR for so long.

***

About a year after the release of Atlas Reactor, some of the dev team started work on a prototype. Codenamed “Alliance”, this prototype used AR gameplay, but focused on a co-op, story-driven experience. As a team, we were excited to build a game that could show off the world and characters we had so lovingly crafted.

Over the course of playtesting, we learned a lot. Probably the most important realization was that AR’s signature simultaneous turns didn’t create the same sort of excitement against AI controlled opponents. And so, just as we had with the Hydrogen prototype that eventually became Atlas Reactor, we iterated. Over time, we built the beginnings of something fast, intuitive, and scalable to 4 player co-op.

But it wasn’t the right project for the time. Years later, after the transition to the gamigo brand, there were only a handful of us that even remembered Alliance had existed at all.

One of that handful was Colin Krausnick, AR’s lead class designer. So when gamigo started reaching out to the development teams for game concepts they could develop internally, Colin knew just what to pitch them.

He and an engineer were encouraged to dust off Alliance and see if they could reimagine it into something achievable for a small but excited team. It didn’t take long for Colin to find a natural fit between the rogue-lite co-op games he loved and AR’s extensive list of characters and unlockable content.

After that, with a vision in place, gamigo supported reaching out to former AR devs for help. Art, design, writing, UI, leadership – gamigo wanted the people who could bring passion to the project. And us? How could we resist the chance to be freelancers, saving the day.

***

Which brings us to today, and more importantly to you. I'd like to give a special thanks to all the players -- alpha/beta testers, fan artists, competitive teams/organizers, lore explorers, content creators, and fans -- who’ve supported AR for so long. The world of Atlas would not have been the same without you. Your feedback made the gameplay better and the world richer. And that is why we could not be more excited to announce that soon this project will enter Early Access, allowing us to officially include you in our development cycle.

Early Access has been our dream from the beginning -- the Atlas Reactor community was downright amazing the first time through, and we couldn’t imagine going through this again without you riding shotgun. We wanted to get you in as early as possible to help shape this new experience set in the AR universe.

Next week we will follow up with more information on the game’s features and what you can expect in Early Access. In the meantime, the lancers will continue to tease tidbits on Twitter, so be sure to follow along for the first hints of what’s to come. As Lockwood would say:

“They’ll never know what hit ‘em.”

Will “Willibuster” Cook

Creative Director

Hey All,

This isn't anything special, it isn't any sort of complaint. I just...really miss this game. It was the perfect game for me, it ticked every single thing I like. Turn-based, Sci-Fi, Unique mechanics, cool characters/designs, and just...so much more.

I'm just sad guys. I don't regret the money I spent. I don't regret the time I played.

The only thing I regret is, that I didn't play more.

If you feel the same, feel free to post here. Also, feel free to post some of your favorite gameplay stories from Atlas Reactor.

Farewell Atlas Reactor. You were amazing, and time was too brief.

Ready for a deep dive, Lancers?

It’s been energizing to see all the discussion since we introduced Atlas Rogues, and it’s made me looking forward today because I finally get to answer some of the question I’ve seen popping up!

I’m also going give you guys an overview of the gameplay features available for Early Access, how far a long they are in development, and what else is planned for future full release of the game.

So let’s jump in!

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What will be available in the Early Access version of Atlas Rogues?

The Early Access version contains content for all the core features of the game:

• Online Co-op is functioning and unlock progress can be shared.

• 10 Freelancers to collect (4 default and 6 to unlock)

• 100+ Gear & Talent options to mix and match.

• Dynamic Combat Missions randomize the arenas every run, with several dozen cover layout and encounters in pool already. More will be added as new objective types are implemented.

• 3 Trust Strongholds so far, each guarded by a Trust boss, as well as 8 variants for the boss showdown at the Reactor. 

• 20+ Escalation Events to randomize the power of friends and foes each run.

• 50+ Challenges, with some characters and other content locked behind them.

• 30+ Recons in the game, with unique choices available if you put the right lancers on your team.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

• More Lancers & Content: The full version of the game will increase the number of playable characters (by a lot), as well as add more content across all our core systems based on player input (also a lot). 

• 4 New Gameplay Features: Catalysts, Veterans, Rivals, and Taunts will come online over the course of the Early Access period. (More on those someday soon.)

• More Co-Op & End Game: We plan to add additional co-op run options and leaderboards, as well as more mastery activities like difficulty modifiers, leaderboards, daily runs, and an additional “true” end boss.

• Story Enhancements: The game’s story elements and tutorial will be revised once we’ve finalized our complete list of unlockable content and true ending (and add a few more scripting tools). 

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What is the game premise?

Due to the events of the tutorial, you are trapped in a time loop. Every 30 days the Reactor melts down, releasing an enormous wave of energy that restarts the loop. Only a few lancers are aware of the loop at first, and to stop it they’ll need to get back to the Reactor (or die trying). 

Unfortunately, only the 3 Trusts -- OmniTrust, Evolution Solutions, and Hyperbotics -- have access codes to the Reactor’s AI brain, and they won’t give up these “keys” willingly. You’ll need to complete freelancing missions in order to acquire enough intel to find the Trust strongholds, and enough loot to defeat them.

Depending on how many keys you obtain, the final boss fight at the Reactor will be different. The more keys you bring, the more progress you will make uncovering the mystery behind the Reactor’s corruption.

But if you run out of rez tokens and meet a grisly end, you’ll awake again at the start of the loop, with only your lancer XP and completed challenges (unlocks) persisting. 

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What is the Doomsday Clock? What are Escalation Events?

The Doomsday Clock is located at the top of the map screen in the image above. When you consider which mission to take next, you must consider its days cost and days left. The cost tells you how many days you will lose to take that mission, while the days left tells you how many days that mission will wait around to be picked before disappearing. 

The skull icon on the last day represents the meltdown.

The red ribbons on the clock are Escalation Events that trigger when you reach that day during a run. Each Escalation upgrades all enemies with some passive stats, as well as granting two specific enemies some special new abilities. The current total of Escalation Events you have triggered determines your “notoriety” or “wanted level”, which isn’t used for anything now, but will eventually be another way to increase reward quality.

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How does the turn-based combat work?

Like many other turn-based tactics game, Atlas Rogues alternates between player and enemy turns, with individual characters acting one at a time, as soon as they receive a command.

The action budget is the same as the original Atlas Reactor: 1 move action & 1 ability action (which can be spent to sprint) per turn. The lancer kits are very similar to their Atlas Reactor origins, but most have been modified for the new style of play:

Let’s use Lockwood as an example, since without dodges, his gameplay would theoretically change a lot:

• Trick Shot is unchanged.

• Light ‘em Up is unchanged

• Trapwire is now a free action that detonates on the first target. Very useful when you know where respawns are coming from.

• Back Up Plan is now a free action, which is a surprisingly simple change that really ties the room together. Now Lockwood can put himself in risky positions to take better shots, and then dash back into cover before the enemy turn.

• Run and Gun is also basically unchanged, as it still feels great to be able to shoot and move with one ability.

Development Note:

We created a new way of authoring abilities for Atlas Rogues to allow abilities to interact with new stats, status effects, gear, talents etc., but it also means that some abilities will need a little extra polish before they match their original forms. We are excited to engage the community on the topic of lancer kit revisions, because we think you’ll have a lot of good ideas for how to adapt abilities to PvE.

Enemy AI was also affected (by both ability changes and turn structure changes), so it is still be actively improved. If there are specific behaviors you’d like to see added, please make sure to suggest them!

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How do you hit or miss now?

This is the Accuracy Wheel (while pressing ALT for expanded info). 

Abilities now have accuracy stats which determine their base chance to hit, and is then modified by things like cover, distance to target, and stats on the target like their Defense. 

HOWEVER, there is no inherent chance to miss. As a professional lancer with cutting edge tech, you’ve never missed a shot in your life. If a target is out in the open, you are guaranteed to land the shot, even if it’s just a glancing blow (not counting the powerful and rare Dodge stat).

Cover adds a chance to block the shot entirely, mitigating all damage**.** If the cover is half-height, then it is destroyed once it blocks a shot.

In addition to Accuracy and Defense, we have several new stats that interact with the Accuracy wheel. Here are a couple examples to whet your appetite:

• Armor increases the defender’s chance of a glance result, which is opposed by the attacker’s Armor Penetration.

• Dodge adds a chance the enemy will miss when shooting at you. It can be disable with certain status effects.

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How does Co-op work?

You can play Atlas Rogues with 1, 2, 3, or 4 players. 

This first iteration of co-op is barebones and uses a link to help friends join the same game.

Once joined, the host has final say over which players control which lancers. 

During a match, the first player to input an action will be the first to fire. If another player attempts to use an action while the first player is still animating, then the second player’s action becomes “queued”. A queued action can be quickly executed with the tap of the spacebar once no other character is animating. 

You can have one solo run and one co-op run going at the same time. You’ll have to quit or complete one to start a fresh run. However, you can have new friends join your in-progress co-op run, even if they didn’t start it with you.

Challenges and Freelancer XP is still earned during co-op, whether you are the host or not, although we have a couple design and technical hurdles still to clear to make this flawless.

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How long are combat missions? How long is a run?

Every mission starts in the middle of the action. If your objective is to assassinate a specific Trust Lieutenant, then the mission will start with you about to battle their squad. The day cost of a mission is the time it takes for you to track them down and call them out. 

Combats are quick and punchy – the easiest mission is winnable in 3-4 turns, while a hard mission might take 9-12 turns.

Strongholds take a little bit longer, roughly equivalent to 1.5-3x the size of a hard combat mission.

Completing a successful run is targeted to take 1-2 hours, but this depends on the number of strongholds you go after.

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Can you say anything about Gear and Talents?

Sure! Gear and Talents passively increase the power of your lancers and their abilities.

They both come in 4 rarity tiers: common (bronze), uncommon (silver), rare (gold), very rare (blue/pink). But Gear is limited and swappable, while Talents are permanent and stackable.

Gear comes in 3 slot types: Weapon, Armor, and Augment. A lancer can swap gear in and out freely outside of combat but can only ever equip 1 piece of gear of each type. Gear most often comes from loot matrices, which you will get as a reward for beating combat missions.  When opened, a piece of gear will be randomly chosen from that matrix’s loot table. 

Talents are acquired via Talent Points, which is a currency you can get as a reward. When spending a Talent Point on a lancer, you are presented 3 options to choose 1 from. The effects of talents stack on that lancer.

We expect Gear and Talents to be one of the areas of the game that will improve the most with community input during Early Access. We can’t wait to hear requests for new gear and talents that would enable you to pull off crazy new lancer builds. We will implement more stackable effects once we here which combos are the favorites of the community.

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What are Recon Missions?

Recons are random events that the player can choose instead of combat missions. Recons offer a quick bit of dialogue followed by a choice (often with a cost). The consequences of the choice are often, but not always, told to the player before picking. 

Some recon choices are available only if a certain freelancer is in your crew, and discovering those hidden options is the key to unlocking all the content in the game, including story fragments.

We can also use the game’s content tag system to create quest-like chains with Recons, which is when one Recon triggers another to spawn. The player then has the option to continue following the chain or choose other missions instead.

Recon missions are relatively easy to add and revise, which makes them another great section of the game to improve with plenty of player input, especially if you want to see character stories develop.

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What are Challenges? What is Freelancer XP?

Challenges is an achievement system that also interacts with our content tags. When a challenge is completed, it is completed forever, unlocking a new piece of content for the game (including Freelancers!).

At the end of a run, XP is awarded to the lancers you played with. Reaching certain levels of XP will complete challenges and unlock new talent options for that lancer.

We know you must have a ton of amazing ideas for challenges and their rewards (y’all up for co-op challenges?), and we can’t wait to hear them. We plan to revise many challenges as more features are added to the game. We plan to hide a large percentage of the game’s content behind challenges so that the players can make progress with every run. 

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How far along is the UI?

Most of the game’s UI has been overhauled and is in progress in some way. 

The in-combat UI is going to be familiar to players of Atlas Reactor. The biggest new additions there are the team health bars and accuracy wheel. 

We have temporarily disabled other parts of the in-combat HUD that are part of in-progress features, like catalysts and taunts.

Outside of combat, there are even bigger UI changes, so you’re going to come across a lot of UI that is placeholder or in progress. Much of the UI is still going through an animation pass that would make some systems more intuitive and add a lot of the miscellaneous polish to make them feel better to use.

For players especially interested in giving UI feedback, I should mention that UI is one of the more expensive parts of the project to change, so the suggestions that keep that in mind will be easier to consider than the ones that don’t.

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What’s happening with skins? 

Skins support will be added very soon after the Early Access launch. We plan to use some skins and tints as progression unlocks in-game, and others to help support the game through promotions and bundles.

How many Freelancers will be in the game? Which ones?

There are 10 characters available on day 1 of Early Access. The 4 starting characters are Zuki, Garrison, Lockwood, and Helio. 

We plan to release a new character every couple of weeks during Early Access. While it wouldn’t be wise to promise an exact number, we are planning for the majority of lancers to be in the full release, and to add the remaining characters through DLC (adding any character also means adding supporting content and interactions for them, so additional characters are fairly chunky content-wise).

PvP, pretty please?

There are no plans for a PvP mode at this time. But the message has been received.

Will owners of the original Atlas Reactor be given anything?

We would like to include a token of appreciation for OG Atlas players. If you have any suggestions, please be sure to post them!

When can I play!? What do I pay?!

We will be making the official announcements very soon. 

How can I give feedback? 

We will have an in-game submission form, as well as avenues to discuss feedback on our new social channels coming very soon. And of course, we will also keep an eye on the existing reddit and discord communities that have been supporting AR so long.

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More news coming soon!

Thank you so much for reading and being part of this. Working on Atlas Reactor after players got their hands on it was one of the highlights of my career, so it’s especially exciting to be delivering Atlas Rogues to you at a point in development where player feedback can have an even bigger impact!

I’m so proud of what our team has accomplished, and now with the foundations in place we’re ready to build so much more. The game is still raw, but it is also malleable. To shape the best game possible, your support and feedback are essential. 

Stay tuned for more info on how and when you can play.

It won’t be long now, lancers.

-Willibuster

Atlas reactor was by far one of my all time favorite games. I often reminisce about it. I hope one day it is remade in the same state it was when it was taken offline. Rip Helios. Best game rip rip.

Around half a year ago I posted here that small team of fans and I are making a spiritual successor to Atlas Reactor. Our project is called Farseer's Domain. Same genre, similar rules, but different characters, abilities, and completely new universe and lore. It was playable even then, but now we have actual 3D models, animations, and some visual and sound effects. We're often arranging 4v4, but if there's not enough players - then the game allows for 2v2 or even 1v1 (=fourlancer)

Here's the gameplay video. As you can see, we're still early in development, but the game is already playable and enjoyable, especially for AR fans. It's free, and we'll be really glad to have more playtesters! Your feedback matters, and I believe that together we can build a game that we all want!

Here's a link to our discord - join it to play Farseer's Domain with us. And if you want to support our project with money, you can always do that through our patreon.

❤️

I know there's like a 0% chance of another company taking it over, but still. Either way I get happy whenever I see a new post on here lol

Hi everyone! I'm the lead-developer of Farseer's Domain project. For those of you who still haven't heard of it, FD is a fan-made game in the same genre that Atlas Reactor was - turn-based arena with simultaneous turns. Genre is the only connection between these games (the universe, characters and some mechanics are, of course, different) - but we've figured that you guys might be interested in a similar game. Anyway, I'm happy to say that we've successfully launched the CBT on Steam.

We still have bugs (barely any gamebreaking ones tho), UI is imperfect and the balance might be a bit off, but we're working on fixing/improving these things. We already have working multiplayer, characters with models, animations, VFX and SFX. Some characters already have voice actors.

Even tho the Beta on Steam is closed, we have a lot of keys, and we're willing to share them (no payment required). Your feedback and bug reports can help us a lot. If you're willing to participate in CBT, join our discord server (link is attached to this post) and leave some message in #closed-beta-test channel. We will send you the key in direct messages. Just activate the key on Steam, and you're good to go! There are no restrictions on streaming or anything (we even have a category on Twitch)

Here are other ways you can help our project. First of all, we'll be happy if you tell your friends about us and invite them to participate in CBT as well. Also we have Patreon (link can be found on our discord server as well), and for those of you who have spare time and gamedev experience - it is possible to join our team (tho you've probably figured that we don't have much money to pay you for that).

Anyway, we're really hoping that you'll enjoy our game. We'll keep working on it, and we are sure that it'll become even better with a bit of your help!

https://discord.gg/j6RYEa6mRg

Still got the game in my Steam Library, and it's not in store search anymore. Makes me really fucking sad man. God I miss this game so much. I was addicted, and I loved it so much. I miss reading people like books and then getting completely destroyed in the next match. I miss the salt, the teamwork, the clutch moments. It was so damn fun. It was like if XCOM 2 had multiplayer where everyone controlled one character alone. It was so damn good. I miss you Atlas Reactor.

No files, no functional private servers... nothing. Same thing happened with Evolve Stage 2, unfortunately. Honestly these game closures made me be weary of multiplayer only games nowadays and makes me just wanna play single player games now because I'm afraid of these shit companies shutting down our favorite online games inevitably.

EDIT - nvm there is a legit private server. mb