Atom Inc Idle Game

I found a new game app with a chemistry theme: Atom Idle by G12.  It's a typcal idle game where there are some objects (in this case chemical elements) you create and merge, many layers of things to level up, and an exponential progression of points.  Here the main points are energy, and atoms appear about every 9 seconds.  The main action in the game is merging atoms to get the next higher atom.

You can tap the round element button at bottom center to speed up the next atom, and of course there are quests that count these clicks, power ups to speed up the process, and you can watch a video for X5 speed for 5 minutes.  There is an arc over this button that counts down the time to the next atom.

The next main resource is antimatter, the little silvery cube icon.  You can spend these on different power-ups.  You can reset the game and go back to Hydrogen to get neutrinos, which is the third tier of currencies in the game.

There are also quanta, which looks like a little purple spinner.  They come up in various places to avoid spending a lot of other resources for a few of those, but they don't appear to be required at any stage of the game.

There is a little question mark icon at bottom left that will explain all the other icons and buttons to you.  There's an auto-merge option that is quite flashy and fun to watch.

At top left is a little button that shows your current scholar level.  Click there to see achievements (quests).  As you complete these you level up.  I'm currently at Full Doctor and have done 35 of the 39 quests needed to reach the next level.

At bottom left are two power-up buttons.  The first has a little antimatter logo and you can click there to spend antimatter to power up various factors, like the chance to create an element one higher than usual from a merge.  The next button has power-ups that cost energy: permanently increase the atom being created, generation speed, chance of generating two atoms, and chance to create an atom one higher than usual from a merge.  The upgrades all show a cost and then a button that says "1 UP," "2 UP", etc.  Click the cost button to upgrade once.  "3 UP" means you can afford to upgrade that item 3 times, and click the "3 UP" button to do all three upgrades at once.

Below those is the Neutrino button, where you can reset the game progress in exchange for neutrinos.  These game resets are found in every idel game I've seen, and are always a bit annoying, but they do extend the amount of gameplay, and it usually doesn't take long to get back to where you were.  When you rest, you go back to hydrogen and lose your energy, but you keep the neutrinos and other progress.  The window shows how many neutrinos you will get from the rest.  Right now I would get 1062 of them.

At bottom right there's an arrow button where you can watch a video to get a boost.  If you pay for no ads ($7.99) then you can click any of those boosts and get it without a video, at least that's how it works in their other game Coin Idle.  Next to that is the Sort button, and under that is your auto-merge button.

Above the atom button is a counter which, when it's full, takes you to a little screen where you have to click on bouncing balls to get an antimatter boost.

At right center is a little slide-out pane which hints at whole other levels and features to unlock.  The top icon "H" takes you to the default page.  Below that is a person icon that unlocks at about element 15.  This is your research page.  

 

You can hire a scientist for 500 neutrinos, and since you start with 500, you will be using them all up to get started.  These workers generate knowledge and you can click them to increase their knowledge per second.  To get from level 5 to 6 costs 350 antimatter.  Click the research button to see a big tech tree.  The cheapest initial research was Add Automerge which cost about 1500 points.  After that, they're mostly 5000 points and up, and you can unlock the reactor for 50,000.  The third icon in that side panel is the reactor, but I don't have it yet so I can't describe it.  The fourth icon is the collider, which costs 1.5 million knowledge points to unlock, so that's going to be a while.

There is no realistic chemistry here.  You can't merge atoms in the real world to get the next higher atom, except for fusing hydrogen into helium.  With each new element you get a little info dump, and there is an encyclopedia button where you can review all of these notes.  One glaring error says that the planet Mercury is 70% argon after giving the concentrations in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.  That would make for one weird planet.  Yes, the atmosphere of Mercury is said to be 70% argon, but not the whole planet.

There are currently 118 known elements in the real world (118 is oganesson), and I figured that might be enough to keep the game running for hours, seeing how things have to be doubled over and over again.  But one of the popups I found talked about a feature that unlocks at element 473.  Actually, the IUPAC does have a naming system for higher numbers, where element 114 used to be ununquadium (Uuq), but I wonder if the developers end up using those codes or just the numbers.  The in-game encyclopedia only has 118 elements, which covers the bases.

To their credit, this game never ran an ad on its own.  The ads are only there to get boosts when you're feeling particularly impatient.  You have to click one of those options before any ad will play.  There's a tiny bottom banner ad but you can remove it for $0.99.  Their shop also lets you get antimatter, quanta, or even make a small donation to the team.

Under settings, it lets you choose between 3 different notations for large numbers. One is pure scientific notation, up to 1E+306.

The next number system runs to K, M, B, T (trillions) then uses 1Qa then 1 Qi to 1 No, then resumes with 1e+33 to 1e+306.  I can't really see the logic of this progression when the simple two-letter system from 1a to 1aa to 1zz works just fine (see previous post).

The third number system is the same up to 1Qi then just has dots ending in 1 SxNog, 1 SpNog, 1 OcNog and 1 NoNog.  I have no idea what they're trying to do here, either.