About
ATOMIC ACRES is a two-player co-op run-and-gun set in a 1950s suburb. Aliens are abducting the neighbors. Saucers lift them in slow tractor beams while they flail and shout, and you shoot the saucer to break the hold. The neighbor drops, and you walk them to the community center.
Only delivery counts. A neighbor who has joined you is not yet safe, so losing an escort on the way pays nothing. Escorts fight with a shovel or a hoe and nothing else, and an interrupted saucer comes back later. There are 19 pickup weapons, and many of them are not guns: a spade, a goose, a hose and plates are in the mix. Optional yard collectibles (lawn gnomes, TVs and pink flamingos) are shared between both players.
Between levels you return to the Council, the hub. The first indoor mission starts there: a pharmacy run where you can retreat, but the reward can only be earned once per run. Players share one camera while close together, and the view splits with a diagonal seam when they move apart. It runs in the browser with keyboard or gamepad.
What is in it
- Two-player co-op, with the second player able to join at any time
- Shoot a saucer to break its tractor beam and drop the neighbor it holds
- Escort neighbors to the community center; only delivered ones score
- 19 pickup weapons, from guns to a spade or a goose
- Optional yard collectibles: lawn gnomes, TVs and pink flamingos
- An indoor pharmacy mission with a reward that can only be earned once
How far along
Playable build, 58 out of 100, ranked 8 of 17 on the progress ranking.
A deployed browser build plays through five districts with 19 pickup weapons and a different finale monster in each, clears cleanly in long AI tests, and still has no music, a measured sound-defect list and a frame rate below target on the test PC.
- Playable6/10
The game is deployed in the browser and a 95-minute AI test on 11 October ran 8 full runs across all five areas, reaching dawn every time with every finale beaten and 0 errors, but no person has played the latest build.
- Core gameplay5/10
A hidden difficulty level now adapts to how the squad is doing and the camera can zoom out to keep both co-op players on one screen, but neither has been played and the AI clears most nights in about a minute with almost no damage.
- Content7/10
The build has 19 pickup weapons, 25 named residents, five districts each with a distinct finale and elite enemies, plus a Credits screen and a retitle to Atomic Acres: Aliens Attack; the design notes still list some features as deferred.
- Art and audio5/10
The guns and explosions were rebuilt in layers and 33 flagged sounds were replaced, but a new sound critic measured only 38 of 185 sounds as clean, nobody has listened to the new sounds, and no music is in the game.
- Stability6/10
The 95-minute AI test finished with 0 errors and a texture leak was fixed earlier, but frame rate on the studio's test PC was about 20 fps on Balanced against a target of 30, and the draw-call reduction from 12 October has not been measured.
- Release readiness5/10
The build is live on a Cloudflare Workers site and a Cloudflare Pages site, redeployed on 12 October with a Credits screen built from the clips that ship, though two sound clips have a licence the studio has not confirmed.
Assessed Oct 16, 2026. Based on detailed, recent logs. This is the studio’s own assessment and it changes as the game does.
Updates
Atomic Acres: Aliens Attack, a sound critic, and difficulty that adapts
The game gets its full title and its first town is renamed. A new tool measures all 545 sound clips and ranks the worst first, a hidden difficulty level now follows how the squad is doing, and the code for grouping scenery into bigger chunks is in but not yet measured.
Guns and explosions rebuilt in layers, and a 95-minute AI test
Recorded gunfire sounded thin and old, so guns and explosions are now built from layered parts. A code review found upgrades that did nothing and a Weapon Editor that reached 12 of 19 weapons, a 95-minute AI test came back clean, and co-op can now zoom out to keep both players on one screen.
Enemies that got wedged, and a scarecrow with a fair warning
The test logs showed chasing enemies pinned on scenery for 10 to 21 seconds. The cause was big alien elites colliding at their full hit size while being drawn small. Also: a one-click AI Watch that visits all five areas, and a scarecrow wind-up you can actually see.
A clear middle of the screen, and a Weapon Editor
The HUD moved to the edges so the middle of the screen stays clear, the area title shows once per session, three weapons got proper sounds, and a new Weapon Editor lets anyone fire all 19 weapons and retune their sounds.
Bosses that read as bosses, and a leak in the skeletons
Two new monsters built as finales were demoted to elites because they looked like enemies, not bosses. Aliens now die by spinning on the spot, a graphics memory leak was traced to unfreed bone textures, and a sound fix was corrected within the day.
Hits that land, and a beam that burns the ground
Gunfire was rebuilt because real recordings sounded thin at ten shots a second, every hit now makes a small explosion, saucers crash out of the sky, and every Tripod Harvester burns a trench with a chasing plasma beam. The graphics presets were rebuilt around measured costs.
Show 3 earlier updates
Every gun fires from its barrel
Shots used to spawn from the middle of the player. Now all 19 pickup weapons fire from their own muzzle, the second player is a new hero, the reverb is gone because it was quietly accumulating, and the split screen came back, rebuilt around how far apart the pair actually are.
Aliens got my neighbors
The game pivoted from a folk-horror suburb to a 1950s alien invasion. Saucers lift neighbors in tractor beams, you shoot the beam to drop them, and you escort them to the community center. Along the way: yard collectibles, an indoor pharmacy mission with a reward that cannot be farmed, and the decision to draw no black outlines.
The bot that found the sealed graveyards
A bot that plays both players found graveyards nobody could walk into, a leak that took 186 loaded geometries to 1,089 over one night, and a diagnostic that was wrong about the game it was watching. Then the "hazy graphics" turned out to be the resolution scaler misreading fast-forward.