Particulars
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Particulars is a game with a unique combination of arcade-action and puzzle gameplay, set in the mysterious world of subatomic particles.
Taking control of a single quark, you must negotiate the fundamental forces of the universe. Other particles will push and pull at you – you’ll always be on the brink of losing control and being dragged towards annihilation!
Woven through the game is the story of Alison, a young physicist struggling to outrun her troubled past. Her journey through the subatomic world is drenched in memories (both good and bad), and will ultimately lead her to some powerful revelations.
Features
- Based on actual particle physics: Enter the world of sub-atomic particles and take part in the interactions between them.
- A puzzling narrative: Particulars is a game which blends arcade and puzzle gameplay with an engaging story about a troubled young scientist.
- Over 100 intriguing levels: Explore the four fundamental forces of the universe over ten chapters of increasingly complex play.
- Dig deeper: The Particlepedia provides information on each particle in the game, the differences between the game world and the real world, and links to other information sources.
Steam User 36
A truly innovative take on games as a medium for telling stories, particulars is the story of a particle physicist looking inwards.
The main gameplay is an arcade style particle physics simulation - essentially marbles with magnets, explosions and puzzles. You don't need to know any science to play though, because the game teaches you everything experientially as you go.
Between levels, we see glimpses into the life of Allison, our deeply flawed but nonetheless inspiring protagonist. It seems that she's very good at particle physics, and would rather run simulations than deal with the strife and hardship that has beset her personal life.
You follow her emotional journey. Step by step unravelling clues of her life and psyche... all the while you play as her, running the simulation. In this way the game is a metaphor, as you look deeper into the soul of allison she looks deeper into the quantum world. As I said, this is a game about a particle physicist looking inwards.
Allison is an inspiring role model. She teaches us that it's ok to not have all your shit together, and that scientists are allowed to be human. Together with her friends and colleagues, this game also normalises the idea of successful women in science (Alison's mentor is female, and gives her career advice. That's right an indie arcade game passes the bechdel test) and shows us that you don't need a barbarian saving a princess to tell a compelling story. Like seriously, this game normalises both the idea of a female protagonist, and the idea of a scientist protagonist - these characters are just compellingly HUMAN, and a refreshing change from the testosterone charged male-jock protagonists most games present.
This game is a must have for science geeks, for anyone who cares about portrayal of women in media, and for anyone who wants to see games used as a medium for telling stories. Or for anyone who wants their kids to have positive attitudes towards any of those things.
Steam User 67
For the full write up visit my YouTube channel,
Particulars is not a game for everyone, and that's a good thing. Often we see game developers try to please the masses and in doing so please no one. The team at SeeThrough Studios have chosen to create a game they wanted to create and this becomes clearly evident as you experience Particulars.
Particulars explores unexplored territory with very strong writing in an arcade-action puzzle game, never have I played a puzzle game of this difficulty and actually been drawn into the story. You experience feelings of futility as you realise the actions you're performing in the game are on such a microscopic scale that in the grand scheme of things they have no effect. The interactive nature of the game enhances this and helps you realise how our main character feels and you're able to see correlations between the subatomic world and the world which our main character lives in.
While it may seem simple at first, as you delve deeper into the story you start to see connections between the story and gameplay, and as the story intensifies so does the difficulty of the puzzle. As the game progresses the need for good puzzle solving and solid execution of the puzzles is needed, this is because of the games arcade-action nature where everything happens so fast and all your actions have a passive effect on everything around you.
If you're not afraid to use your brain for a couple of hours Particulars is the game for you, with its strong storytelling and its surprisingly difficult puzzles this game is easily worth the price of admission.
Full Release - All the small issues have been cleaned up, the game feels ultra smooth and its aesthetic has been improved. I'll update the review when I finish the game now that it's out of Early Access.
Steam User 24
Take this review with a GRAIN OF SALT, and please READ AT LEAST the TL;DR at the bottom or watch the full video to understand the problems of Particulars.
So let us take Particulars apart and thus delve into the subatomic world of quarks, bosons and the like. As always, I’ll talk about the aesthetics first, which are particularly brilliant. Especially noteworthy is the minimalistic interface. Every particle has its own icon and shading, the goal and timing of a level are indicated in the central area with a circular bar and while all of this might need a couple of minutes of getting used to, it looks amazing. I cannot say the same for the art of the cutscenes however, as I feel this drawn comic style is out of place in an environment of minimalistic vector aesthetics.
The overall sound design is very good as well. There is a crackling indicator when you are getting too close to a particle than would annihilate you and in general every sound effect is unique and very recognisable in terms of its effect. Overall, the creative choices blend very well to create a surreal subatomic world, excluding the cutscenes.
As for the gameplay, I feel I need to fragment this review into two parts, just as I felt game significantly alters in its gameplay after the fifth chapter. The first part of the game is mostly about carrying particles from A to B, destroying other particles or plainly surviving for a set period of time. This feels a lot like an action arcade game with barely any puzzling involved. In the majority of the levels, speed is of the essence, which led to a bunch of frustration for me. Controlling fast paced particles into their target area, with other anti-particles flying about the place, which obviously are also attracted to their counterpart and kill it instantly on contact, felt like I had little chance of actually impacting the outcome. Thus many levels, even after completion, seemed as if I relied heavily on random chance instead of personal skill and overall Particulars feels rather unrewarding. This critique almost ended up being a pure ranting on fast paced twitch-heavy gameplay with a sluggish player particle. Luckily most of the game’s levels are skippable, however for some reason excluding the last level of each chapter.
Once you completed chapter five, you’ll delve into what feels like a completely different game with the same skin on top. Your particle now receives the ability to change, essentially switching the family and spewing out a W with the respective charge of the originating particle. Sounds complicated? Well, I do consider my physics knowledge to be as weak as a biochemist’s knowledge about physics can be, which is essentially non-existent and suffice to say, I have a really hard time understanding what is going on. Particulars tries to remedy the complication a bit by providing a pause menu, which gives you all details about subatomic particle transformation. After working through this encyclopaedia for a couple of times, you can get at least a slight grasp of what is going on. Nonetheless, compared to the action oriented gameplay beforehand, the game now plays essentially like a puzzle game, that requires you to think something through first and afterwards additionally asks you to execute the presumed solution in a rather complicated environment, meaning that even if you understand what you are supposed to be doing, it is not given that you will succeed in the first, second or even third try. Therein lies my main gripe with Particulars. As mentioned previously, I either like playing fast-paced platformers with a very tight control scheme along the lines of Super Meat Boy or Spelunky or very deep, mechanical puzzle games like SpaceChem. Particulars tries to mix the action, twitch-paced gameplay with a bunch of thinking and while the subatomic puzzling is difficult and satisfying when understood, working towards the solution can be frustrating, especially if you know exactly what to do, but fail to execute it properly. In terms of controls, I found the keyboard controls to be okay, however due to the only eight directional digital movement, some levels are harder than they need to be. Therefore I recommend a controller for playing, which however also has the downside that when inspecting particles in the pause menu, using the right analog stick to move around is painfully slow.
TL;DR
My conclusion of Particulars is, that this game is just not for me, even as a scientist. While the physics in Particulars seem solid and you can surely learn more than a thing or two during the gaming experience, I personally do not like the combination of fast-paced, sluggish movements with puzzling as I get frustrated when I figured out the solution but fail to execute it. Similarly to my earlier critique of Luna’s Wandering Stars, games like these are just not for me. If you are amongst the people to enjoy these kinds of games however, you should definitely check Particulars out, as it is a very insightful exploratory experience into the world of subatomic particles.
Steam User 14
The game is both pleasant to interact with and meaningful, it even could teach you something about the composition of the atom without you knowing it! Some friend gives a depressive scientifically obsessed girl a garage particle collider (looks like an arcade machine) to experiment with, and thus to have the needed psychotherapy for she thinks that the subatomic particles are exactly like people - some can't live togather & some die without each other.. there are also UP's & DOWN's between the quarks and she has to reproduce in her memory, reenact some situations which gave her trauma.
So we have here 3 things togather:
1. a nice magnetic arcade of colliding discs
2. a laconical introspective melodrama
3. a comprehansive visual encyclopedia of contemporary subatomic theory
A definite YES!
Игра приятная на ощупь и глубокомысленная, она даже способна дать вам представление о составе атомного ядра без вашего ведома! Один друг предоставляет депрессивной помешанной на науке девушке гаражный ускоритель частиц (выглядит как игровой автомат) для проведения экспериментов и, через это, прохождения психотерапии, так как девушка уверена, что субатомные частицы - точь-в-точь как люди - кто-то не может ужиться, а кто-то погибает в разлуке... у кварков также существуют ВЕРХНИЕ и НИЖНИЕ в отношениях, и ей предстоит воспроизвести в памяти и перепрожить травматические ситуации.
Итак мы имеем сразу три вещи:
1. милую магнетическую аркаду про сталкновения кружочков
2. лаконичную интроспективную мелодраму
3. доступную наглядную энциклопедию современной теории атома
Определенно ДА!
Steam User 10
I'm a little bit surprised about the negative reviews that complain about the difficulty of the game (lack of hand-holding) and required knowledge of particle physics (false) because you don't see those same criticisms of a game like... dark souls...or ... super meat boy. Punishingly tricky this game can be, but it's elegant and almost educational.
Steam User 6
Now that Particulars is out of the early access that left a tainted first impression, I've managed to give it another spare moment of my time. The game provides some unique sub-atomic gameplay. You don't necessarily need to understand the underlying particle physics and I don't know how much of the interactions are real physics and how much are just there to make it a playable game, but it does result in a fair amount of trial-an-error gameplay that can be both educational and fun.
The last level that introduces black holes creates a difficulty imbalance from the rest of the game and if you don't have a good grasp of the process of making the right particles from the earlier levels, these later levels will be nearly impossible to pass without skipping.
While the story dialog feels extremely erratic, jumping forward and backward in time, the gameplay is original and for that it is definitely worth a try.
Steam User 21
Such an abstract and amazing concept for a game. I definitely recommend supporting the developer as the mechanics are very causual(easy to get into), and the dialogue/quotes/narration in the game are incredibly well placed and fantastically done. It is very similar to spacechem in what it achieves.