So. Atom is back.
First playtests: June 27th–28th. No public server yet, this is a "we are building again" post. Grab the playtest role in the Discord to participate. The project page has the short version of what Atom is.
If you played the original builds over on Civlabs, you already know what Atom was trying to be. Vanilla survival but heavier. Thirst, temperature, weight. Systems that talk to each other, layered onto a game that never really asked you to think about any of them.
We shelved it about six months ago. Not because it stopped being fun (it didn't), but because the constraints we were working inside started to pull in a different direction than the design did. Civlabs was a great home for the experiment, but at some point the question stopped being "what should Atom be" and started being "what is Atom allowed to be." and the second one isn't the one I wanted to keep answering personally.
Why now
A few things lined up.
The first is that I kept going back to the old prototype. I'd constantly think about ideas and content that would be great for Atom. That's usually a good signal. If a thing doesn't leave you alone, it probably isn't done with you yet.
The second is that my goals for Glowstone feel like the right shape for this kind of work. Small, opinionated, no pressure to be everything to everyone.
The third is honestly just timing. The team's back together (more on that below), the systems built for RustLabs can translate over; improving Atom in return, and there are roughly three people who have asked me every couple of weeks when Atom is coming back. Hi to all three of you.
What's changing from the old build
Most of the design holds up. The bones are good. But a few things are getting rewritten on the way back in:
- Temperature is being redone from scratch. The old model was too punishing in cold biomes and too forgiving in deserts. I want the gradient to actually matter without making the snow biomes a no-go.
- The HUD is being rebuilt. Every penalty should be readable at a glance, no menu-diving to find out why you're slow or shivering.
- Every system gets a second pass. Not a rewrite for the sake of it, but every mechanic that survived the shelf is getting re-examined against the question we couldn't always answer the first time: does this make the moment-to-moment better, or just heavier?
What stays the same
The design principle hasn't moved. Atom is still vanilla compatible. No client mods, nothing to install besides Minecraft itself. Making everything important easily visible and understandable, every system interacts with the others, and the answer to "how do I handle this" is almost always "carry less, plan more, bring a friend."
Who's building it
This isn't a solo run. The team behind Atom v2 is a mix of people who shaped the original and some new faces joining for the rebuild.
Getting the original crew back was the part I wasn't sure would happen. Atom shipped the first time because a small group cared more than the scope deserved, and the fact that most of them said yes again is a bigger signal to me than any of the design notes above.
The new faces matter too. A revival that's only old hands becomes a nostalgia project.
Timeline
I'm not going to give you a release date. I've been burned by my own timelines too many times, and I'd rather be honest about it. What I will commit to is shipping these devlog entries when things change, good or bad, and keeping the Discord open for the in-progress builds.
The order roughly looks like:
- Port the core systems from the old build mostly done
- Rewrite temperature soon
- Rebuild the HUD in progress
- Playtests with the Discord First tests begin June 27-28
- Public alpha when it actually deserves the word
Close enough to playtest, far enough from "done" that the next few playtests are going to teach us a lot.
Playtests
We're running playtests frequently from here on out. Short, focused sessions where we throw the current build at a small group, watch what breaks, and patch between rounds. It's the fastest way to pressure-test the systems and the only reliable way to find the things we can't see ourselves anymore.
The first playtests run June 27th–28th. Weekend, two days, multiple sessions across both. Sign-up goes through the Discord drop into glowst.one/discord and grab the playtest role. The cadence is going to be high, so if you miss this one the next one isn't far off.
If you played the old one
Thank you, genuinely. The old Atom existed for as long as it did because people kept showing up to play something that was barely held together.
If you want to come back for this one, you're more than welcome. The Discord is where it's all happening glowst.one/discord. Playtest, sneak peeks, and the in-progress builds go there first.
More soon.
Thanks for reading
- Adam