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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE4GXdja_AM
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.

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 ♥♥♥♥ 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.

I had heard Particulars compared favourably to Spacechem, which I regard as hands-down the best puzzle game ever made, so I was interested to see what it had in store. A big difference between the two titles (aside from their fundamental gameplay being completely dissimilar) is that Spacechem requires absolutely no pre-existing knowledge of chemistry, and what little knowledge it does require is clearly explained as the game progresses. Particulars assumes a basic level of familiarity with particle physics, which I do not have, as its efforts to explain the concepts it introduces are half-hearted at best.

The first few levels work on the basis of opposite particles attracting one another and colliding. Anybody can follow along with this. However as the game progresses and you need to absorb, mutate, eject particles into both other particles and yourself to be re-absorbed, broken apart, annihilated, so on and so forth, there is almost no effort taken to explain how this works. Consequently I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. None. I simply pressed buttons and flew my particle around the screen performing these actions until I eventually stumbled upon the winning combination. This was not trial and error so much as pure luck. Trial and error would actually be somewhat acceptable, however as the game operates on a chaotic plane, with particles quickly flying into one another and exploding or mutating, trial and error is not really possible. To succeed on any level beyond luck, you need to know exactly what you're doing so you can perform the task quickly enough.

There is a very original, compelling game to be found here, however until and unless a tutorial which assumes complete scientific ignorance on the player's behalf is implemented, I cannot possibly recommend this to a layperson.

Whether you enjoy physics or not it's a great game.
It's simple enough to understand, you can easily learn from it and it has a good narative, it's now nearly 4am and I can barely stop playing.
10/10

For the full write up visit my YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/brbteabreaktv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtYJ3SiyTro

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 it's surprisingly difficult puzzles this game is easily worth the price of admission.

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.

This is game simplistic and enjoyable. There are a few things that i don't know if are suppose to be that way or not, but all the problems are not in the game play and in more of hte cutscenes and vanity stuff like voice overs. The game play is easy to learn and it enjoy able. But what i find impressive is that the gameolay isn't connected to a plot but there are quotations and brief cutscenes that are impactful and paint a pretty clear picture of the main characters life, it may be simple quotations and cutscenes but they are impactful enough to make me sad and almost in tears. it is trully a game to play and it will make you feel.

This polished early access title lets you control one particle to guide others to safety or destruction while avoiding being annihilated yourself. A narrative is interleaved with the puzzles; although some artwork is incomplete, I found it engaging, especially in combination with the lovely soundtrack. I've been very happy with the purchase.

It is awesome. Being the main target bashing protons and electrons together to create collisions and explosions, getting data, the amount of obstacles thrown at you. It's one of the best puzzle games I've ever played.

This game is pretty interesting but in a good way. Storyline behind the game is a bit interesting even though there's still a few holes in the story (because its still be worked on) and some of the voice dialog doesn't match up with some of the written dialog in game, though that's subject to change in the future. For the most part though game play is quite simple and it can be used with both keyboard/mouse or a gamepad (xbox controller). By looking it as far videos goes it very hard to understand and may even seem uninteresting but once you get hands on the game, you begin to understand what's going on and how it's supposed to be played. Overall it's worth trying out and only tiny gripe is that the dialog and voice dialog don't match up but like i said earlier that's something that's bound to change later on in the develop.

This game is really awesome. The story if follows is really original and so is the concept of being a particle floating around. I really like it. It might seem easy at first but it does get challenging after a few levels. It's not a game you'll get bored of easily since it's being updated regularly with new stuff.
The music and the graphics are really nice. I'm considering buying the Devotee pack :)

The game is fun, although some of the timed challenges are quite frustrating. Still, it has a great concept and I'd like to see how the backstory with Allison develops and relates to the gameplay.

i would recommend this to you because its a cheap fun game with nice graphics and it starts slow then builds up the speed watch the trailer and you will be like WOW!

Puzzle game made by Australians. Amazingly Awesome 7.9/10

It's peaceful, relaxing and very fun to play.

This game is a pretty good, no GREAT, game for an alpha.

This game is great so far, especially for early access. I'm so glad it made it to steam.

First off: I didn't care for the game. But I belive in something. Just because somebody doesn't enjoy the game, doesn't mean the game is bad. This game has a simple design, yet the game, for me, was extremely challenging. The few beginning bits of the story were interesting. I really wish I could like this game more, I'm a big story person. This game isn't for everybody. There isn't a video game that's designed for everybody. If you think that, you're in the wrong universe, because even if you try to create a video game that is designed for everybody, you'll fail. What i'm saying is this: This game is not for everybody. But, for those select few people that like these kind of games, then you just struck gold.

Particulars is a game with a unique combination of arcade-action and puzzle gameplay, set in the mysterious world of subatomic particles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7TJR84YMl8

Am I the only one that thinks this game would be better if it were just a iOS game?