The indie video game Bohrdom, developed by the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen, has gone viral online, drawing a surge of attention and reviews.
Originally a little-known title on the Steam platform, Bohrdom was described as a “non-violent,” asymmetrical, skill-based fighting game that was loosely based on a chemical model. It was introduced in 2018 and was advertised through YouTube and X accounts.
One reviewer on Steam left a review after the shooting incident, saying, “A Game made by a crazy woke leftist assassin that went up and shot at a president.”
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Sudden spike in attention after shooting
The game, released in 2018, had only a handful of reviews before the incident but has since seen a spike in traffic and commentary. The renewed focus on Bohrdom came after Cole Allen was identified as the shooter at the WHCD on April 25.
On Sunday night, rumors about the game’s origin swiftly proliferated on social media.
Stephen Totilo, a former Kotaku editor-in-chief and author of Game File, saw gamers swarming Bohrdom’s Steam forums at 11:30 pm ET and sent screenshots of the action to Bluesky. Allen stormed the Secret Service checkpoint at around 8:30 pm ET outside the event, according to CNN.
PC Gamer reported that the Steam store page had 107 user reviews, a 50/50 “Mixed” status, and 10 pages of discussion posts by Monday afternoon. Through Bohrdom’s Steam reviews, more than 100 people have paid that $2 to participate in a political argument, and more people are doing so in the discussion board without needing to pay for the game.
Some users commented on the website and wrote, “The attack was guerrilla marketing.”
The user-defined tags describe the game as “Bullet Hell,” “Assassin,” and “Political.”
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What is Bohrdom about?
Bohrdom is a game that primarily serves as a teaching tool. As described by PC Gamer, in this gamified version of atomic chemistry, where one takes on the role of an electron or nucleus. Allen called it “technically a skill-based, non-violent asymmetrical fighting game,” or “a hybrid of a bullet hell and a racing game.”
A user reviewed the game on Steam, writing, “Graphically VERY plain asymmetrical arena brawler with VERY special rules. One nucleus fights up to 12 electrons in single player or in up to 4 player split-screen/online. Fun for chemistry freaks.”
Another user described the game and decoded the name. He wrote, “Aha I get it, Niels Bohr developed an early model of the atom and it’s a play on the word boredom. That’s a pretty good title and suggests that it’s not intended to be a significant project.”