Reading the instructions on the game's web-page again, it seems like I missed a number of input options. Maybe then it's no wonder it was hard to make progress... Like "Left Trigger - Brake"... That's what I kind of missed and slowing down by accelerating into the opposite direction is really tough once thing deteriorate to "twitch reflex speed".
Viewing post in Aurum Artificer jam comments
One thing that irritates me is that the right thumbstick is for movement and the left one for aiming. Also, when you let go the direction snaps back to its origin.
The best results I got was when I managed to kind of cage in one atom in the lower right corner and feed it with a stream of protons and neutrons while shielding it against other atoms bumping into it and throwing it out of its position (either into me so I would absorb it and score or whacking it all over the field so I would have to catch it before it bumped into too many other things and possibly be split down or otherwise obliterated.
Sometimes there is some kind of explosion where an atom seems to appear and immediately gets destroyed throwing out a whole bunch of protons around. And at least once I had a sudden spark of energy particles (the yellow tiny ones) going wild.
In one play-through I gott pulled into such an energy spark and the border fields suddenly sort of caged me in, I couldn't move anymore and apparently the game continued although I couldn't see any of it, just get some sound effects and scoring once in a while. In another game I was suddenly teleported (I think it was one of those proton explosion that kind of grabbed me) and then I couldn't move anymore as well...
The biggest things I managed to get were Phosphor, Sulfur, Magnesium, and some more around that range...