Taking inspiration from the real-life event of the Windscale fire that befell Northern England in 1957. Atomfall is a playable “what if” scenario based on that event that avoids retreading familiar ground we’ve seen in other games about nuclear disasters. And Rebellion have really hit a six with this extremely British survival game. Atomfall is a compelling first-person adventure full of mystery and intrigue that’s unlike anything else, and one I’ll be returning to soon.
The year is now 1962, and you have amnesia and an inability to speak. You’ve woken up to a scientist in a radiation suit telling you what he can as he’s sustained a mortal wound, but not before teaching you how to craft bandages, and then saying that you need to escape somehow. Exiting the bunker you awoke in, reveals a gorgeous world with a looming nuclear reactor plant in the distance, disturbed by a recent event you can’t remember.
As you start a new game, you’ll be asked to select a difficulty. The developer recommends and game defaults to “Survivor”, which is the fourth of five total difficulties. I stuck with this for my entire playthrough and while I found it challenging, and overwhelming at times, it wasn’t anything that became too much to bear for long. It feels like a spot-on recommendation, and if at any time you need to make adjustments, you can change the playstyle, even altering individual components. You can keep the combat where it defaults, but lower survival and raise exploration, as an example. There aren’t any achievements tied to the difficulty chosen, so however you like your games to be played will be complimentary to the experience.
Atomfall doesn’t give you any direction on where to go, and this extends to the quests. In fact, there are no quests or objectives, only “Leads”. You just have to talk to people, gather clues, and investigate these leads to find out more. The game is very open-ended in that you can go anywhere at any time, and there’s no artificial or arbitrary gating. Exploration is the key to progression, but your curiosity is not always rewarded as you may come across a dead end. Sometimes it takes you to unexpected places, or you’ll be taken on interesting excursions. In a lot of cases this meant I would accidentally solve a lead I hadn’t pursued. Everything you do seems to intertwine with each other. It’s all very convincing how it works for someone who has amnesia, and is immersive as a result.
The area that surrounds the Windscale plant is broken up into four regions: Slatten Dale, Wyndham Village, Casterfell Woods, and Skethermoor. And while these are in the order I discovered them, your order may be different (aside from the fact the game starts in Slatten Dale). Each region is large in size, and feels bigger than any level found in the recent Sniper Elite: Resistance. Unlike other games of this style, there’s no day/night cycle or weather changes, each region is static in how you see it each time you traverse them. I never came away wishing any of those systems were in-place. The in-game map is as empty as your mind, and will get filled in as NPCs tell about interesting places to visit, who to talk to, and rumors you entertain. The map can be marked with icons and ways for you to revisit places you couldn’t loot completely. There’s unfortunately no fast travel here, nor any vehicles or mounts. You will spend a lot of the game running from one end of the map to the other, though there are some shortcuts through sewers and other systems that can help. There are so many paths to explore, that each time I went back to a region I had been in before, I was always discovering bunkers or outposts that prevented it from feeling like a slog.
Combat is not at the forefront of Atomfall, as there are times to fight, and times to not. This is largely in part due to the fact that ammo and resources are scarce, especially in the early game. Traversing a new area is treacherous, ominous, and unsafe. Comparing this to something like Fallout, where you know you’re going to be alright, that level of confidence never arrives in Atomfall. Weapons are either ranged or melee, and are of varying quality. Every weapon you hold will be found off someone, and the early weapons you find are rusted out and not operating at their full potential. They never jam or break, thankfully, and are able to be improved upon when you unlock the gunsmith ability. This is where you can take two like guns, and make them better a version. Each gun has three qualities, so the process is rather simplified and easy to reach the pristine tier of any weapon you come across. Melee weapons can’t be upgraded, but you’ll come across a myriad of blunt and sharp objects that vary in their attack speed and damage output, and it all comes down to preference. I usually ran with a loadout of one melee weapon in case my weapons were out of ammo or not able to be loaded fast enough, a pistol, a shotgun, and then a single-shot rifle for distanced damage. You can mix ‘n’ match what weapons you’re carrying at any time, but you’ll quickly find your favorites.
The enemies in Atomfall are varied. You’ll encounter the Outlaws first, who shoot first and ask questions later. The Protocol are a military outfit that practice social distancing to its fullest. Druids love the Earth and the Wicker Man, and are highly cautious of you being around them, and will take you down with bows and arrows if you even look at them wrong. All the human enemies are mostly predictable and easy to deal with, then there are the Ferals. These blue zombie types are scary, can infect you to make you hear voices, and pose the realest threat more than anyone else in the game. Usually a well-placed grenade eliminates them, but if you’ve got more than one on you, forget it. Later in the game there are robots that can perceive you as a threat, and learning how to deal with them is really satisfying. Because once you’ve dealt with one, you can deal with them all with relative ease. For some reason though, bats, rats, and other nonsense you come across are unyielding terrors. They can be stomped or swatted to deal with the swarm, but they are an ever-present and hilarious danger to your life. Clearing enemies out from an area or outpost is temporary, as eventually they repopulate it.
Sound and line of sight is important, as enemies are hyper aware of everything and will hear if you make too much noise or see you if you’re standing out in the open. Though there are spots of tall grass to hide in. You can just run around forever, because you a heart rate you have to maintain, as raising it too high makes it difficult for you to shoot or engage in melee combat, like the recent Sniper Elite games. Being a first person game where stealth is a component, I was shocked there wasn’t a way to lean around corners to help reduce your visibility. You can tell where you’re not wanted by the red “trespassing” banner on the screen while walking around. If all else fails, you can just run from any encounter you deem is too difficult or too much, and the enemies will forget all about you until you return.
While I wouldn’t classify this game as an “immersive sim”, it certainly exhibits some qualities of one. One example is when I was exploring a region that had a heavily defended base complete with barbed wire fencing and evenly spaced motion sensors that would detect when I came too close. And breaching a certain point would trigger an alarm, and protocol guards and hulking mechs would converge on my position. I had just come from the woods where I had taken a bow for silent shots. I left the nearby area and decided to shoot the sensors, and with two arrows I was able to destroy them, allowing me to pass through the area and not alert the nearby guards. Now, there was no tooltip or anything to suggest they could be destroyed, but so much of this game is experimentation. This was something that was immensely gratifying to discover on my own, and carve my own path to achieve my objective.
You’ll meet a lot of people in your time with the game. Each of them have unique personalities and specific agendas. In talking to them, you’ll learn more about the quarantine and ways you might be able to escape, but first you’ll have to do things for them in order for them to trust you enough to reveal their plans. There’s a military commander who’s removed from the outside world but runs a town like a little base, a doctor who wants to continue her research, a mysterious voice on the other end of a telephone, and an old lady in the woods that feels very out of place and untrustworthy, as well as many others. Dialogue is fascinating as responses are categorized as curious, angry, wary, desperate, or unsure – and you won’t get the option to try them all. Engaging in conversation, following their leads, and asking questions will reveal more about what’s going on. So in peeling back the layers of Atomfall‘s onion, you’ll learn more about the mysterious “Interchange”, and the people you meet are all keys to your escape.
What I think is the best system of the game is the fact that there’s no currency, only bartering. You will have to leverage the items in your backpack that hold different values, and whatever item you want from them must be in equal value in order for the trade to complete. Over time you’ll learn what items you do or don’t want, and be able to maximize each person to get what you want from them.
While this isn’t a traditional RPG, there are skills to attain that are rather weirdly gated. They are all dependent on finding stimulants to invest as points to acquiring a skill. However, much of the skill tree is locked away until you find training manuals that will unlock whole branches. Some of the game’s best skills are kept from you until you speak to the right NPC that hold the item to make them available. Even now, there’s just one branch I have yet to unlock because I never found the person who has the book for it. Skills are broken down into four categories: Ranged Combat, Melee Combat, Survival, and Conditioning. None of the skills you acquire are surprising: make guns easier to shoot, give you more health, let you craft upgraded weapons, and give you better deals on barters. However, you’ll have to make careful decisions as to which ones you want, and when, as the stimulants don’t come easy or often.
I think one of the things that struck me the most was that the game doesn’t pause when you’re in your backpack. This is your inventory, where you hold your weapons and items, and perform crafting. So if you’re near enemies or in combat, you can be discovered or attacked while trying to craft a bandage or select a different weapon. It’s an odd decision, but one that forced me to be more thoughtful overall. It’s worth noting that you can save whenever you like. The game supports quicksaves and hard saves, with multiple save slots for experimentation or being able to try out the various endings.
Early on you’ll pick-up a metal detector, this allows you to find hidden treasures such as caches that contain weapons, ammo, and items or collectibles. There’s a few collectibles in the game, such as smashing garden gnomes or discovering comics that tie-in with the real-world for the time.
From start to finish it took me about 17 hours to see the end credits. With the multiple endings that can be achieved, I could see it taking around 25 hours to see and do everything if you have good save points to rely on. There are six endings where you side with a single individual. There’s one ending where you don’t do something, which might require a new playthrough, depending. This is a game where mysteries do get revealed. The ending is finite, but there are multiple points at which you can exit before getting to a point of no return. I’ll say that the payoff for learning the truth isn’t satisfying for all the work you’ll put in, but that’s also dependant on the people you side with.
Atomfall is super impressive in terms of performance. This game has built-in, required ray traced shadows, but it otherwise doesn’t have DLSS, FSR, RTX, Reflex, or anything artificial. With everything set to ‘Ultra’ or its maximum setting, the game runs at a consistent 180fps (capped), no matter what is on-screen. This is a gorgeous modern game that’s terrifically optimized.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
Rebellion have made a fresh, exciting post-apocalyptic world we haven’t seen before, formed from the results of a real-world accident. There’s some fantastic player agency that’s unlike anything else we’ve been able to have from this perspective. Atomfall has deep systems to engage with, an impressively unrestricted world to explore, guerrilla-style combat, and a leads system that takes you to unpredictable places for one of the best surprises of the year.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
