Whipped up by Rebellion, the same developer who created the Sniper Elite series, Atomfall is a first-person adventure game inspired by the worst nuclear disaster in the UK’s history. Set in an alternate version of the 1950s, the game takes place in the Lake District region of North West England, which has been reduced to a quarantine zone following the real-world Windscale nuclear disasters. A newcomer to the existing chaos, armed with your base survival skills and an investigative eye, your goal is to escape the quarantine zone and uncover some disturbing secrets along the way. Though it doesn’t provide as much action as advertised, Atomfall has an intriguing premise that grabs your attention, but a few persistent flaws hold it back from greatness.
The Mystery of the Atomic Quarantine
Atomfall takes place in the Lake District, home of a mysterious atomic facility that encounters an undisclosed accident, forcing the surrounding lands into strict quarantine. Most of the citizens have been forced out of their homes, leading to tensions between various factions as they battle for ownership over the neglected territories. Self-proclaimed “Outlaws” troll the streets, looking to bully anyone they encounter. A militia outfitted with robotic enforcers tries to maintain normalcy through conformity and control. Mysterious “Druids” lurk in the darkened woods, with rumors of their savagery spreading like wildfire. In the midst of this, you awaken in a bunker stricken with amnesia, and after a run-in with a wounded scientist, you set out to the surface to explore.
Atomfall might be advertised as a first-person shooter, but in practice, it’s more of a narrative-driven adventure than anything else. Your primary motivation is not to rid the Lake District of its worst inhabitants with guns ablaze, but rather to escape the zone and live to tell the tale. In order to do so, you must locate one of several important NPCs, each with their own “quest line” to complete, in hopes of finding an exit. The rest of your journey is spent tracking down notes and other bits of lore, which in time, reveal the grander mystery of the atomic facility. Depending on who you trust, who you kill, and the leads you track, more of the story is revealed, possibly requiring several playthroughs to get the whole picture. In this way, the player has a lot of agency over the story at hand, but that doesn’t always result in the most satisfying narrative experience.
When it’s firing on all cylinders, Atomfall is deeply atmospheric and creepy, fueled by a constant anxiety of the unknown and offering a dreary and immersive world that is begging to be explored. Characters are interesting for the most part and the mystery is gripping at the start, but depending on your path through the game, the allure of uncovering Atomfall‘s grand conspiracies can diminish rather quickly. Due in part to sluggish gameplay, but mostly the fragmented storytelling, I found my interest dipping after a few hours. While this could be forgiven in a more action-focused shooter, Atomfall puts a ton of weight on the shoulders of its story, and if you start to become bored, it’s hard to get invested again.
Thankfully, everything is reasonably well-written, but the effectiveness of most mysteries depends on how information is drip-fed to the audience, and Atomfall is clumsy in that regard. Half of the time, I was engrossed in every detail and eager to find the next clue, but the other half, I wanted to play the game at 2x speed. These peaks and valleys of intrigue caused several pacing slumps during my playthrough, but they weren’t severe enough to ruin the experience. Generally speaking, Atomfall contains a cool mystery and path of discovery, but one that’s self-guided and is completely dependent on your personal pace, for better or worse.
A Beginner Guide to Lake District Survival
On the surface level, Atomfall bills itself as a sort of survival/shooter hybrid, but that’s not really what it is. Sure, you can shoot enemies in the game and you’ll have to manage rudimentary stats like health, but most of your time is spent walking around the Lake District, investigating bunkers and buildings, and chatting with various survivors. Atomfall is not an open-world game, but is instead zone-based: a rising trend in AA budget titles. There are a handful of maps to explore, including but not limited to the disheveled countryside, a quaint village, a creepy forest, and several strange research facilities, all of which are connected by various entrances and exits. Once you’ve left the bunker at the beginning of the game, you’re free to embark in several directions, where you’ll find loose “quests” that have you tracking leads across multiple zones. These leads will gently guide you to new points of interest, where you’ll discover additional clues in a given quest line, pushing you further on and repeating the cycle.
The survival aspect of Atomfall is most prominent in its combat design, as areas are sparse on resources. Ammo, bandages, and other important items are hard to come by at first, making it important to stay stealthy and avoid detection from anyone who may want to harm you. You can craft items quickly in your inventory by locating recipes, but you’ll need to collect simple resources like alcohol, cloth, gunpowder, and more, which can be found around the environment. Resources and other collectibles can also be found in buried caches, which you can locate by using a metal detector, adding a dash of variety to item collection.
Even if you do find an excess of goodies, inventory space is exceptionally limited, so you’ll have to pick and choose what you take and what you leave behind. Some NPCs will trade items via a basic trading system, but apart from a few key items, you won’t find much worth trading. With no fast travel and enemies that respawn when you reload a zone, you’ll often have to make do with what you’ve got in your inventory, although there is a storage system if you find one of the many pneumatic tubes around the map.
There are several difficulty modifiers that will make combat, exploration, and quests easier or harder, but Atomfall was designed to be challenging. On default settings, enemies can easily spot you during stealth and will usually start a firefight, forcing you to use up precious resources if you want to survive. There’s a decent arsenal of weapons for protection, including basic firearms like pistols, rifles, and shotguns, along with melee weapons and throwables, but combat feels clunky and enemies hit hard.
Things become more manageable as you unlock passive abilities by finding skill books and upgrade your weapons through crafting, but these boons don’t improve the combat as much as they make it more forgiving. Beyond the light RPG elements and some immersion-heightening stealth, combat in Atomfall is generally underwhelming and is occasionally more frustrating than enjoyable. Of course, you can always lower the difficulty to make everything less abrasive, but at the cost of reducing the impact of the game’s survival themes.
The Bottom Line on Atomfall
Atomfall is a good game with an intriguing focal mystery, some cool ideas, and an atmospheric world, but it’s marred by clunky combat, awkward pacing, and shoehorned survival and crafting mechanics. The storytelling is intertwined well with careful exploration, but the gameplay loop feels repetitive at times, especially when combat can be frustrating and backtracking is frequent. Still, Atomfall is remarkably evocative, and when it successfully grabs your attention, it’s a nice change of pace from the average action-heavy first-person shooter. Overall, Atomfall is a roughly 8 to 10 hour game that, while flawed, brings some new ideas to the genre while granting a lot of freedom to the player. It might not nail the execution, but it can still be a lot of fun, especially if you like stealthy, story-driven shooters.
