Folks around the world have cried out for a post-apocalypse adventure that would take place in the UK. We’ve had games like ZombiU, but Fallout and franchises like it have rarely ever ventured to England despite movies like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead painting incredible narratives in post-apocalyptic settings. Interestingly enough, it’s not Bethesda coming to the rescue on this front, but Sniper Elite developers Rebellion, which have been working on Atomfall. It’s a first-person action survival game set in a post-apocalyptic Northern England, and we got to try an early taste of the challenging journey ahead in the game.
Hi Windscale of a different scale
Atomfall takes place in an alternate universe where the Windscale nuclear disaster that took place in 1957 in Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria) ended up far worse, ruining the region and leaving it filled with mutated creatures and radioactive fallout. We play an amnesiac that has found themselves stranded in the quarantine zone of Lake District, Cumbria where the incident occurred, and our goal is to navigate the dangers of the zone, unravel what happened to the region and to us, and stay alive by any means necessary.
In the preview we got to play, we were dumped into one end of some woods with the goals of reaching a mysterious woman known as Mother Jago. Papers we’ve picked up tell us she can help us. The only problem is her neighbors in the woods are a doomsday cult that will kill any outsiders they see, and that’s not even including the irradiated landscape and creatures in between their camps. Our first task was to get our feet under us, figure out melee and ranged combat, and prepare for the trek across.
For what we saw, Atomfall’s starting area map was a verdant countryside area interspersed with rocky hills and forests. It had broken down homes, shops, and other former civilization sitting between the backdrops of an ancient castle and massive nuclear facility in the distance. Much like any Rebellion’s Sniper Elite games, Atomfall felt like a sandbox. We could literally go anywhere we wanted and take any path we liked on the way to main missions like meeting Mother Jago. And it felt well worth it to do so. Not only could we find supplies, resources, and side missions or the clues to solve them, but the world was also gorgeous and felt well worth exploring and enjoying for its broken beauty.
I like that the sandbox approach to this adventure means you have an opportunity to experience all sorts of different events that could be vastly different from your fellow players. For instance, I ended up finding a radio and notes in a certain village that told me of a woman that found a bunker, as well as the coordinates on how to find her. I found her and she ended up being one of the sanest and least murderous people around. We talked and she wanted me to help restore power to a nearby facility, but I didn’t get to see how that ended. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues ran into a crazy woman in a broken mansion that was acting like her servants were still there tending to her. It looks like there are a lot of threads to discover and what you get will depend on how much you explore.
Clean the cultist off your bat
Gameplay is a very challenging survival affair in Atomfall as far as I saw. You’ll be dumped into the world with a handful of implements, but your survival will depend on the information you gather, the resources you hoard, and the weapons and gear you find and craft. Fighting big groups of enemies in this game is a bad idea, which I found out by getting beat down by groups of three cultists or more several times. Even sneaking up on one and doing a stealth kill makes enough noise to get the attention of nearby people. With that in mind, you have to employ some stealth and always be considerate of the whole situation.
That said, you have plenty of options to choose from when tackling survival in Atomfall. The game features melee weapons like cricket bats that can disorient and stun enemies and hatchets and machetes that can cause bleeding. Our ranged options included a lot of broken firearms like a rifle, shotgun, and pistol that were all rusted to heck and mostly good as last resorts. They were loud and janky, but could clear an enemy or cause them severe bleeding. There was a bow and arrow that served as a silent killer, but at the cost of firing very slowly since you have to nock and load the arrows. We also found and could craft throwables like Molotov cocktails, nail bombs, and poison vials that could help us clear out groups in a pinch. A lot of it required searching for resources like cloth, glass, and alcohol that allowed us to make more weapons and keep advantage on our side.
Adventuring through this world was an interesting endeavor. As far as I could tell, when you discover the details of a quest or a new destination, Atomfall will give you a general idea of where to look for it, but it doesn’t seem to hand you blatant checkpoints to follow. When I discovered the woman who gave me coordinates to her bunker, I actually had to locate coordinates on the map to find her. If that’s the kind of problem-solving we have to do with navigation in Atomfall, I’m kind of into it.
Cultists aren’t the only problems we’ll deal with in Atomfall. At one point I ran into a strange purple growth on a tree, and giant purple hornets swarmed me, forcing me to flee. I could shoot the nest from a distance and cause the hornets to fly around the area. I hope that ends up being a situation where I can lead other enemies into the danger zone and then let the hornets deal with them. I also went into an underground road tunnel where eyeless, zombie-like creatures were lurking in blue fungus. When they noticed me, they’d hit me with blue goo that would hurt me over time and caused me to hear creepy voices. I’m interested to see what other kind of irradiated horrors await us deeper in the depths of Atomfall.
A trot through scenic nuclear Cumbria
Atomfall absolutely feels like something Rebellion made. You can feel it in the freedom of approach to its story, the breadth of opportunities for discovery and side-tasks, and the challenge of only facing down what you can overcome and avoiding biting off more than you can chew. These are all things I love about Sniper Elite, but here, we have those qualities strapped to a first-person action game that feels satisfying in its combat, both melee and ranged. It doesn’t have leveling, but as you craft better gear and discover new clues, you’ll become more capable as you live longer. And if the rest of the environments are as well-crafted as this one, I look forward to seeing what every corner of this world has in store for us.
This preview is based on an early PC build in a private session hosted by the publisher. Atomfall comes out on March 27, 2025, and will come to PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Game Pass.
-
Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Atomfall's action-survival journey through an irradiated UK is a harrowing adventure
