Atomfall imagines a British apocalypse where cricket bats are deadlier than radiation
8.22.2024
By Laura Kate Dale, Contributor
Like the STALKER series, Atomfall is based on a real incident. The 1957 fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in the UK’s Peak District spread radioactive isotopes over the UK and Europe. Atomfall is set five years later, in the rolling fields and dilapidated buildings of England’s (glowing) green and unpleasant land. It's an interesting mix of British tropes, from dense local accents to folk-horror.
We were given a brief chance to go hands-on with Atomfall as part of a demo that took place at Gamescom 2024 this week. Developed by Rebellion, the studio best known for the Sniper Elite series, this first-person adventure sees the player set loose in an open world to search for clues to the original disaster, talk to NPCs, and scavenge for a couple of measly bullets; then scramble, run, and swing your cricket bat for dear life trying to battle the survivors who are eager to kill you on sight.
Considering Atomfall is set in and named after the events of nuclear fallout, it might surprise you to learn that the biggest source of difficulty and challenge found in the demo was combat with other survivors, who are laser-focused on murder. Much like zombie-survival games, one or two regular survivors aren’t too hard to take out with a wooden bat, but when you get to three or four—one of whom perhaps has a gun—your chances of survival drop drastically. Thankfully, stealth is an option, with the game’s UI doing a great job of communicating when you’re hidden and when someone’s beginning to notice you from a certain direction.
Despite my struggles, you’ll be happy to know Atomfall features a robust suite of accessibility tools, ranging from aim assist to navigation assist features such an-on screen compass, as well as traversal assist tools like automated movement. They don’t make the game a walk in the park, but being able to turn off motion sway and increase my FOV helped me avoid motion sickness, for example.
While playing, I was pleasantly reminded of a game I hadn’t thought about for years, the quirky Wii U launch title ZombiU. For all the issues that game had, it managed to truly make swinging a cricket bat in first person feel satisfyingly weighty, something Atomfall also manages to capture well. If your British video game is going to feature a wooden bat melee weapon, that feel needs to be impeccable. This hits it for six.
Given that Atomfall is developed by Rebellion, it should be no surprise that the gunplay—rare as it was during the demo—is incredibly satisfying. Weapons are responsive, with well-realized audio feedback and tactility. From scoped rifles to hip-fired handguns, each weapon feels distinctive. Ammo is scarce in Peak District at the best of times, so I developed a bit of RPG healing potion syndrome, a sense that I should hold onto every bullet in case a more dire situation cropped up.
I left my time with Atomfall with more questions than answers, which is probably for the best. In just a short play session, the game got me curious and pulling at interesting plot threads, and I’m intrigued to see where those threads lead to.
You can wishlist Atomfall on the Epic Games Store.