Mar 21, 2025, 10:00 AM ET
Atomfall isn’t a “British Fallout game,” despite what you’ve probably heard. It is set in an alternate history England after a nuclear disaster — that much is true — but in every other respect Atomfall is different. Not quite an open world game or linear action game either, and without player or gear levels, it’s certainly not an RPG. It can also be finished in around 12 hours, and there’s even an achievement for getting a run down to under five. Atomfall isn’t what you think it is — it’s far more refreshing.
Set after the events of the real-world Windscale nuclear disaster of 1957, the area surrounding the site has been walled off and quarantined with some civilians, soldiers and scientists still inside. The reason for the quarantine is more supernatural than the actual Windscale fire, and some of the locals have started to hear voices and behave strangely. The soldiers locked inside the walls have dubbed themselves Protocol and have taken control of the village of Wyndham, a process complete with fascist overtones, as well as intentional mirrors of the COVID lockdowns — “work out to help out,” a loudspeaker blares. Protocol is in a constant standoff with the Druids who hear voices in the soil, and Outlaws roam the zone. The player is thrown into the mix after waking in a nearby bunker with amnesia.
When you get dropped into one of Atomfall’s areas, there’s little to no direction. Waypoints and quest markers aren’t plastered onto your compass (even bullets have to be checked manually), and instead you’ll have to place icons on the map based on what your Leads indicate. Leads are like quests, but can be started by gathering information instead of talking to someone, and the more information you gather, the clearer your objective will be.
Most NPCs in Atomfall will try to immediately kill you, but the ones you can chat with will send you on a variety of hunts, most of which will work toward your main goal of escaping. You just need a way out of the zone, and the primary quest givers are all equally likely to get you one. Or you can just follow the instructions of a mysterious voice down a telephone.
Atomfall’s small handful of areas are surprisingly compact and dense, with optional objectives everywhere. Very few points of interest are actually required to find a way out of the zone, and an experienced player who understands the game will likely speedrun through areas in a matter of minutes. But if you do choose to see more of the game, you’ll find the Druid Castle, which is majestic enough by itself, but completely outmatched by the catacombs filled with glowing fungus. There’s no reason to ever visit Dalton Hall, but you’ll find some nice bonuses if you do, and it’s located in a place you’ll likely run through more than once. There’s also a sewer tunnel area that connects each environment, in addition to a bunch of bunkers littered across the land with enemies and rewards inside.
Atomfall’s zones are small but densely packed with things to do. Rebellion Developments
You’ll be doing a fair bit of combat, and likely leaving a lot of bodies in your wake. NPCs have a surprisingly long sight range, and often catch you before you even see them. As a result, stealth is rarely ideal — especially because it’s so barebones, with a crouch button, long grass to hide in, and not much else — and while you’ll start out hitting everything with a cricket bat, you’ll soon get access to guns and ammo to use for majority of the game’s challenges. Human opponents go down with a single headshot, so precise aim will win almost any battle. On the flipside, crouching in tall grass makes you practically invisible even to nearby foes, so clearing out a gang with a bow and arrow can feel easy to the point of being cruel.
Once you’ve gathered enough info and equipment, the game leaves the British countryside and stuffs you into the Interchange, a massive underground tunnel system and scientific/military installation. The Interchange got shut down once the quarantine was put in place, leaving many scientists and soldiers inside to die or become Ferals — blue-tinged zombies that can infect the player. This area puts a horror twist on proceedings, and bipedal robots will give you a much stiffer challenge than one-shot foes. Powering up each of the Interchange’s areas with atomic batteries is a necessary task, but there are still areas further inside that are only necessary in specific ending scenarios.
Atomfall isn’t the kind of game to put 50 to 100 hours into in a single playthrough to get everything done. Even if you try to attempt everything and take it slow, 30 hours still feels like an overestimation. Instead, it’s built to be replayed from different perspectives. Don’t try to see everything in an area in your first playthrough — cut a path through it, choose a lead, follow it to its conclusion, and then start the game again, following a different lead, cutting a different path through the landscape to reach your goal. Again, there’s a reason an achievement is present for finishing the game in under five hours — the developers are trying to tempt you into playing through the entirety of Atomfall in different ways.
For the first few hours of Atomfall, the lack of overt objective might make it seem that this is going to be a slow-paced, lengthy game that will eventually become more tedious than enjoyable. But once you make it through to the end and look back on your adventure, you realize that the pace is entirely dictated by you. How fast you want to push through, how violent you wish to be in combat, which lead you want to follow through on — it’s entirely player-driven, you just need a moment to understand how it all clicks together. The simple design begs to be sprinted through, cricket bat in hand, enjoying the English countryside in all its glory.
