Atomfall review: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bat

Atomfall wears its influences openly, bearing traces big and small of British post-apocalyptic and sci-fi media – The Wicker Man, The Quartermass Experiment and classic Doctor Who.

Its clearest inspirations, however, are the books of John Wyndham, who gives his name to the settlement at the heart of the game.

Everywhere you go, there's an air of Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos about, and Atomfall's own peculiar atmosphere does the great man justice.

The zone is inhabited a combination of rural village folk and religious zealots – almost all of whom are equally hostile to you – and somehow it has fallen to you to discover the secrets at the heart of the disaster.

Once you reach the charming village of Wyndham, you're pointed in the direction of 'The Interchange', a facility seemingly linked to the disaster, and one that the British army would quite like you to stay away from.

The Interchange is, in a sense, how the game's story progresses.

When you first sneak your way in, the entire facility is unpowered, requiring you to locate a battery in its depths to begin booting everything back up, section by section.

It's then time to go out into the world to find more batteries, spurred on by a gravel-voiced stranger who talks to you through the various eerily pristine telephone boxes dotted around the zone.

Atomfall doesn't really have a story to tell, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, the story exists passively, and you decide which parts you want to uncover.

Every time you answer a question about the zone, more pop up. It's a mystery that begs to be investigated, and the only way to do that is through exploration.

Exploration is Atomfall's silver bullet, and the approach that Rebellion has taken with it is as unique as it is effective.

Unlike your typical RPG, Atomfall does not have quests, nor does it have quest markers.

Instead, you have 'leads' and are expected to pick up clues by chatting to people and finding written notes scattered across the zone to progress whichever leads you choose to pursue.

At this point, it's your job to analyse the clues you've picked up and figure out where to go next.

Some clues are fairly straightforward, simply telling you to talk to a certain person or head to specific coordinates. Others are vague and will require some outside-the-box thinking.

You will at times come across a clue that brings two leads together, creating a web of intrigue that involves everyone from the army captain in charge of the village to the outlaws you massacre – essentially, how the game progresses depends entirely on how willing you are to stick your nose where it's not welcome.

Atomfall's map also plays into this quest system excellently. Instead of a giant open world, the exclusion zone is split into several smaller areas.

While this means there's less to explore overall, it does mean that the world is brimming with places of interest.

During my first few hours with the game, I couldn't count the number of times I set off for a specific location, only to stumble upon an overgrown mansion or abandoned bunker before diving into whatever strange goings-on were waiting for me.

This wasn’t helped by how spectacular some of Atomfall's vistas are. Coming up to Casterfell Dam for the first time, it felt less like Fallout: Cumbria, and more like happening upon a medieval fortress in The Elder Scrolls.

The nature of Atomfall's approach to story means you can complete it pretty much as fast as you like.

Want to explore every nook and cranny? You can easily while away 20 plus hours doing so, or even more if you want to see every ending. Conversely, if all you care about is uncovering the game's main conceit, then you can be done in as little as five hours.

But while the exploration is Atomfall's most enjoyable aspect, it also unfortunately leads to its most frustrating.

There is no fast travel in Atomfall. While you might not initially notice this while you're exploring for the first time, you will eventually have to start backtracking to follow new leads, and the more you are forced to backtrack, the more tedious the game begins to feel.

Most of the characters you'll speak to are found in the village, but there are a few others for you to meet out in the wilds, all of whom are a joy to chat to, and very often quite funny too, especially when they lean particularly hard into their over the top Britishisms.

Most areas like beyond the borders of the village will have anywhere from a couple of enemies to an entire camp full of them.

While violence is always an option, Atomfall largely attempts to steer you away from it.

Melee combat is slow and messy, and you can be very easily overwhelmed by even a group of three, especially if any of them are armed with a gun.

You'll find guns of your own on your travels, but ammunition is a scarce resource, so you typically want to avoid firing them if you can.

Similarly, you can craft your own molotovs and grenades, but the resources to craft these are far from plentiful.

The fact that combat is so difficult often means that you need to play more strategically, planning how you approach each fight to minimise the resources you spend – sometimes this involves avoiding a fight entirely.

I do enjoy this methodical approach to combat, and it makes a nice change of pace compared to other RPGs, but I won't pretend there weren't times that I simply wanted to dash in and liquidate druids with my cricket bat.

Having said that, I will concede that Atomfall will let you kill anyone, and I mean anyone.

Another advantage of the game's approach the questing is that the way your leads unfold differ based on your decisions, meaning playthroughs can differ hugely if you go the pacifist route or murder the entire village on day one.

There's a lot to love about Atomfall, but it is abundantly obvious within the first 10 minutes that this game will not be for everyone.

There is a level of friction built into almost every aspect of the game, from the clunky combat and resource management to the lack of quest markers and fast travel.

Even as someone that enjoyed these aspects of the game, they do become grating at times, and the further into the zone I ventured, the less interested I was in pursuing anything other than the main story.

But for those who enjoy a bit of a challenge or are simply in the mood for a bit of mystery and exploration, Atomfall's radical freedom and beautiful setting offer up something one of a kind.

Atomfall launches on 27th March 2025 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. We reviewed on PC.

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