For seven years now, British developer Rebellion has honed and enhanced its craft on iterative sequels. A second Evil Genius, a fourth Zombie Army, a fifth Sniper Elite — all perfectly good to great games in their own right, but based on an already fine-tuned formula. Atomfall, then, the studio’s first new IP since Strange Brigade, represents an eye-catching break from that norm.
With shades of Disco Elysium and immersive sims like Deus Ex and PREY, the team has swapped straightforward action for mystery and suspense. It’s about meddling in places you don’t belong, working for and against people to get what you want, and finding a way out of an English quarantine zone. It’s a concept so well executed that Atomfall clears Rebellion’s past efforts to become its greatest achievement to date.
Set in the picturesque Lake District of northern England, the village of Wyndham and its surroundings have been closed off from the outside world for five years. The game uses the real-life Windscale nuclear disaster and creates an alternate timeline where the once peaceful countryside surrounding the plant never recovered. The village now finds itself under government control, with robots patrolling the streets and violent, extreme clans hunting anyone not wearing their colours outside of its walls.
You wake up one day in a bunker inside the quarantine zone with the most candid of objectives: escape. As we all know, however, it’s never that simple. Conspiracy theories and rumours are rife throughout the village, and you must separate fact from fiction in order to fashion a reliable getaway. The magic of Atomfall is there’s no guarantee your discoveries will even lead to anything of note — deadends are common and false hope is frequent. As such, the experience becomes one you’ll want to poke and prod to see how it reacts back (and potentially reload a save), always in doubt over whether you’ve been manipulated into taking the wrong path.
The title presents this investigation to you in the form of Leads, which are a replacement for the traditional RPG quests system. Instead of markers automatically littering a map, you’ll talk to people and find notes that reveal more about the world as you go along. These clues are then documented and grouped together so you can explore an overall theory of escape rather than completing a singular objective in isolation.
Locations will be marked on your map based on the evidence you find, opening up more places to pursue the rumour and work out whether it’s a viable way to leave the quarantine zone or not. There are just as many ways to break free and finish the game as there are not, making the experience ripe for replay to see what opportunities you missed the first time.
Tying all these inquiries together is a gameplay loop of exploring, talking, crafting, and the occasional shooting. The game adopts an open zone structure, with Wyndham Village at its centre and a handful of different areas surrounding it, all accessed through short load screens. Inside its walls, Wyndham prioritises the investigation through character interactions and sneaking past guards. Outside of them, killing cult members — either with a gun or melee weapons — replaces any introductory pleasantries.
You must scavenge for supplies, resources, and ammo to survive out in the wild, but there’s more than enough to go around. While it’s been advertised as a “survival-action game”, the crafting system is the only mechanic that comes close to something you’d expect of a survival experience. You don’t need to manage any hunger, thirst, or sleep meters — there’s nothing close to that in Atomfall. And even then, we were never low on healing items or bullets, allowing us complete freedom in how we approached any situation.
This is, for all intents and purposes, a traditional action game when you decide to fight back against the cults — but it’s also where the experience slips somewhat. The melee combat and gunplay are both a little clunky, with disappointing hit feedback that makes swinging the likes of cricket bats and knives particularly unfulfilling.
There’s also a stealth system and a simple trespassing mechanic for places you’re not supposed to be in, alerting nearby enemies when you’re spotted. Both feel tacked on, however. Despite it clearly not being the main focus of the game, you engage in combat often enough for it to take away from the overall experience. Atomfall is far and away at its best when you’re pursuing Leads through conversation and espionage as the countryside’s James Bond, not bashing an enemy’s head in with a cricket bat.
Rebellion at least does a fantastic job of ensuring you’re engaging with the former as much as possible thanks to a wonderful recreation of a typical, quaint English village. Hailing from the UK, we immediately fell in love with Wyndham and its dry stone walls, pub, and the same style of village hall with a stage everywhere seems to have.
Complementing the setting is social and political commentary played over loudspeakers throughout Wyndham that makes fun of various British stereotypes and themes, including Conservative slogans from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the magic will be lost on players from outside of the UK. However, for anyone who can identify with that small-town nature where everyone knows each other, and local gossip and grudges are the talk of the place, then Wyndham proves a special setting.
On the PS5 Pro at least, it all runs excellently too. Save for a rogue audio cutout issue, the game performs at a very smooth 60 frames-per-second with decent visuals to match. Wyndham looks lovely despite the ruins around its perimeter, and the surrounding zones are just as much of a treat to explore with interesting landmarks and enticing underground areas.
Conclusion
Atomfall commits to embodying everything it means to be British, and it comes out the other side all the better for it. The mystery at the heart of the alternate 1960s setting is gripping, forever teasing clues and solutions to a way out of its rural quarantine zone. Its combat systems and mechanics let the experience down, but Rebellion’s latest peaks when it makes you the countryside’s Inspector Gadget with a bunch of Leads to pursue and villagefolk to suspect.
