Atomfall review – Fallout in the Lake District is a fun nuclear disaster
Fallout 5 may be a long time coming but the British-made Atomfall offers an interesting alternative, that has plenty of unique ideas of its own.
Fallout 5 may be a long time coming but the British-made Atomfall offers an interesting alternative, that has plenty of unique ideas of its own.
Given there’s still no clue as to when The Elder Scrolls 6 will be released, it could be the best part of a decade before we see another Fallout game from Bethesda. The logical thing for them to do is get someone else to make a new game but so far there’s been no sign of that, which means the only alternative is to just play the old games again or look for a spiritual successor.
Although it’s not nearly as similar as it first seems, Atomfall is very clearly attempting to fill that gap. The fan-made Fallout: London is a much more literal homage but a lot of the basics in Atomfall are clearly very similar, given it’s a first person action adventure (but pointedly not a role-player) in which you play a hapless survivor emerging from a bunker to discover a world changed by nuclear disaster.
The difference is that Atomfall is set in the UK during the 1950s and the world hasn’t been destroyed. Instead, a portion of Cumbria has been sealed off, following an accident at what is now the Sellafield nuclear processing site. What results is certainly Fallout-esque but while Atomfall is covered in rough edges, the best parts are surprisingly innovative.
The nuclear disaster at the Windscale nuclear power station is a real thing that happened in 1957, except in Atomfall’s version of reality it was considerably more serious. Although one of the key questions of the game’s plot is whether what’s going on is due purely to the meltdown or if it has triggered some other pre-existing danger.
You certainly have no idea when you start the game as, in true Japanese role-playing style, you wake up with amnesia and have no clue who you are or what’s going on. In the first moments, a badly injured scientist gives you a hacked key to the door of the bunker you’re in, which he promises will open up a much larger complex called the Interchange.
Gaining full access to and reactivating the Interchange is implied to be your overall goal but Atomfall is surprisingly ambiguous as to what you need to do or how you should go about it. This is not a negative but one of the best things about the game.
Atomfall is much closer to Zelda: Breath Of The Wild than it is Fallout, or an even more extreme example like Red Dead Redemption 2 – where every interaction necessary to complete a mission is spelled out for you in patronising detail. Instead, you’re merely given suggestions, including by a mysterious ‘operator’ that keeps ringing you from red telephone boxes when you pass them by.
You’re told to go to a map location and maybe you’ll find the battery you’ll need somewhere near, or to seek out a trader who lives vaguely to the north of your current location. The lack of handholding may irritate some but if you want to take the quickest route through the game it’s all pretty clear and probably won’t take you more than a dozen hours (which could itself be considered a positive, given how frequent 60+ hour epics are getting nowadays).
The most interesting way to play the game is by exploring on your own and stumbling on new locations and characters organically. This often results in what are technically side quests, but you slowly begin to realise – especially if you replay the game, in an attempt to get a different ending – that there’s multiple different ways to approach each problem, both physically and morally.
For example, the scientist at the start of the game wants you to make him a bandage, in what is a thinly disguised crafting tutorial, but you could just kill him and take his key without it being given to you as reward. The game has a Fallout style dialogue system and it’s entirely up to you how you treat people, as you deal with ordinary villagers, the increasingly unhinged military authorities, and a group of Wicker Man style druids.
You can simply kill people if they have something you want but you can also betray their confidence if you feel it suits your needs… or they deserve it. Atomfall isn’t all that impressive in its opening hours but the more you get into it the more you realise that that there’s not only multiple ways to complete a goal but more than one way to get sucked into that element of the story. This becomes particularly obvious towards the end of the game, when you realise how cleverly the game is juggling the various characters and your interactions with them.
The village of Wyndham is very on the nose with its references (Rebellion)All this works great, along with other unusual ideas like a barter system instead of traditional shops, where you have to swap collected or crafted items to get what you want. You can end up with multiple copies of most crafting recipes and weapons, so you have to consider whether some items are better to trade in rather than actually use.
Where the game struggles is in terms of the action, which is odd because Rebellion’s bread and butter is the Sniper Elite series and yet the stealth in Atomfall is much more rudimentary and the combat barely competent. Which is to say the ranged combat (particularly the bow and arrow) is fine, but the melee action is clunky, repetitive, and ruined further by rudimentary AI.
The lack of fast travel is also irritating, especially as there’s a lot of backtracking involved. It’s probably because the game world is actually very small, with four main open world areas that even if they were all put together would still be small compared to most other comparable titles.
Our biggest disappointment with the game though is the script, which gets little value out of the fact that this is a rare big medium budget game set in the UK. The homages to the work of John Wyndham, Nigel Kneale, and other early 20th century British sci-fi writers are mostly superficial, as are the attempts to invoke elements of folk horror – especially given that, although there are sort-of zombies in the game, it never really tries to be scary.
The dialogue and voice-acting is workmanlike at best and if we didn’t know Rebellion were British we’d never have guessed it, given how awkwardly over-the-top all the regional dialects are. Given that, it’s unsurprising that the game doesn’t actually have that much substantial dialogue in it, with the wider plot almost creeping into FromSoftware territory, in terms of what it leaves to your interpretation.
Atomfall is the sort of flawed but interesting game that – more so than the franchises that get them as a matter of routine – desperately needs a sequel, to further explore and refine its various unique ideas. For now, though, it has to be satisfied with being a diamond in the rough, because Atomfall is not just a Fallout surrogate but a genuinely unique open world adventure in its own right.
Atomfall review summaryIn Short: An alternative to Fallout rather than a homage, with a more freeform approach to open world gaming that offers more meaningful freedom than many other bigger budget titles.
Pros: Mission structure is impressively open-ended, while still offering enough handholds for those that want it. Character interactions are equally flexible and the bartering system is interesting.
Cons: The script is weak and the melee combat pretty bad. Lack of fast travel is annoying.
Score: 7/10
Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Rebellion
Developer: Rebellion
Release Date: 27th March 2025
Age Rating: 18
*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one
The metal detector is usually part of a larger puzzle (Rebellion)Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
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