Preview: Atomfall Teases Mysteries and Mechanics Worth Exploring
Combat qualms aside, Atomfall’s minimal direction, RPG systems, and unconventionally beautiful apocalypse tangle into a tantalizing enigma we can’t wait to unravel.
Posted 2 months ago
“Oberon must die.” That one, morbid statement, delivered enigmatically via an isolated payphone, was all the guidance Atomfall was willing to offer as I ventured into its green and rocky hills. Who or what is Oberon? Was that a directive or a warning? All I know is that it served as a bloody good hook with which to reel me in.
Standing up from a 30-minute hands-on Gamescom session with Rebellion’s new first-person survival-action-RPG, I had far more questions than when I’d sat down. And that, surely, is a good sign for a game that wants us to pick apart its secrets.
It's a lovely landscape, just please don't ask about that ominous glow in the distance.
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Set in the north of England, Atomfall promises a fantastical mystery based on the 1957 Windscale nuclear accident. A touch like Fallout, but trading VATs for cricket bats. What struck me immediately was that the exclusionary zone I’d been thrust into was a beautiful place. Green grass was abundant, drystone walls lined pathways, and waterfalls trickled gently down gray stone.
“We wanted something that was beautiful and interesting and lush,” said Ryan Green, Art Director on Atomfall, in an interview following our playtime. “I moved over from the states – I grew up in California where it’s very hot and dry all the time. And now I’m here and it’s so green, so lush, so distinctive. And we hadn’t seen that, especially from the style of game we’re making. A lot of times post-apocalyptic ones can be very grim.”
Less so welcoming were the first inhabitants I encountered. Ignoring the primary path downhill, I ventured upwards instead, soon running afoul of a group of face-painted bandits. As they turned from scavenging an abandoned military helicopter, it quickly became clear that not all is well with the inhabitants of this locked-off chunk of the Lake District.
Are you sure we can't settle this over a builder's brew?
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Thoughts of being invited in for a cuppa quickly turned to the cricket bat in my hands instead as the group closed in brandishing spiked clubs, knives, truncheons, and even a grenade. Weapons here appear to be whatever folk can find. What few guns I encountered were scarce on ammo, invariably rusted to the brink of failure – though still remarkably deadly.
Fortunately, while Atomfall’s protagonist may be suffering from a bout of amnesia, they’re no slouch in a scrap. The same, sadly, can’t yet be said for the melee combat. Strikes had little heft behind them. Attacks often seemed to swing through enemies, with distance difficult to judge. Enemy AI was also all too easily mislead. It felt like only a moment’s break in vision was enough for them to lose track of my location, or forget I existed entirely. (This was forewarned to us by devs as they sat us down, a peril of putting a game in peoples’ hands while yours are still hard at work under the hood.) Then again, it’s possible the regional disaster had addled this lot’s attention spans. A few bat swings to the head and one friendly-fire incident with said grenade later, and the bunker they’d been guarding was mine to investigate.
Expect to spend plenty of time marking your map in Atomfall.
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Inside lay multiple mysteries, the first of which tried to claw my face off. Atomfall’s not-quite apocalypse is home to nastier things than just outlaws, you see. Upon entering the facility I was beset by a pair of glowing, ghoulish creatures, panickedly expending what precious pistol ammo I had to fend them off. What they were, Atomfall wasn’t willing to share. My prize instead was a note listing a set of coordinates and hinting to buried secrets.
It’s here that the game’s indirect approach to guidance made itself apparent. Your log tracks only the fundamental information; it was left to me to find the position detailed and mark it on my map. It’s an approach true of more narrative quests as well. Heading downhill, I encountered my first friendly face: a shabby figure playing guitar in a ruined hovel. He directed me toward a merchant somewhere to the north. And “somewhere to the north” is about as explicit as the detail in my log got. If you want to find something in Atomfall, you’ll need to put in the leg work. A scratched drawing etched onto your map is about the best you can hope for.
“This mechanic emerged by itself during production,” explained Ben Fisher, Atomfall’s creative director. “You’re never given a quest or told what to do. There’s no golden path, there’s no main quest. As you explore, you’ll discover leads, different pieces of information that you piece together and decide what to pursue or ignore. You’re never told what’s true or what’s a lie. You’re never told who’s a goodie or a baddie or any of that. You’re just uncovering information and piecing it together yourself as part of your exploration.”
Chris' experience: Trading, leads, and death
My combat experience in Atomfall was less successful than Henry’s first round at bat with enemies. I encountered a group that I managed to stealthily pick off one by one up until two thugs wearing cricket pads rounded a corner and saw me strangling their mate. Then, outnumbered and outgunned by a single rusty six-shooter, it took not long at all for me to die. Combat, we were warned, requires a very tactical approach, especially earlier on when you have no gear to get you out of trouble. They were not lying to us.
I then spent the rest of my time investigating leads, such as that village to the North. I found a merchant, willing to offer me a few more morsels of information about the shadowy government scientists experimenting on the anomaly in bunkers in the dales nearby. I also found a unique bartering mechanic, in which items I found or crafted (such as full-heal first aid kits, using bandages and alcohol) could be traded for stock.
A set of scales show in whose favor the trade is weighted until you offer up enough random scrap or useful gear you’re willing to part with, and I managed to negotiate a crafting recipe for a skill tree upgrade. I began investigating the dozens of boons to sneaking and crafting and firearms proficiency in the Skills menu but never discovered which path my new recipe unlocked for me. Unfortunately, a spectral phone began ringing and my time with the demo was over far too soon for my liking, with so much more left to uncover in the mysteries of Atomfall’s valleys.
Back to that figure in the hovel. It was clear in speaking with him that he knew more about the area than he was initially willing to share. Conversation presented several tones of response but no direct indicator of how “well” I was doing at winning him over. I needed to pay attention to his language to determine the appropriate tact. Given his welcoming nature, I opted to respond in kind, a decision that rewarded me with the location of another bunker. It isn’t clear just how differently this conversation could have gone if I’d opted for anger, but Green and Fisher assured me that you could go so far as to kill pretty much any NPC in Atomfall, or alternatively, avoid killing anyone entirely.
Threatening the first friendly face we met didn't seem like a great idea.
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It’s possible that the minimal level of guidance could prove perplexing, perhaps even frustrating. But for now, it had me itching to venture far further. That sense of intrigue led me, near the end of my time, to sneak into a very openly hostile outlaw camp. A covert plan which was going swimmingly right up until a particularly brazen dash tripped a hidden wire, detonating an explosive and pulling a mob of understandably grumpy camp residents in my direction. Cowering in a makeshift barracks, I slotted a scavenged grenade in my hand, readied to pull the pin, and … my time was up.
Bumbling enemies and awkward fights make it clear that, at this stage at least, Atomfall is far from perfect. But just half an hour of wandering through a small chunk of its world led me to enough intriguing systems, narrative threads, and environments to leave me desperate to return. If it can tidy up some its scruffier edges, Atomfall and its Oberon mystery could be one of the most exciting discoveries of 2025.
