izigame.me

Atomfall sets itself apart from Rebellion’s usual catalog by dropping you straight into an unknown, hostile world. If that sounds familiar, it should but what makes it stand out is how it handles player choice. When dealing with the Quarantine Zone, your options boil down to the classic "Embrace it, nuke it, or fuck it." Yet, no matter what you'd pick, the goal remains the same: escape.
Rebellion markets the game as a ''Survival-action'' and I don't usually suspect the dev tags. At first where I thought it would be something more akin to We Happy Few it turned out to be a sandbox action-adventure and while it's great at that most of the ingame systems are rather shallow (nevertheless still fun). The internet had the game wear its Fallout and STALKER inspirations proudly, but its real charm lies in clue hunting and open-ended problem-solving. It's more Chernobylite but even more open-ended where you piece together the story bit by bit and tackle obstacles your own way. If you love unraveling mysteries at your own pace, this is your jam. Better yet, you can finish the game however you want. That may mean doing almost everything or skipping a large portion of the game.

It still is a compact experience. My playthrough took 11 hours (with nearly everything done, minus one questline), and that's with some save-scumming (which is what we all do, right?) You could probably see all of it in under 20 hours. The in-game timer barely clocked 8 hours, though. There’s a speedrun achievement for finishing in under 5 hours, which is already plenty as you can already finish the whole thing under a hour without the much need of a guide. I suspect everything's doable in one playthrough (minus the speedrun, obviously) if you can manage your saves.
The main objective is straightforward: power up the Interchange. You need 4+2 atomic batteries (four for the sectors, two for the finale). At first, that sounds like a tough quest, but it’s not—big bad enemy robots drop them frequently, and once you get a trusty weapon and exploit their weak points (which is disappointingly easy), fights last barely a minute. You can kill traders and loot their batteries if you’re feeling like a good ol' sob. While I appreciate the agency, it somehow makes things feel reductive. Trading is an option and I do love trading and all, but why bother when violence gets the job done faster? Traders mostly reside in isolated places and I didn't face any real repercussions after killing them.
You get four handcrafted maps full of landmarks to explore (have not tried but I suspect you can sequence break). World design is excellent, offering multiple approaches. Questlines usually have more than two solutions (through NPCs or fighting your way in/out or trying to see if there's another area which you could utilize). It lets you mess around and I adore that.
The Interchange however is the highlight, evoking STALKER’s labs with its eerie, curious nature. It has some wings to explore and those were some of the intense moments of the game even if they are mostly optional. You never feel like you’re wasting any time even when you know that the questline you’re currently doing won’t be the one you’ll thrive for in the end.
Inventory space is tight, very tight to the point where you can't even stack items. But in a game this small, it surprisingly works. It forces you to prioritize (to spend them fast above anything else), though you’ll rarely run out of crafting materials if you explore adequately. This is a central core mechanic to STALKER already but in a huge map where you must organize things for over 50 hours is one thing and to do that in Atomfall is completely another. Luckily things are lighter here and not as tedious. There is no fast travel but it's a closed-world which you can sprint in about a few minutes. You tremble, your heart beats like a hammer (not a Metric reference🤞) but you won't stop sprinting! Unlike many of the open-world hugeass games you can sprint as much as you'd like. It's good as I can guarantee you this game is a backtracker's wet dream (isn't really tougher than any avg. survival horror).
Enemies do respawn (except some infected enemies like Thralls in the Interchange I believe), but most threats are trivial once you’re armed. The real danger? Those bullet-sponge Thrall bastards slowly lumbering toward you, everything else is cannon fodder. Unfortunately, the lack of enemy variety doesn't really help it. There are two types of infected, two types of big robots, three factions (Druids/Outlaws/Protocol Soldiers). There are swarm enemies (bugs, bats, rats) which would occasionally show up and don't present any real threat.
ps: You can't side with the Outlaws. They are your typical baddies.
The lack of fast travel combined with respawning enemies though.. It results in something quite unfortunate. That is wanting to skip the enemies if not the entirety of the whole level as you wouldn't want to waste resources (which is far more evident with the enemies like Druids who are easy to kill but doesn't drop bullets and melee is more inconvenient) and/or let them distract you from your objective. I get them wanting the map to be more vivid while also posing a threat but it still ends up being a problem. Respawning enemy patrols are fine but enemy camps should have not been respawned. On top of that, I must reiterate how easy is it to fight. You just sit on your ass and snipe everyone including those damns robots which can melt you in miliseconds if you stick to their asses but can't do shit if you stand still only a few meters away. All of a sudden the game becomes a worse Sniper Elite.
While I loved connecting the dots, the story left me cold. It’s more about the situation than emotional and moral stakes. You get snippets of lore from notes, but the characters’ motivations feel thin. There are six endings, but the finale is chaotic—mostly, once again, a mad sprint through areas you’ve already seen. It's kinda anticlimactic. The characters you’ll be in cahoots with are very stereotypical but that’s what you get with soldiers, scientists, and delusional people, eh?
Combat is serviceable. Early guns feel appropriately weak but never unfair (meaning your bullets don't travel to the fkn moon). Melee is fun but gets overwhelming as you move close to the endgame. You have your kick to stagger enemies and it does put a distance but to close that distance you'd need to play more aggressively which doesn't always work (unless you spam in cycles). Stealth is barebones and that's really it. Yup, this is one of those games where enemies have eyes on their back.
Puzzles could’ve been better, but as an action-adventure game (at the face value), it checks the right boxes. The sandbox elements give you freedom, but the RPG (there are no skill checks etc.) and survival mechanics (don't expect to feel the tension of mitigating hunger, thirst, sleep etc.) are certainly shallow, possibly hurting replay value. I don't insist on replayability but seeing Atomfall is ''done and gone'' suits better anyway.
On the plus side, it’s well-optimized, capturing rural England’s atmosphere nicely. Voice acting is neat, and the customizable difficulty is a standout feature. You can tweak combat, exploration, and survival separately, even being able to adjusting enemy behavior (aggression, accuracy, etc.). Survival settings affect loot scarcity and trading from what I was able to gather, exploration is probably the most important one as it lets you disable navigational hints, waymarks, hell, the whole compass.
Atomfall never digs deep, but it’s a solid experiment which deserves its flowers. At €50, given today’s AA pricing, it’s forgivable enough. If you’re craving a compact, choice-driven adventure with a retro-apocalyptic vibe, it’s worth a look.
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Please take a moment to check out my curator for more in-depth reviews