Atomfall is a very British take on Stalker, where you explore a post-disaster Cumberland with a cricket bat

GamesFPSAtomfallAtomfall is a very British take on Stalker, where you explore a post-disaster Cumberland with a cricket batWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Rebellion)

Atomfall Gamescom screenshots

It’s a sunny day in the Lake District, and I’m bludgeoning a man to death with a cricket bat. Welcome to 1960s Cumberland, where the locals are hostile and the nuclear power station is pouring out ethereal pillars of mysterious energy.

(Image credit: Rebellion)

Atomfall Gamescom screenshots

When Windscale—later renamed to Sellafield—actually caught fire in 1957, Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government downplayed the incident, heavily redacting reports for fear of damaging the public’s confidence in nuclear power. For Atomfall, Rebellion is taking that conceit and running with it. What else was the government covering up? Exploring the hills I find a bunker, abandoned except for the feral ghoul-like creature that instantly attacks upon my entry. So there’s a little bit of Fallout here too.

These little mysteries are laced through my time with the demo, and they’re the main thing that have me excited for the game’s release next year. It opens on a ringing phone box. I answer, and a distorted voice informs me that “Oberon must die”. When I talk to someone, or find a particularly interesting note, I’m not given a quest, but rather a “lead”—a breadcrumb trail leading to the secrets of this setting. This is the good stuff—scavenging through a valley, poking around abandoned bunkers and finding clues that point tosomewhereon the map. Teasing out mysteries that lead to conspiracies and unexplained phenomena and weird sci-fi nonsense.

(Image credit: Rebellion)

Atomfall Gamescom screenshots

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(Image credit: Rebellion)

Atomfall Gamescom screenshots

There’s a crafting system too, but I don’t get the sense Atomfall is going heavily down the survival route. My recipe list here is basic: I can craft new bandages for recovering after a particularly brutal fight, and molotov cocktails for helping to avoid a future brutal fight. There are a handful of materials I can scavenge from loot caches and outlaw corpses, but—at least based on what I’ve seen—the onus is on making tools that help in combat rather than working through the standard survival crafting tree.

Despite my lingering uncertainty around combat, the Atomfall demo was one of the highlights of my time at Gamescom. And sure, some of that was because I spent a few years living in the Lake District—I am being very catered to here. But on a broader level, it’s an interesting direction for a Stalker-esque FPS to take. It’s bright and vibrant, a surface level idyll that promises something darker and more mysterious beneath the surface. And I’m fully prepared to haphazardly battle my way through hordes of deranged locals, cricket bat in hand, in order to get at it.

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