There’s something intriguing about waking up in a post-apocalypse. You find glimpses of the world you know and watch as the street signs, parked cars and people you see daily are somehow changed. It’s no wonder film, literature, and video games have landed in this “What if?” scenario for so many decades. The other side of that irradiated coin is that it’s very easy for a post-apocalypse to feel samey, played out, or like we’ve walked down this bombed-out road before.
That’s why I’m happy to say that Atomfall is one post-apocalypse that has its own voice, feels unique and keeps you going with an incredible approach to quest design. It’s not a long journey, but it’s one that has enough mystery and intrigue that you’re likely to dive back in for another go-around.
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First Steps In The Wasteland
Atomfall takes place in the fallout of the very real Windscale Nuclear Disaster in 1950 England. The difference here is the scientists working at the plant were working on more than a few things that they probably should have left alone. But that’s what scientists in video games do, right?
The overall quest is simple — escape the quarantine zone. Depending on how far you want to delve beyond that, you can spend your time saving or dooming the local populace, joining a cult, or just being a trigger-happy wandering nomad. The main quest took me about 20 hours, all told, and I think you could do it quicker. But the quest design is so open that main quests and side quests blend together seamlessly.
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This wide-open approach to quests is far and beyond the most innovative thing in Atomfall, and I absolutely loved it. Unlike many titles where the books and documents you collect are just set-dressing, here you’re truly rewarded for reading every scrap of paper and understanding the events in the world. You’ll find clues that connect characters together and change the outcome of quests, as well as the overall state of the world.
Following Breadcrumbs
There are elements of choose-your-own-adventure and even hints of Elden Ring in how the game feeds you tidbits and lets you run with them. For example, you might find a bombed-out house with a large underground bunker beneath it. A foreign soldier is trying to repair his radio to reach outside the exclusion zone. If you’d found his comrade’s camp before coming here, he’s more likely to be friendly to you
Your adventure takes place on five overworld maps, each large enough that you’ll spend a few minutes running from one side to another. When you set out on your journey, you’ll have a vague mission to discover what’s going on in the exclusion zone, and the first folks you bump into will likely mistake your head for a cricket ball, but it’s good to get to know the locals.
When I found my way to Wyndham Village, I approached with clear trepidation, and I tiptoed through the gate, watching my back – expecting the soldiers to open fire at any second. This is just one of the NPC groups you’ll get to know in your journey, and depending on the friends you make will determine if these safe spaces stay safe.
If, like me, you follow your nose in open-world games rather than the prescriptive quest markers — then you’ll be right at home in this apocalypse.
Getting To Know The Neighbours
The people of the quarantine zone have been locked in for some five years, and suffice it to say, they’ve survived in one way or another. You’ll see bombed-out cars, looted storefronts, and rolling green pastures dotted with flaming piles of radioactive material.
The key factions are The Protocol soldiers, set to secure the quarantine zone (at all costs). As well as the ordinary, everyday civilians living under The Protocol’s thumb. The Outlaws who decided life is better without all those silly “laws”. The Druids just want to be left alone in the forest, but at the same time, they are building giant wicker men and worshipping a “voice in the soil”. There’s also a smattering of scientists still around and plenty who are technically alive but are one bite away from an HR violation.
Then there’s the mysterious voice on the phone. As you travel around the quarantine zone, you’ll see the classic red phone booths, which could ring as you get closer. The voice on the other end gives cryptic clues as to where you might go next or whether to trust the nice lady living in the forest.
Like so many great pieces of sci-fi, everyone keeps secrets, and plenty of the survivors start out nice, but they harbour deep secrets the further you dig. After all, cryptic voices in phonebooths giving out advice is no basis for a system of government.
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A Spot Of Tea
The flavour of Atomfall is decidedly British. You’ll feel right at home if you’re a fan of Faulty Towers, Doctor Who or Wallace and Gromit. You’ll find Cornish pasties to top up your help, cricket bats as one of the earliest melee weapons, and military soldiers that sound like they’re doing their darndest John Cleese impression.
Similarly, Atomfall is similar to Fallout for sci-fi inspiration, but that connection is only skin deep. The further you delve into the machinations of the game’s factions, the threat of mutation thanks to radiation, and the prevalence of British phone booths —you’ll undoubtedly feel the connection to Doctor Who, Day of the Triffids, or Annihilation shine through.
As for what you’ll be shooting — Atomfall throws a variety of melee and ranged combatants at you, all using the same arsenal of weapons that you have access to. You’ll fight bandits, forest cultists, military and sentry robots to name a few.
Combat is deadly from the get-go and only stays so as the game progresses. You won’t find an inventory system or progression trees to beef up your character here. There are perks to be unlocked, but these are more specific to tools and weapon usage. When you’re charging down a group of bandits in a field or running from an infected scientist — you’d better have your head screwed on, or you might not make it to tea time.
That’s why stealth is going to be your friend in Atomfall.
One Sneaky Geezer
Taking the stealthy approach is easy enough—you’ll find plentiful trees to hide behind, low bushes and tall grasses to hide in, and, of course, all the detritus of a long, dilapidated society. The AI aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, however. You’ll often find them walking right past you, crouching in a slim bush with all the masking power of flywire. But we’ll chalk this up to radiation poisoning and move on.
Since Atomfall is the most recent outing from the Sniper Elite devs, I hoped rifles would be the easy standouts of the combat arsenal. Sniper Elite is a long-running guilty pleasure for me, and I hoped to see some semblance of the X-Ray Shots that are so often replicated by other devs. No such luck unfortunately.
However, I quickly fell into step with the bow as the only ranged stealth option. It has a satisfying and consistent draw, and getting stealthy headshots from the bushes is quite intuitive whenever you want to kick off a fight.
Your unnamed protagonist is definitely more of an everyman than a brilliant tactician or soldier, and that comes through in the combat. They don’t slide into cover like a Farcry protagonist or dual-wield like Max Payne. And a bullet to the head or blast from a flamethrower will put you straight into the ground.
That being said, the other guns feel great but can be a bit one-note. The kickback and feeling of these weapons are spot on but lack a bit of variety. I didn’t feel like a battle rifle was all that different to an SMG. And at close range, shotguns and pistols felt about as effective as one another. I would have loved a bit of a crafting system or some basic weapons mods, sights or the ability to make my weapons my own. But as it stands, once I’d filled my four quick weapon slots, I didn’t really change those weapons out at all.
Mind The Gap
Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine at the end of the irradiated rainbow — I encountered a few issues that really caused problems in my playthrough. The most glaring was a few crashes that meant I had to reload from an earlier save. These almost always happened at the end of quests or going to speak to NPCs. Hopefully, these will be ironed out with patches.
The biggest kicker, though, was about halfway through my playthrough. I’d been chasing down leads with the Cultists and heading into the bowels of The Interchange with a tonic that allowed me to resist the radioactive corruption that filled the area. However, right near the end of this glowing dungeon delve was a gap you had to squeeze through, overflowing with blue iridescent plants. With the tonic, I could make it through easily to the other side, complete my objective and start making my way topside.
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Unfortunately, the tonic ran out, and I hadn’t any more in my inventory. I could have squeezed through the gap and survived on a sliver of health if I had the healing items, but the journey down had tapped my stocks completely. Suffice to say, I spent close to an hour scouring every corner of the cave for healing items and came up short. To add insult to injury, the default autosave is set to every 3 minutes, which makes sense for a difficult dungeon run. But for me, it meant all my autosaves were on this side of the corruption, and my last manual save was four hours earlier. I’ll revisit that questline in the future, but for now, that’ll just be an unanswered question.
It’s also very strange in this day and age (2025, not the 1950s) to have large open maps but no option to fast travel back and forth. I know the idea is to uncover quests and leads while you’re travelling. But towards the end of the campaign, when you know the map pretty well and have to travel back and forth to check in with NPCs, I’d like the option to streamline that.
I Love The Smell Of Radiation In The Morning
From the War of the Worlds to the Day of the Triffids, Doctor Who and The Island of Doctor Moreau – British sci-fi has an incredible collection of worlds to wade step by perilous step into. It’s a wonder then that videogame sci-fi has often landed farther afield than this side of the pond.
Atomfall is a great glimpse into British sci-fi, it tells a compelling story through an amazing quest system that kept me teasing at threads of the story.
Despite a few hiccups along the way, I’ll happily dive into the quarantine zone for another go around, if only to see what happens if I side with those crazy Cultists.
Quest Daily Scores Atomfall:
8/10
Atomfall is available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
A review copy of Atomfall was provided to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
