Atomfall art director breaks down the survival game's condensed Lake District setting: 'It wasn't so much about how far you travel, but how many things you see along the way'

Upcoming first-person open-world survival game Atomfall seems like a big departure for developer Rebellion, which is most well-known for its more linear third-person shooter franchises Sniper Elite and Zombie Army. It’s been described by some as the studio’s take on Fallout, primarily thanks to its retrofuturistic 1960s setting. But, having gone hands-on with the game for almost three hours at a preview event, its combination of free-form exploration and frantic combat reminded me most of Far Cry.

I dived into a save file set a few hours into the game and, armed with a decent arsenal of starting gear, spent most of my time roaming around the English countryside soaking in the sights and beating local bandits to a pulp with everything from crude farmer’s knives to dented cricket bats and even the odd rusty axe. The melee combat feels satisfyingly meaty, but I also experimented with a decent range of firearms and a surprisingly effective wooden bow that had me landing headshots left, right, and center like some kind of lethal Robin Hood wannabe.

This is the area where the studio’s shooter heritage seems most apparent, as ranged weapons not only look the part thanks to authentic levels of grime and smooth animations but also handle with just the right degree of realism. While I didn’t walk away completely sold on everything that I saw, especially when it comes to the presentation of the story, it’s clear that your encounters with enemies are going to be a highlight.

Pick your gear

“We want players to have a dynamic experience where they're not just tackling things with a single-minded approach,” explained Atomfall art director Ryan Greene ahead of my play session. “We want them to be making those difficult choices and using tactics and not just say ‘I'll get the best gun, I'm going to win just by using this one gun.’ We want you to juggle your inventory a little bit, approach problems with some thought. That's the ideal way we'd have people play it.”

Although I never personally struggled to find ammunition or fresh firearms littered throughout the abandoned buildings and military outposts of the portion of the map I explored, going in guns blazing was often far from the best approach. Stealth was viable and effective, allowing me to pick off the most heavily armed ranged enemies in silence before starting a louder close-quarters fight with any leftover melee goons.

You also don’t find much in the way of automatic weapons, which forces you to work around the limitations of slower bolt action rifles or unwieldy first-world war revolvers more often than not. “We looked at what was suitable in a British 1950/1960s era,” said Greene.

“You'll find a lot of shotguns, it makes sense for someone out there to have that. There's a military in the area, so might you find a few of their guns that are era-appropriate? Sure. But then you might just be local and not have any of those things. So what do you use? A cricket bat works just great. There are woods up there, so hatchets, axes, whatever, lots of different things.”

Scavenged resources can also be combined into powerful Molotov cocktails, bombs, and traps if you manage to find the prerequisite recipes, giving you no shortage of deadly tools to play around with. Training manuals are hidden throughout the world too, unlocking buffs and abilities to further complement your desired playstyle.

Stranger than fiction

As a survival game, Atomfall is going to launch with competition. Titans like Rust and Valheim continue to dominate the Steam charts on PC, while the unique premise of games like Palworld has helped the genre make waves on console. As such, I was particularly keen to find out what Greene thought would help set Atomfall apart.

“How many games do you see that are set in the Lake District?” he quickly replied. “We wanted to lean into the Britishness a lot, which is kind of funny, me being American. The Lake District, I didn't even know it was a thing and then I moved over here and learned about it, and I thought, ‘wow, this is really distinct and special and different’.” On top of this, Greene argued that the game will “then really lean into a lot of older British traditions, and weave those through the backstory and some of the groups that you might encounter.”

Atomfall is also rather unique in the fact that its premise is founded in a real-world historical event, a disastrous fire at the Windscale nuclear site in 1957 that remains the UK’s most severe nuclear accident to date. “I think the Windscale incident was the jumping off point and it’s funny that most people don't know about it. Especially internationally, no one knows about it, and we're playing with that. ‘Why did the government not want people to know about it?’ That became the starting point for what could be a cover up and hiding the truth of what happened.”

Atomfall still features many fictionalized elements. It’s set in the area around the fictitious village of Wyndham, which has been sealed off in an imagined quarantine. Futuristic robots patrol the village streets and the nearby woods are filled with desperate bandits and rabid cultists. According to Greene, the main inspirations were “a lot of old science fiction things like John Wyndham books,” with the famous novelist presumably doubling as the origin of the village’s name.

“There's old Doctor Who, that class of British sci-fi, and then also British history, like older, darker, more historic things. You might see that some of our bandits look a little bit like Morris dancers. You might see some cultists out in the woods really look like a lot of pagan groups might have.”

Take a hike

While the real Lake District may span thousands of square kilometers, these fantastical elements gave the team plenty of control over the layout of the map, which is divided into modestly sized zones. “We really wanted a density of play. It wasn't so much about how far you travel, but how many things you see along the way,” Greene explained.

“Obviously, if you could space them closer together, you're gonna not hit those boring parts where you're just walking through the woods doing nothing for a long stretch of time. We always want to make sure something's within sight that intrigues you a little bit and encourages you to poke around and discover what's happening in the mystery, in the story, and find the good stuff, find the loot.”

It’s this latter element, the story, which left me most worried, however. Atomfall doesn’t really feature a story in the traditional sense, instead leaving you to gain an understanding of events from the world. “You can do things in any order you want to. We don't have a true quest system, where you're doing option one then option two then option three,” said Greene. “It's really just interconnected stories and however you want to piece it together, which, as a developer, makes it challenging because you can get yourself into a very difficult situation pretty quickly if you don't plan for it.”

As a result, much of my playtime felt directionless, with me walking between various landmarks hoping to bump into a friendly non-player character (NPC) willing to give me a task. It’s difficult to tell whether this feeling was caused by the fact that I was playing a partially complete save file, however, so I’m keeping an open mind until the full release.

Playing on a powerful PC, Atomfall looked absolutely stunning too - with some of the most lifelike textures that I’ve ever seen. While I’m optimistic that the experience on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles will be similar, this is also a game that’s coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Regarding those less powerful systems, Greene assured me that “there are some concerns, but [the team] didn't have to make too many compromises” to get things running smoothly.

“We went at it with a pretty optimized approach and that made it very comfortable for the newer consoles, but still pretty functional on the older ones," he continued. “It's always tricky balancing those, but I think we've done it pretty successfully and I think whether you've got a bleeding edge bit of hardware, or something a little bit older, you're going to have a good experience, and it's going to play well and look great.”

This is certainly promising, but we’ll have to wait until Atomfall launches for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One on March 27, 2025, to see how each version measures up.

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