Atomfall | Review

No Fallout in this Atom

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris March 21, 2025Last Updated: March 25, 2025

1 6 minutes read

Atomfall is an immersive sim set in 1962 Northern England. The Windscale Plant incident is the real-life inspiration for this story of mystery, deceit, and madness. At default, it is a punishingly difficult title, that rewards patience and forethought. This is no “Fallout in England”, it is a survival, crafting, shooter with a focus on detective work, and it’s pretty damned good. A few storytelling foibles held back my enjoyment, so let’s see if it’s worth checking out Day One in Xbox Game Pass.

The Windscale Plant Incident

Back in the early 1960s in England, there was an issue at a nuclear plant that is the inspiration for Atomfall. You will awaken in a bunker outside of the plant with no memory of who you are. As a man in a yellow hazmat suit bleeds to death he helps you escape. Here is your first choice, help him by crafting a bandage and handing it over, or leave him to his own devices.

Those types of choices are the soul of Atomfall. The game is played from the first-person perspective and features plenty of melee combat and shooting if you want. You are often encouraged to avoid violence wherever possible, as the game recommends the 2^nd hardest difficulty with little to no exploration guidance by default. The maps aren’t huge, which is good because there is no fast travel and you’ll crisscross them dozens of times to complete the game’s various quests.

I played through on Hard as the game intended, with no waypoints to guide me, and only a few shots or hits being enough to kill me. As I tried to find out what was going on, and deciding how I wanted to react to it I found an ambitious game with obvious seams. Atomfall isn’t a huge production, and with only a handful of maps, it felt small at first. I completed things in roughly 20 hours, seeing 3 of the 4 endings I could find a path towards.

You can set the game to easier settings for combat and exploration but I wouldn’t recommend it. That sense of terrifying dread as a group of 6 Outlaws walks by is palpable. When I put it on easy for a few minutes I could take them all out with my fists in unison. Keep it on hard and dedicate your hearts to learning the game’s mechanics if you want the most out of this title.

Fisting your foes

Atomfall starts you off with just your dukes and eventually a cricket bat. I avoided combat for a while, searching my surroundings while staying crouched and utilizing tall grass to stay hidden. The game’s stealth mechanics are rudimentary, relying on line of site or using your nameless character’s innate ninja skills inside of the brush.

Despite claims otherwise I eventually found guns, lots of them, and plenty of ammo. The majority of my playthrough was on PC as Xbox code was only available a few days before the review embargo. On hard headshots were still a one-shot kill from mid to close range using the various handguns, shotguns, rifles, bows, and smg’s the game offers.

The “survival crafting” part of Atomfall comes in the way of recipes, which require various items you’ve picked up to build. Some recipes are hidden behind quests, others behind skill upgrades, and most are found out in the world. As you craft various elixirs, grenades, and eventually stronger guns it all became second nature. There is a bartering system instead of a currency one and I found it easy to get what I wanted with it.

While the UI isn’t the slickest its utilitarian design worked well on a mouse and keyboard and decently enough on controller. One thing I could never find a way to craft was ammunition, though even after scouring the map I still had multiple skill books left undiscovered.

Sneaking and Skilling

Those skill books are also a mix of quest rewards or can be found out in the world. To unlock specific skills, like deeper pockets or better gun control you’ll need to find the skill stimulants scattered everywhere. Those too come from quests and are routinely the best reward to get from side missions.

I found a stealth skill book early on and made sure to take quieter movement first, as it’s the best skill in the game. You’ll want to sneak as often as possible early on when ammo is more limited. There’s food to eat, bandages to craft, and med kits to find to heal up your wounds. All of this is in service of your detective skills, not the characters but yours as a human.

Quickly you’ll unlock or buy a few gadgets. There is a torch (flashlight) which I never used. Second was a metal detector which can find various goodies hidden throughout levels. Last was a late-game item that did a bit of Metroidvania as previously inaccessible areas were now able to be visited.

On hard difficulty, the most the game gives you is a spot on a map and vague instructions on what to do there for quests. If you get stuck or bored you can change that at any time to get a waypoint but it killed the title for me. This game was clearly developed around this system and it was one of the first I’d found myself taking mental notes for in a while.

The biggest part of the quest system is your choices. You can kill any NPC at any time, ending their questline entirely if you’d like. Do you go in guns blazing on an objective and piss off an entire settlement or try and find ways to get them to like you so that you can walk into their base without issue? At first, I was pure stealth, then a bit of violence, before realizing how important currying favor was.

Instead of having to break into a prison camp I did a job for the leader and was allowed the run of the place. I still used it to wreak havoc and therein is one of the game’s weaknesses, at least for me. I could kill hundreds of a particular faction and it wouldn’t change any hidden or otherwise knowable standing. The only action that seemed to fully turn them against you was straight-up murdering their leader. It broke the illusion a little bit as otherwise Atomfall is excellent at the illusion of being bigger and grander than it actually is.

Yer a bonny lass

Rebellion uses an in-house engine for the Sniper Elite games and I would imagine it’s the same here. The title is cross-gen, still releasing on Xbox One and PS4. It looked good on my PC, running at a locked 120fps at 4k resolution. It’s not the prettiest title early on, but some of the later areas look fantastic thanks to a shift in art design.

On Xbox Series X the title looked and ran well framerate-wise, outside of the numerous crashes. I don’t mean one or two, it crashed at least 5 times on me in a handful of hours while checking out the port. There’s something odd as well with the Xbox Series version being 30 GB large while the PC port is over 60 GB.

I’m not sure if there will be a patch before launch, but here’s hoping as the game’s autosave system isn’t enough to keep the frustration down on console. When it does work, and that was the entire time on PC, it’s an enjoyable audio and visual experience. Music is rare, mostly kicking in during combat. It’s just you, the sounds of nature, and the same handful of enemy voice lines for most of your playthrough.

The voice acting during dialogue with NPCs is solid. There are no direct cutscenes, everything is in game with you having choices to make on how you choose to respond. Also, saving the game and straight up killing someone to see if they have anything useful on them is a sneaky way to know if their side quest might be worth doing. Often the item on their person is the one they’ll hand over to you.

Outside of the crashes I ran into on Xbox I also had the game break on me twice, both at the very end. I won’t say exactly what was happening but once I triggered an ending and… nothing happened. A quick reload and try again had it work, though. The other time was when the game told me to go to an area for a quest but the NPC I needed to talk to wasn’t there. I went back to where they normally were and found them, triggered the event, and had to walk all the way back to the quest marker for things to go through.

Wrapping Things Up

Atomfall is best when it’s difficult. While I had a few issues with the story, my main concern is the crashing I experienced on Xbox. If that is smoothed out this one is an easy recommendation for those with patience. It can be brutal, but it’s oddly endearing and full of intrigue that’s well worth downloading via Game Pass and is part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program.

I got an update post writing this review and doing the video, turn off spatial audio on console and you should not crash anymore. This is set for a fix “soon” post launch.