Atomfall is an action game played from a first-person perspective. Set in an alternate history in which the 1957 Windscale fire rendered much of the Lake District, Cumbria in radioactive fallout. Players can collect various resources and scraps to craft weapons, or use firearms to defeat enemies, though ammunitions are scarce in the game. While Atomfall is billed as a survival game, players only need to manage the player character's health and heart rate. Combat, sprinting and kicking enemies will increase the protagonist's heart rate, resulting in darkened vision and muffled hearing.[1] Stealth tactics can also be used, and the game can be completed without killing any enemy.[2] Killing all characters in the game is also an option.[3]
The British countryside of the Lake District is a series of interconnected areas which can be freely explored by the player.[3] Players must interact with other non-playable characters and select dialogue options as responses. Players will eventually acquire leads which will lead to new objectives and opportunities. Players can pursue these objectives in any order after they are unlocked.[2]
Premise
The protagonist, an unidentified amnesic, must explore a quarantine zone established in the Lake District, Northern England five years after the Windscale nuclear disaster to uncover what had happened in the area.[4] Players will have to fight against mutated creatures, cult members, rogue military agents, and robots created by the British Atomic Research Division.
Development
Atomfall is currently being developed by British developer Rebellion Developments. The game was inspired by Fallout: New Vegas, which was described by Ben Fisher, associate head of design at Rebellion, as a "dense" experience and one that valued player choice. Instead of building a single large open world area, Rebellion opted to build several smaller but interconnected zones due to the team's expertise in crafting maps of similar size, having worked on the Sniper Elite series for decades.[3]Metro and BioShock also influenced the game design.[5] However, unlike these games, investigative gameplay was prioritized by Rebellion in an attempt to promote players' freedom and facilitate world-building.[6]
