Atomfall Review (PS5) – Fancy a Post-Apocalyptic Holiday?

Go to Northern England’s Lake District and you’ll find no shortage of picturesque views. You’ll also find a nuclear site, the source of a disaster in 1957. Thankfully, it was contained, and you can still enjoy the scenic sights. But what if it wasn’t? Atomfall explores an alternate history where things went very wrong. In this action survival game, secrets abound. And it’s up to you to decide whether to search them out or get out while you can.

Game Name: Atomfall
Platforms: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Publisher: Rebellion Developments
Release Date: March 27th, 2025
Price: $59.99 (PS and Xbox), $49.99 (PC)

Atomfall begins with a snap bang of an opening, with an injured scientist barging into the room your character has woken up in. Right from the get go, you have the option to help or let him fend for himself. The first-person game is all about player choice and customization. Even before the game properly begins, it gives you the option to customize your playstyle. Atomfall has five preset options from the menu balancing combat with exploration, and you can even customize your own down to every little detail.

Despite this engaging opening, Atomfall doesn’t have a true inciting incident. Once you leave the bunker, the game suggests you check out a place called “The Interchange.” But there isn’t really any pressing reason to go there. For a while, Atomfall’s narrative takes a passive role. You know that there was a disaster five years ago and the area has been quarantined off. The game tasks you with finding atomic batteries which you need to power the Interchange. Perhaps, I dunno, you should just explore instead?

Exploring Atomfall

And once you start exploring on your own, the game really gets going. Mysterious phones ring, scientific anomalies occur, bodies pile up, cultists appear, an authoritarian military tries to take over, and all before teatime. By this point you realize, Atomfall is less interested in its own story and more interested in the one you want to uncover for yourself. Roam the British countryside and you’ll surely stumble upon something of intrigue.

The world of Atomfall is vast, with four large areas to pour over. The open-ended story works well with other aspects of gameplay. Survival is key, so players want to constantly scavenge for items they can use or barter away. This creates a satisfying gameplay loop where you see a location, check it out for supplies, and then have a potential surprise of a storyline you can follow. Or something nasty.

You never know what you’ll find poking around in dark and dingy places. Early on I delved into a bunker, figuring, surely nothing intense would happen this soon? The blood-hungry mutants said otherwise. Later on I came upon a creepy basement. Right when I resigned myself to getting chopped up by some axe murderer, instead a strange Russian man popped out to ask me if I could fix his radio.

Tracking Down Leads in Atomfall

Atomfall is absolutely one of those games where you set out on one quest and stumble upon ten more before you’ve even finished the first. Except here it’s called following a lead. While similar to a standard quest system, leads have some key differences. Instead of telling you where to go and what to do, a lead will share a rumor or a general vicinity of where to find something or someone.

The lead system proves liberating and only occasionally frustrating. At first I thought “What do you mean, I have to find something on my own?” But when you do a bit of digging (sometimes literally) it can feel greatly satisfying. For example, I only found the entrance to the Interchange after befriending a trader who told me where to look. And I only befriended her after bartering for a metal detector. On an aside, I then used the detector on a nearby cache which led to—you guessed it—another lead. If you get stuck, interacting with your surroundings tends to—here we go—lead somewhere.

But what about when you want to find a particular object for a specific lead? This is where the hands-off lead system gets a bit wobbly. Occasionally the game will task you with finding something small, like a key. Keys are not exactly famous for being large and multi-colored, outside of Kingdom Hearts. This is where customizing the settings to give more of an idea of locations can come in handy.

The Characters of Cumbria

If the main narrative impetus seems flimsy and impersonal, the characters are anything but. To be fair, the main narrative is really a container for the stories you’ll build with the cast. And Atomfall’s eccentric individuals are colorful and mysterious. It’s with them that the true narrative takes hold—or rather the one you want to play in a given route.

As you meet characters and take sides, certain paths open up to you as others close. Unlike games that allow you to take every quest regardless of affiliation, Atomfall encourages repeat playthroughs through tailored experiences. There are three main factions in Atomfall; the scientists, cultists, and military, and even without those factions (and outside them) there are various characters you can choose to prioritize. Rather than each character simply having their own story, they instead play an active role in yours.

While Atomfall has gotten compared to a number of post-apocalyptic games, it has more in common with a choose-your-own-adventure work. I appreciated that Atomfall didn’t lock me into a set route through a single choice but rather naturally built a narrative around my various decisions. Certain characters I got on with better than others, and they ended up playing more of a role in my story as a result.

What’s all this then?

I can now see how Atomfall draws from so many British speculative fiction works like The Prisoner, The Wicker Man, and The Day of the Triffids. All of these works have similar settings (rural post-war England) yet separate genres. There’s spy thriller, folk horror, and science fiction. Atomfall is all of these and more.

The genius behind Atomfall is that it includes several genres but lets you decide which to experience. As such, I took inspiration from another of Atomfall’s inspirations—Doctor Who—for my playthrough. And Atomfall happily provided the kind of tough moral quandaries the show serves up well. Investigating a murder gave me a culprit. Yet I then found that the killing wasn’t as cut and dry as I’d believed. And a severe punishment would have grave societal ramifications. As such, I went a more compassionate route, and Atomfall obliged. It did make me curious about making a more drastic choice. But ah, that’s for another playthrough.

Of Combat and Cricket Bat

Some enemies can’t be reasoned with no matter whose side you’re on. Ammo is in short supply, so guns aren’t always the way to go. And frankly, combat isn’t always the way to go. Enemies are wary of you as well, and will often encourage you to back down from a fight. Stealth is a big friend here. Finding the path of least resistance through a fortified area can take trial and error, but pulling it off can feel rewarding.

That said, if you want to go in swinging, you can go in swinging. Literally. The cricket bat quickly became my favorite weapon. I loved its animation and satisfying “thwack” sound. It’s not great for crowd control but for a lone enemy it’s a fun and nifty novelty.

There are still a number of weapons in the game. At first, they’re few and far between, and survival is tenuous. But once you take down one enemy, you can take their weapon. Yes, Atomfall is a game where enemies actually carry the weapons and ammo you’d expect to find on them. Still, that’s not to say you suddenly become British John Wick.

Keep Calm and Craft On

At its atomic core, Atomfall is a survival game through and through. You only have so many inventory slots, leading you to deliberate between what you really need and want can go in the bin (or storage chute).

There are two ways to alleviate this scarcity problem. One is through crafting, and only crafting what you need. Crafting supplies use their own separate inventory system, so sometimes it’s advantageous to load up on say, cloth and alcohol, rather than carry around a first aid kit.

The other way is through bartering. Atomfall has no true currency system. Rather, characters trade their items for yours. The game weighs them with scales to ensure a good deal. Each character has their own selection of goods. And since some are in very short supply, this actively encouraged me to chat up every trader I could find.

And as you traverse the world looking for leads and scavenging for supplies, Atomfall has a beautifully eerie world to show you. There’s no fast travel, so it helps that the Lake District is so picturesque. And as you explore, the music changes to match the vibes around you. Whenever the ambient music dipped into a minor key, I knew something unsettling was likely just around the corner. And sometimes I saw it and sometimes I missed it. But that didn’t matter, either way I knew I’d come upon some new intriguing event soon enough.

Review Disclosure Statement: Atomfall was provided to us by Rebellion Developments for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.