A FAMILIAR FEAR

I HAD not been playing Atomfall for long before I encountered my first Scouser.

- CHERYL MULLIN

To say hearing my home accent jolted me out of the game would be an understatement, as the feisty 'Wyndham native' took issue with being removed from her home by a Protocol soldier.

It won't be the last Scouse accent I hear in this game, and it makes me love it all the more.

Atomfall's been dubbed the British Fallout, but nuclear disasters aside, they have very little in common. You'll soon discover this is a game deeply rooted in British horror and sci-fi, with nods and winks to delight fellow genre nerds like myself.

Set in an alternative 1960s Britain, much of the Lake District has been covered in radioactive fallout after the 1957 Windscale (now known as Sellafield) fire.

Waking in a bunker with no memory of how you got there, you're confronted by the terrifying vision of a worker in a contamination suit who is gravely injured but holds your only means of escape.

It's also your first chance to decide tactics for the game - do you help the dying scientist who, in his gratitude, will give you the keycard you need to leave, or do you smash him over the head and steal it?