UN-UNITED KINGDOM

ATOMFALL is a muddled misadventure in need of a stronger identity.

- By Fraser Brown

I've spent years wandering many an inhospitable wasteland, so Atomfall's pleasant post-apocalypse is pretty inviting. They've got tea here. And bakeries. And it's extremely green—not because of radiation storms, but because it's all pastures and woods and verdant hills as far as the eye can see. It'd be a nice place for a hike, if it weren't for the fire-spewing robots, lethal flora, bandits, cultists, and conspiracies.

With its '50s-inspired retro-futuristic setting, Atomfall has needed to contend with the spectre of Fallout since it was first unveiled, but the similarities are only surface deep. That shallowness is probably Atomfall's defining feature: it's chock full of systems and obvious inspirations, but it rarely digs into them and struggles to set itself apart.

I enjoyed rooting around, trying to understand this weird place

It flirts with Fallout, STALKER, RPGs, survival games and all sorts of different systems, and it pulls you in lots of different directions. They all end in one place, though: escape. You're stuck in this picturesque prison, trapped by a quarantine that's already in its fifth year. Inspired by the real Windscale fire—a 1957 nuclear disaster in what is now Cumbria, England—Rebellion swaps radiation for a sci-fi MacGuffin and a potentially fatal cover up. And of course, only an amnesiac without a personality can find a way out.

Meandering is how I'd have to describe the road to freedom. Finding the right people to help you escape, and completing the tasks they set you, will see you wander across five areas, including an underground facility, all the while filling in blanks and connecting loose threads.