It’s safe to say we never thought we’d play a video game inspired by the Windscale disaster.
But earlier this week, we got to do just that, in an exclusive two hour play-through of Atomfall – an upcoming survival-action game with horror elements based in a post-nuclear apocalypse version of Cumbria and the Lake District.
Armed with a (sort of) decent laptop, a dodgy middle-of-Cumbria internet connection, notepad and pen, we started our hands-on demo in a cave, which seemed apt.
You begin by waking up lost, confused, and unable to figure out how or why you’ve ended up in the middle of a strange post-nuclear meltdown version of Cumbria.
Set five years after the 1957 Windscale fire, Atomfall, created by Rebellion, drops you into a worst-case scenario world of militarised quarantine zones, lawless valleys, farmland, fells and unnerving Wickerman-style cult settlements.
It’s a non-linear, first person game, so your goal is to play everyday detective and follow leads rather than quests to figure out what is going on and how you can escape it all.
Emerging from our starting cave, we stumble into Casterfell Woods, one of several places in the game whose place name echoes real life locations from across Cumbria.
While we’re given an initial lead to find a herbalist living in the woods, I’m too entranced by the game’s environment – so I wander off.
If you’ve spent any time out fell walking in the Lake District, you’ll immediately be struck by how weird it is to virtually walk around a high-quality video game version of it.
There’s also a lot of general English countryside inspiration, with red phone boxes randomly calling you to whisper spooky plot-points and randomly placed Cornish pasties for you to eat, but sadly, in our play through, we did not find any Cumberland sausages.
Ben Fisher, head of design at Rebellion and the game’s creative director, says that during the games development, teams found Northern England and Cumbria to be a ‘rich treasure trove’ of cultural reference points that aren’t seen very often in games.
Everything from the trees to the hills, rocks and foliage just feels Cumbrian, but while I’m busy treating the game like a hill-walking simulator, I end up getting attacked and killed by a murderous swarm of blue irradiated hornets.
The game is full of hostile enemies that range from bandits trying to survive to cultists and irradiated zombies, but it does give you every opportunity to strategically avoid these confrontations. Ben says avoiding confrontation is actually encouraged.
Atomfall heavily revolves around survival, so you’re intentionally not an overpowered hero, you’re just a normal person facing scarce resources, which means you have to be tactical to survive.
Once I manage to successfully evade the hornets, I stumble across a dirt road leading to Wyndham, a central quarantine camp that looks visually like a mash up between Ambleside and Windermere.
The quarantine camp/village is all dry-stone walls, quaint pubs, dilapidated churches, hotels and bakeries and it’s full of surviving non-playing characters who shout remarks about not liking people who aren’t local – make of that what you will
Accent wise, it’s a mixed bag. There’s some classic BBC style English speakers, some Yorkshire and generally Northern accents and twice I heard voices that sounded vaguely Cumbrian.
Alongside all that comes the post-apocalyptic military checkpoints, soldiers and stomping robot guards that breathe a lot of immersive life into the game.
As a side note – I actually went to Egremont’s Wyndham School – so to see the name in a virtual world is weirdly amusing.
Wyndham is sat on the edge of a lake and on the other side of that lake sits the Windscale plant – cooling towers, golf ball and all, but with a huge swirling purple vortex coming out of it.
Eventually, we’re told all players do end up in the Windscale plant at some point later in the game, which is very Cumbrian to say the least.
But it’s important to mention that Atomfall doesn’t re-create Cumbria like Grand Theft Auto does with Los Angeles.
Instead, it’s better imagined like Sellafield has been dropped on the edge of Windermere and all the towns and villages have been mashed up into a fantasy version of Cumbria and the Lake District.
It’s almost like being in an apocalyptic Cumbrian fever dream – and after I start to investigate Wyndham, I find myself noticing how much research and detail must have gone into this game.
Wandering into a bakery, I find tiny mentions of Cartmel on old posters on the walls and on the outskirts of the camp, I find a road sign pointing to Kendal, so it’s clear the game will be full of those little details that Cumbrians will overly appreciate.
I almost found myself wishing I had someone to play the demo with just so I could share those ‘look! Cumbrian stuff!’ moments with other people.
There’s so much to explore and do and the world of Atomfall is so expansive that I quickly realise I needed to actually interact with characters and properly play the game before my two hours are up.
So I finally venture off to speak with Mother Jago in Casterfell Woods (the herbalist I was supposed to seek out straight away) who asks me to retrieve a book for her from the druids castle.
You can also choose your dialogue response options – so naturally, I did a lot of curious questioning, as is the nature of us journalists.
She tells me that the druids believe the soil can speak to them and that the Windscale scientists are evil, which does make me laugh.
I end up trespassing in a druids camp which contains a stone circle, explosive booby traps and plenty of Blair Witch-style effigies suspended from trees.
I did find myself fighting some of these druids, who are immediately hostile, and while my internet wasn’t really up to the challenge, I found it easy to get to grips with.
While I didn’t make it to the castle due to time constraints, I did catch a glimpse of the gameplay, and saw a visually striking candlelit hall full of decorated tables complete with half-rotten food and foliage growing across the walls.
So alongside the rolling Lake District hills, are also castles, dungeons, caves, military bases and farms all across the map to explore and at one point I did discover a few neon blue exploding sheep.
If you’re interested in the mechanics of the game, while I’m not a games journalist, all I can say is the combat is accessible to plebs like me with few long-range weapons available and lots of close up melee weapons.
It runs on a bartering system, there’s no currency, and crafting is another big component of the game as well as skill trees, which you can grow for things like stealth.
Lots of people are actively comparing Atomfall to Fallout and while the trailers may hint at it being this way, when playing the game, you realise it’s much more distinctive and exists in a realm of its own, with some influence from games like Skyrim apparent.
When I’m told my two hours of playing the game are up, I’m a little disappointed, it’s so easy to get engrossed in exploring this game that two hours feels more like 20 minutes.
If it’s half as good as what we’ve had the chance to play this week when it’s released – Atomfall is sure to be a lot of fun for us Cumbrians.
Atomfall will be available on Xbox game pass on March 27.
It will also be available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Windows PC and PC via Steam and via the Epic Games Store. It will also be available on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.
