by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $13.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
Quintessentially British, undeniably engaging and very quirky …
When it comes to post-apocalyptic games, the settings tend to skew either American or Australian. The former because of the dramatic irony of a once proud empire brought low and the latter because George Miller is a motherflippin’ genius and everyone wants to copy Mad Max. You know what land mass doesn’t get much of a look-in these days? The United Kingdom, which is ironic because the bloody place looks pretty post-apocalyptic right now! Atomfall seeks to address this omission and does so to mostly positive effect.
Atomfall is the story of a user-controlled amnesiac protagonist who wakes up in an alternate history Northern England where the Windscale disaster has turned the place into a radioactive quarantine zone. After a very brief tutorial, you’re shoved out of a bunker and into the game proper, with limited weaponry and no idea of what you’re meant to do. So, you pick a direction and wander and let fate take care of the rest.Although in initial gameplay videos Atomfall looked like “Fallout but with Poms”, the end result is very different. It’s pitched more as a quasi-survival game, with players having to scavenge for scraps, barter for weapons and goods and craft health items and the like. The story is threadbare and is pretty much up to the player to piece together, with various conversations activating “leads” that give you a vague next direction to go in, but little in the way of map markers or specific instructions. It’s a gameplay model that can be best described as ‘interesting’. It’s certainly an intriguing method of story exploration, one that steadfastly refuses to hold your hand, but it does make the experience feel a little disjointed in terms of the yarn being spun.
Combat is simple but effective with enemies that go down in a few wallops (or bullets or arrows), but the catch is that you’re spongy as hell too, meaning you’ve got to be a little more strategic in the battles that you engage with and the ones you avoid. However, Atomfall’s tone is its biggest selling point, feeling like a mash-up of Day of the Triffids, the Quatermass movies, ‘70s Doctor Who and even a touch of The Wicker Man at times. It’s a heady stew of influences and if you’re attuned to this sort of vibe, you’ll likely overlook some of the ropier aspects of this distinctly AA game.
Atomfall isn’t perfect. It’s short, a bit rough around the edges and the storytelling doesn’t always work. However, in a sea of generic, bloated games, Atomfall stands tall as something a bit original and a lot odd. Quintessentially British, undeniably engaging and very quirky, Atomfall is an odd duck but for the right crowd it will go down like a piping hot cup of tea.
