Atomfall featuring a post-apocalyptic Lake District(Rebellion)Rebellions new post-apocalyptic survival game is nearly ready for release but does a radioactive Lake District hold the same allure as a bombed out Boston?Unless Bethesda get someone else to make it, it seems very unlikely that well see a new mainline Fallout game until well into the next decade. That seems very strange given the popularity of the Amazon TV show, but there are always alternatives. The fan made Fallout: London, and other similar projects, have proven very popular and while its not necessarily a clone, Rebellions new title Atomfall takes very obvious inspiration from the series.We played the game briefly at Gamescom last year, when we had a long chat with Ben Fisher, Rebellions Associate Head of Design. He explained that while the game was inspired by post-apocalypse survival titles like Fallout, Metro Exodus, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. there is also a big influence from 1950s era British sci-fi, such as The Quatermass Experiment and Day of the Triffids.The game also pays homage to folk horror such as The Wicker Man, which is very obvious in the main artwork and the section of the game we got to play. Were not sure the actual game quite lives up to that confluence of interesting influences but if youre desperate for a new hit of Fallout-adjacent action, then theres certainly plenty of interest in Atomfall.The game is set in an alternative history 1957, where the Windscale nuclear disaster irradiated most of the Lake District and turned it into a mutant-filled wasteland. In the Gamescom demo we saw the remnants of a military presence, trying to maintain order in the village of Wyndham, but this demo started out in the wilds, in an area where the predominant threat is a cult of druids, whose home base is an abandoned castle.Your goal is to find a cure for radiation poisoning, which a local medicine woman is supposed to know although it turns out that the druids have stolen her recipe book and you have to infiltrate the castle to get it back.Rather than a single, contiguous open world the game is split up into a number of smaller areas, although the one we found ourselves in was still quite large and while we could see where we were aiming for on the map, therere no waypoints or objective markers. This means you have to study the layout of roads and cliffs fairly carefully before pencilling in your route and hope theres nothing dangerous in the way, that isnt on the map which there frequently is.Although we did come across a few triffids (which look almost exactly like the original BBC adaptation) and some mutated wasps (which could be fairly easily avoided) almost all the enemies we fought were just human druids, armed with simple melee weapons and bows and arrows. The one exception were some zombie-like creatures that could shoot fireballs from their chest but were inert until we came near them it seemed because they were attached to weirdly glowing fungi, which can be seen in a number of locations, particularly underground.We did get to chat again, briefly, with Fisher at the event, where we admitted that theres still a few things were not sure about with the game, including exactly how difficult it is. Theres definitely a certain amount of Dark Souls to it, especially in the fact that the game doesnt pause when you open the inventory, but while death can come quickly the enemies arent too difficult to deal with if you have a decent weapon (cricket bats work very well) and dont get boxed in.According to Fisher the game is intended to be challenging but there are very granular difficulty settings, including the ability to pause properly, so its very different to Dark Souls in that sense. The punishment for death, at least in the demo, is also very mild. The metal detector comes in very handy (Rebellion)Our main concern though is the games tone and just how weird and/or comedic it gets. Rebellion is happy to reference lots of iconic British media as an influence but that didnt seem to amount to much in what we played.What we wanted to do is make sure theres a kind of internal consistency throughout it, said Fisher. If you look at something like Fallout its much more of a picaresque narrative, where each vignette can have wildly different tones.Given were telling one coherent story there are esoteric characters, that have an odd perspective on the world, but we didnt want to push the suspension of disbelief too much. The Prisoner is one of our main reference points, because there is some interesting tonal range but overall its quite balanced.Anyone thats seen the final episode of The Prisoner will know that doesnt rule out much but on a practical level we were disappointed by both the dialogue and the voice-acting, both of which came across as very basic and lacking in personality. Many of the druids kept repeating variations of the phrase We dont know what you intend, which seems very unnatural and on the nose in terms of what the AI is thinking.Perhaps some of it is placeholder dialogue but the demo was very action-orientated, with only the medicine woman, Mother Jago, being a named character. And while she didnt leave much impression we didnt have much else to judge the games storytelling on.The actual exploration and survival elements are interesting though, with a very limited stamina bar and a heart rate to keep an eye on. Crafting, particularly for potions, is very important and naturally ammo is in very short supply. You can use a metal detector to find more though, which involves following its directions to dig up hidden loot crates, while making sure you dont back into a triffid while youre staring at the ground.More TrendingPotions arent just for health or curing you of afflictions though, as there also seems to be a lot of buffs available, which youre encouraged to quaff before entering battle. Also, about halfway through our playtime we realised we had a book in our inventory that allowed us to be a lot more stealthy once we read it (we assume the developers put it there to make the demo easier), which helped greatly and made creeping around the castle and the village outside a lot of fun.Naturally therere also skill trees, to learn more abilities, although not nearly as many as in a Bethesda title, with Atomfall never describing itself as a role-playing game. There is no doubt it has a lot in common with Fallout though and will certainly scratch a similar but not identical itch for fans. Whether it will do anything better than Bethesdas games we couldnt say at the moment (although it did seem largely bug free) but our greatest hope is that it makes full use of its unusual British setting.Formats: Xbox One*, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S*, PlayStation 5, and PCPublisher: RebellionDeveloper: RebellionRelease Date: March 2025*available on Xbox Game Pass day one The druids castle is not as hard to infiltrate as it first seems (Rebellion)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy