Playing Atomfall for 90 minutes booted me out of my comfort zone more than any other survival action game, and that's a very good thing

It took me almost 90 minutes to reach the village in Atomfall despite having started around the corner. I realize this upon glancing at my map, dotted with investigation leads and crude sketches of various points of interest I'd stumbled into on my fraught journey beyond the town's boundaries. Wyndham Village is fortified, its barbed perimeter patrolled by military foot soldiers and Dr Who-like robots that regard me with apathy rather than bloodthirst. Surely that fact alone makes this quaint town safer than the wild woodland at my back? Then, after a visit to the pub, I find a dead body at the church.

Atomfall is scarily prescient, somehow set to launch at precisely the right time for its genre. High-stakes survival epics are some of 2025's hottest commodities – the tougher, the better – and those looking for a challenging open world experience will drink in Atomfall's quarantined wilderness in all of its inhospitable glory. Ammo is scarce, the natives aren't always friendly, and a dense urban jungle stretches out as far as the overbrush permits sight. But Atomfall's most intriguing challenge, both from a player and developer's point of view, is its non-linear storyline. After experiencing first-hand how this process plays out, I'm left wondering how far us players can be trusted when taken off the leash – and I can tell you right now that it's a much scarier prospect than you might think.

Grating expectations

Atomfall starts with a completely blank slate. Awakening in rural 1960s Cumbria, England, years after a nuclear incident caused the area to be sealed off into its own quarantine zone, our amnesiac protagonist sets out on a quest to discover what exactly happened – as well as who they are. There's no such thing as a main mission track in Atomfall, nor are there any earmarked side quests to create the conundrum of being steered off-course. Insetad, I was free to simply wander Casterfell Woods during my hands-on preview and, to put it bluntly, fuck around and find out.

Information is Atomfall's most strictly-rationed resource. By withholding narrative details from the player, even more than bullets or bandages, its non-linear story feels more like a series of interconnected puzzles to be slotted into place. As a fan of sweeping tales whisking me off my feet, though, I'm reassured by lead designer Ben Fisher that "every piece of the narrative connects somewhere to the grander story. So no matter where you engage with the story, no matter where you start finding leads, it will all eventually lead back to the Windscale plant and the trigger for this whole event."

In short, there is no such thing as doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in Atomfall– which also means you never have to worry about killing an NPC here or there, even if they are a quest-giver. This can be further influenced by your playstyle selection, a difficulty-adjacent setting which dictates how much information is given to you outright versus how much is left to discover through exploration. A guided playstyle is best for those who prefer a more "crafted narrative" approach, Fisher tells me, with key investigation leads highlighted in your journal to help carve out a sense of storytelling momentum. But the unguided approach is the way Rebellion intended Atomfall to be played, so that's what I set out to accomplish.

My preview session kicks off with a single lead detailed in my journal – to find a woman called Mother Jago near an abandoned mine to the east. I have two options: follow the lead, or do literally anything else. Fisher described Atomfall's lead system as a "choose your own adventure" experience in the past, but with little to no hand-holding, it's more like the adventure chooses me.

Survive, not thrive

On my quest to the abandoned mines, I have the grave misfortune of being jumpscared by an unseen feral – Rebellion's bioluminescent, undead crossbreed of The Last of Us's fungus zombies and the husks in Mass Effect – in a dark, shady underpass.

The creature vomits an infectious purple gunk straight in my face, triggering auditory hallucinations – listen to us, listen to us – as I haphazardly slash at it with the trusty sickle I'd liberated from a cultist wandering near my spawn point earlier on. Spotting another feral dead ahead, I decide to test out Atomfall's FPS action. And yes, it's very Rebellion. Similarly to Sniper Elite, the key phrase here is realism. There's no crosshair, so I'm relying on my shaky hands to line my sights up just right. I line my shot up, shoot, and embarrassingly put a hole in the wall directly behind my foe. I fumble with my bullets quickly, initiating a lengthy reload animation that I simply don't have time for. As the feral charges up another jet of puke, I swap to a shotgun. A bullet to the chest does nothing to my purple-puking attacker, so I decide to do a Dying Light and stick to melee weapons – namely my whippy sickle. It's easily my preferrence over the cricket bat's comically slow "bonk" and resulting ragdoll effects. The sickle is a delight, smooth and dextrous as I carve up the feral in just three short strikes. Enemy swiftly dispatched, I make a run for the exit – and dash straight past yet another dozing feral. Right as it screams to life and I step into the literal light at the end of the tunnel, the edges of my screen grow hazy as my character starts gasping for breath. Stamina is tied to your heart rate in Atomfall, and running too fast for too long causes it to spike in a worryingly cardiac arrest-shaped threat. The only fix? Resort to your default meandering pace.

The stamina meter's pithy starting range is probably my biggest technical gripe about Atomfall. This sad display of cardiovascular health makes getting about the frankly huge open world more of a slog than it needs to be at times, especially if you're pelting it for safety after a failed stealth endeavor. Still, though, Atomfall is a survival action game – and that first part would be all too easy without a handful or more notorious setbacks to overcome.

Try, try again

The most important lesson I learned about Atomfall is simple: stay humble. I found stealth to be pretty much paramount in these early hours of the game: this is no power fantasy, but a slow and methodical investigation process that would test my already thin patience.

Thus, a cycle began. I'd see a group of Druids – the given name of the bandit-like hostile people roaming the woods – and try to take them on instead of hiding in the bushes and waiting for them to pass. I tried everything, from throwing grenades to performing sneaky takedowns on each one in turn, but the harder I tried to push back against Atomfall's punishing environs, the quicker I learned what had to be done for survival. Namely, stay sharp and silent. "Having that intensity, that high friction at the core loop encourages the player to take a step back, to observe, to plan, to try and execute that plan with imperfect knowledge," explains Fisher. After an embarrassing snafu involving lobbing a sickle at a Druid's head, alerting them just in time to turn around and watch as I "stealthily" take down their buddy, I can attest to this imperfect knowledge leading to… interesting executions. Things only got better once I relinquished the fear of messing up. I even killed the aggressive Scottish lady at the church, who felt all too passionately about not informing the authorities of the murdered woman collapsed by the pulpit. Was she even guilty? I have no idea, but therein lies the exciting part.

From an abandoned bunker on the outskirts of Wyndham Village to a creepy sewage plant, my best moments in Atomfall happened purely by accident. Some accidents – like attacking non-hostile NPCs – can be offset by toggling on full-body highlights, but I quickly grew fond of Atomfall's particular brand of survival game friction and how it's shaping up to be a very different kind of open world game. If you can stay alive long enough to embrace those differences, it seems poised to impress and stress in equal measure. If not, well... don't say I didn't warn you.

Check out some of the best survival games of all time while you wait for Atomfall