When first revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase last year, many incorrectly thought it would be a Microsoft exclusive, but as it was eventually known, we’ll all be able to play the next big thing in sci-fi first-person RPGs, Atomfall. Thankfully, no one will be missing out on what’s to come, as we explore the dainty English towns, picturesque hills, and forests, all the while being chased by axe-wielding enemies, mask-wearing lunatics, and a lot more. Oh, and don’t forget we’re also trying to uncover a nuclear conspiracy as well!
The Inspirations, Secrets, and Enemies of Atomfall
Set in an alternate history after the events of the Windrush scandal, a near-nuclear meltdown long-forgotten by most in modern England nowadays, it ended very differently here. Five years have passed since that event, and life has gone on, but with some serious changes. There’s now an odd juxtaposition to the lovely villages and scenic pubs, as nuclear-powered robots patrol, weary of threats, military follow alongside, and out in the near-wilderness are groups of crazed maniacs, secrets to be uncovered or ignored, and so much more.
We were lucky enough to sit down with Ryan Greene and chew the fat on everything Atomfall has to offer the inspirations, and what we could look forward to as the game’s release draws closer.
So for the Thumb Wars readers who may not be aware of yourself or Atomfall, do you mind just saying who you are, what you do, and what you work on currently?
Yeah, my name is Ryan Greene, I’m the art director for Atomfall. I’m in charge of the art team, but a little bit of ideas from the design side too.
You’ve been open with fans that it’s inspired by the 1957 Windscale nuclear disaster. It takes place five years after the accident and you said you’re playing with reality a little bit. In what way are you playing with reality?
Well, in reality, it was just a nuclear accident. We’re playing with the fact that maybe it wasn’t just a nuclear accident, maybe there were other things going on during the secret Cold War era at the time. So, yeah, I’m not sure if you got to the village, but if you get to the village, you might see some robots stomping around. There’s a lot of military secrets of tech and different things that were going on. So we’re laying into that as well as what was really the accident at the power plant.
Where things have happened slightly different and you’re uncovering different things. Other than Bard (the robot), what else can we expect to see that we wouldn’t right now in reality?
Yeah, and you might have seen some stuff in the trailer when we first released it. You’ll see some guys glowing blue and things. Well, odd things happened at the Windscale power plant that affected things and changed them. So that, think of that kind of older era John Wyndham stuff.
I got educated about him when I moved over here and started the project, Day of the Triffids, think of things like that. Think of, you know, all of a sudden this odd thing appears in our normal British culture. How do we adapt to that? And that’s a fun one for us that we play with a lot in the game.
You said it changed them, the Windscale disaster. In Atomfall’s universe, how did it change them? Or what has it affected, if you’re able to speak on that at all?
Well, I mean, I think you can visually see the humanoid-type creatures. Were they human or not? Yeah. You know, it’s things like that. Like, how could… Yeah. How could the local people, animals, and creatures be affected by what happened at the plant? So, that’s part of the mystery you have to uncover as you go and as you kind of dive deeper and deeper into the game. And both literally and figuratively, like, you will go down into dungeons and find more mysterious things down there.
I spent quite a lot of time reading the different collectibles, and it seems like a lot of the lore will be divulged in things that we collect? Pretty open-ended way of playing?
Yeah, very much so. So, we’ve got, like, things like collectibles, things that you can use to level up as a character a little bit. There are different skills you can unlock, things like that. Items you can pick up. There are craftable items. But then there’s the story, which we don’t do a traditional quest structure where it’s you need to do the one thing for us.
It’s more like a ‘choose-your-own’ adventure. So, you get leads to do different things that will lead you to the next thing. And you’re playing a little bit of a detective and trying to find out what it is that’s going on here, and trying to find out the truth behind the whole disaster. Who are you going to help along the way? Who might help you? And can you really trust them? So, we’re going to play with a lot of that kind of who are you going to side with kind of attitude, you know?
Are there different endings then, depending on the direction you choose to pursue?
Yeah.
How many do you know off the top of your head?
I think there are six in total, I believe. We’re working on them right now, so we’ll see how that shapes out. That could change. but yeah, there are multiple endings. And depending on what your choices are in the game will lead you to different ways that the game could conclude. but there’s no real blocker.
You could go theoretically and kill every single human in the game and still finish the game. That’s an option. You could do the pacifist route and finish the game or anything in between really is the idea. So we don’t like restricting players. It’s a big thing from one of our owners in particular. He really was like, let me play it how I want to play it. And so that was a big pillar for the game. People have the agency to do what they want.
You’ve mentioned different modes in Atomfall?
So yeah, we’ll probably have our normal mode, which would be kind of hard, kind of mean, kind of ‘you need to be very careful’ about the choices you make in combat or whether combat’s even the right answer.
Then we can also look at ratcheting up and down a few different control mechanisms, such as how much ammo you get, you know, how much supplies. Okay. I want to go shoot things. Give me more supplies. Let me shoot things. Let me be happy playing it that way. Okay.
And then we can also take it the other way where there is less hostility from the NPCs. So you’re relatively safer because they’re less likely to attack, which means if you want to just explore and not die, that’s valid.
Now, nuclear science and nuclear energy is not something to mess around with. Big explosions, radiation, etc, but how does that factor into the gameplay and environments?
There are zones that are, you need to, once again, make plans to get into and utilize equipment or stimulants or different things that will get you through areas clearly.
There are also things. Like, you see the robots have got a big glowy atomic battery on their back. You shoot it, you blow it up and that’s dangerous if you’re nearby. You know, things like that, that we’re definitely like, once again, just playing around with the tactical decision-making that players can choose to do.
It’s a very big and complex game in a lot of ways. And we’ve tried a lot of wild things that are difficult to make sense of. If you were just to, like, talk through some of the points we cover in this game, try to pitch that as a new game to someone, people would be like, that sounds like madness.
It doesn’t make sense. But when you play it and see it, it kind of does. You know, you’re like, okay, cool. It’s a 50s-era comic. Cumbrian or North British game with a sci-fi twist, you know?
How did you manage to marry up 1950s England with sci-fi, robots, etc? Did you find that a difficult process, to make it seem natural?
A little bit, yes. Because you can get some discord between those elements if you’re not very careful about it. You can’t do that. So early on in production, we were like, cool, let’s make the north of England, let’s just do the base layer. And cool. So we needed trees, we needed green stuff, we needed little stone cottages. Cool, let’s do that.
Then let’s make sure we’re hitting the era notes. So things like the older vehicles, even the Cold War era, like, military hardware you might find around there. So you’ll see some abandoned tanks and things like that. We wanted to make sure that was all on point. Signage, labeling, make sure we got the older styles, older graphic designs. And then once we had that as the base canvas, then it was like, how do we go about adding those twists, those thematic twists, that sci-fi element, the horror stuff, which you don’t even see much in this.
And the old kind of rural Englishness of it all. So then we had to just deal with like, cool, OK, we wanted sci-fi, we wanted robots. Well, robots just by themselves don’t make a lot of sense. So what else do you show? You know? So we see this kind of… Improvised manufacturing that looked like it came from some skunkworks, you know, experimental facility. We just kept layering more of that, more of that, wherever we can. You know, robots are powered by atomic batteries. Well, if you go around and see the abandoned military vehicles, they’ve all got atomic batteries, empty atomic battery packs on them.
So you’re like, OK, I see what they were doing, you know. Just trying to make sure it all marries into that. So if you see one of these themes, such as the Bard technology robot stuff, you see little elements that bleed into related technology.
I’ve got to ask, how did you come up with the pub name? Grendel’s Head, I want to say. It just felt very tongue-in-cheek for a UK Pub, because our pub names are… Some of them have a troubled history and others are just, way too common.
Yeah. We were a little cautious about that because we thought the best name for a pub is something that was either completely distinct and you can’t really find one, or it’d be so common that everyone’s like, yeah, I’ve seen four Black Horse’s or whatever it might be. Our writing team came up with a new one they thought was going to be good, and we wanted to lay into a little bit of that, kind of a little bit creepy, a little bit mysterious, you know, kind of any of those themes we could hit along the way.
If we can get older-era sci-fi, and older-era folk horror into the game, it’s great. And it’s like, if you explore around, you can find old sci-fi comics for example, because we own 2000 AD in a massive comics library of old out-of-print stuff, so we’re drawing off that as some of our collectibles.
Atomfall‘s release date is March 27th, 2025, barring any delays, and will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
For more Thumb Wars Interviews, see what the duo behind the incredible 30th Anniversary PlayStation trailer had to say, or how Dying Light: The Beast could be breaking its own rules with one achievement/trophy.
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Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!
