Atomfall launched last month to much acclaim, with many enjoying the outside-the-box thinking, player-first exploration, and 1960s Britain-with-a-twist representation of the Lake District. Post-launch, we got the opportunity to speak to Rich May, one of Rebellion’s Senior Programmers, and responsible for some of the coolest parts of the game.
Atomfall’s Design is a Thing of Beauty
Firstly, for the Thumb Wars readers who may be unaware, could you tell us who you are, what you do, and what Atomfall is?
My name is Rich May, and I’m a Senior Programmer at Rebellion. Atomfall is a post-apocalyptic survival-action game, inspired by the real-life Windscale nuclear incident in the 1950s. Players will have to navigate a fictional Quarantine Zone set up by the government after the disaster, an area filled with a cast of weird and wonderful characters just as trapped as you are, and try to uncover the mystery of what happened at the Windscale Atom Plant.
Atomfall is big on allowing players to do what they want and explore how they like. Some players will inevitably get lost or struggle with the freedom you’ve given them. How are you balancing the need for your design ideas and principles to shine through whilst also minimising frustration for players?
One of the ways we try and balance freedom versus frustration is by ensuring that all of the Leads that players will discover in Atomfall are interconnected. This means that if you do get stuck or feel that you can’t travel to where a Lead is heading, you can explore somewhere else, and eventually, you will find new clues to help you resolve the Lead.
This could result in unlocking a new physical route to the location you need to get to or obtaining new information that offers you a different perspective. This not only helps minimise frustration but also encourages exploration. We tried to make sure there were no “wrong ways” to approach Atomfall, so even if the player happens to go in a direction that isn’t the way we’d normally expect someone to, they’ll still have an enjoyable and interesting experience.
If players are still finding things too difficult, we’ve included a range of different ‘Playstyle’ settings for Atomfall. While the base setting is our recommended experience, the Exploration Playstyle allows you to enable features like Navigational Hints, Flagged Leads, and Waypoint Markers. These offer extra guidance by summarising objectives more succinctly, reducing reading and clutter in your Investigation menu, and offering markers on your map to prompt where to explore next.
The red telephone boxes. Are they entirely scripted, dependent on player actions, or something else entirely?
The interactions with the telephone box change depending on the player’s choices and progression in the game; the ‘voice’ references characters and events that the player has chosen to trigger or interact with and comments on the things they’ve done.
This helps create a feeling that everyone’s story, regardless of their choices, is one seamless sequence of events, but also allows us to jog the player’s memory about important places and characters. There’s an element of reverse psychology, too – if the voice warns you not to do something, you might want to do it anyway.
How did you nail the aesthetics and looks of the era, both from a civilian and military point of view?
As Atomfall is set in the early 1960s in rural Cumbria, but since the zone has been locked down since the incident in 1957, we have a lot of 1950s influences too. We took great care to ensure that the game accurately captured the look and feel of the time. As part of our early research, members of our Art and Design teams undertook several photogrammetry expeditions to the area.
This enabled us to capture images of historic structures and architecture (i.e., the Lake District’s iconic dry-stone walls) that were then used as sources of design for the game. The result is that the environments explored by players represent a concentrated slice of Northern England that is true to the real-world location.
Did you hire historians or another type of consultant to ensure you got it right?
We didn’t hire historians, but we did a huge amount of research. Not only did this extend to the Windscale incident, but also tiny details such as the fonts used on 1950s signage, which are very different from those we see on signs today. We even spent time mapping period-specific items to ensure they were accurately represented in the game. This includes the pint glasses found in Grendell’s Head in Wyndham, so players can have an authentic pint of ale!
There are a lot of Easter eggs, from the obvious and in-your-face ones like Doctor Who, to the more explore-and-find-them ones like the Narnia one. What’s your personal favourite?
One of the ones that always makes me is the Last of the Summer Wine reference, which is a group of skeletons in a bathtub located on the edge of Skethermoor. Despite it being a very classic, British-oriented reference, it’s been amazing to see players from around the world enjoy that Easter Egg. My own personal favourite is a reference to 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper, but that’s because I had a hand in making it.
The game is rife with collectibles. Some are for leads and others are for world-building. Considering gamers are famous for complaining about having to collect too many things, what made you so sure this was the direction to go with Atomfall?
I think it’s about making sure that the collectibles act as meaningful drivers in the story. Yes, players will need to go out into Atomfall’s Quarantine Zone and find lots of different items, but this will help them unlock new areas, discover new clues, and open new conversations with characters. So it operates very differently from fetch quests in other games, which can cause fatigue/frustration.
What was the thinking behind having so few weapon types, considering the plethora of them available in the British military at the time?
This comes back to the Quarantine Zone setting of Atomfall and the British setting in general, really. Guns are inherently rare in the UK, and everyone in the Zone has been trapped and isolated from the outside world for five years by the time that the events of Atomfall unfold.
This means that resources are extremely scarce, which is reflected in the limited range of weapons and items available to the player. It’s also why the items you craft are cobbled together from things you find in bunkers and abandoned houses – some of the most useful items you can craft are made from string and glue!
You’ve been honest about there being six endings for a while now, but which do you consider to be the canon ending?
Atomfall is all about choice, and we’ve really tried to avoid saying there is a right or wrong way to play Atomfall. This feeling extends to the endings. It is entirely up to the player which ending they choose to believe is ‘canon’.
Considering the game is set in 1962, some would say the atmosphere in places feels entirely different from that of a 60s aesthetic, predominantly the Druids. How did you come to include them?
Atomfall takes inspiration from a wide range of British cultural influences, and alongside pulpy 60s sci-fi and Cold War paranoia, we wanted to represent Britain’s rich tradition of folk stories and pagan myths. While often understated, this folklore has an enduring appeal within British media, which is perhaps best captured in the legendary 1970s folk horror film The Wicker Man.
So, it’s from this tradition that Atomfall’s druids and their eerie home of Casterfell Woods take their inspiration. Places like the Lake District have a timelessness about them – even the buildings have been there for hundreds of years, if not longer – so it made sense to explore that side further.
If not the Windscale Disaster, what other events would you have wanted to base the premise of Atomfall around?
Our CEO, Jason Kingsley, has always been interested in historical flashpoints that could serve as a jumping off point for a ‘what if’ story had things gone differently, and the Windscale incident was a real pivotal moment in British history. So, it immediately lends itself to the style of story we wanted to create in Atomfall.
Also, it allowed us to create a post-apocalyptic game that is set within the English countryside. This was attractive to us because the post-apocalyptic genre is dominated by games set in either urban locations or deserted wastelands. Whereas with Atomfall, we have a quarantine zone that is lush and green, while also being quintessentially English. This juxtaposition of “modern” technology, ancient, beautiful countryside and made it feel immediately unique within the post-apocalyptic genre.
Is this the only area where there has been an accident/cover-up in Atomfall’s universe?
At the centre of Atomfall are the characters who have had to survive in the Quarantine Zone and deal with the events of the fallout. Everyone has their own version of the truth, and many of them will try to cover their own tracks or disguise their involvement in the incident. So, you could say that the world of Atomfall is rife with secrecy and cover-ups! Choosing who to trust is one of the big decisions players will have to make throughout the game.
And talking of universes, as this is set after them, could this be the same universe as Sniper Elite? Creating a Rebellion-shared universe?
While we have drawn heavily on experience with the Sniper Elite franchise, we have tried to do something very different and original with Atomfall. So, I think we can say it exists as its own story.
What is the one part of Atomfall, be it mechanic, feature, or something else entirely, that you are most proud of?
Definitely our Leads system. Interestingly, the inspiration for the Leads system was an earlier version of the game that had a traditional Quest system. When we played that version of the game, it felt too guided, too rigid. The more we leaned into our preference for sandbox freedom and player-driven storytelling, the better it felt.
We wanted to reduce the feeling that there was a “right” or “main” route through the game, and that you were doing jobs for other people instead of telling your own story. So, we had the creative challenge “how do we guide the player without telling them what to do?”
In Atomfall, Leads can be picked up through conversations or by finding letters and items within the quarantine zone. Discovering a new Lead will give you hints on where to go next, but they are essentially puzzles that you will need to piece together yourself. You never know where a Lead will take you, or if you are being sent in the right direction, as your sources of information may have competing interests.
At its heart, Atomfall is a mystery, and as players investigate what happened at Windscale, we wanted them to stay engaged with the “observation” aspect of gameplay. A traditional quest marker encourages the player to head straight for the indicated target, discourages them from staying observant, and encourages them to engage with their environment as they move through it. Moving away from regular quests towards Leads felt a much better fit for the game we were making.
The presence of folklore and folk horror was pretty well felt in one way or the other, but were there times you wanted to lean into it more? Mythical British monster and the like, caused by nuclear radiation, maybe?
Alongside the folklore and folk horror you mentioned, we also drew inspiration from 1950s and 1960s sci-fi like The Day of the Triffids, early Doctor Who, and The Quatermass Experiment. The fiction of the era explored themes of paranoia, unease, distrust of the government, uncertainty about urbanisation, loss of tradition, and keeping calm in the face of a grand threat.
Given the breadth of influences we wanted to represent in Atomfall, it was important for us to ensure there was balance between all these themes and not lean into any one in a way that might diminish the other. As a result, we get a much more holistic setting that is as pulpy in its themes as the fiction that influences it.
Was there ever discussions of giving Atomfall a multiplayer component? Maybe a co-op campaign?
The story we developed for Atomfall and the feeling of trying to untangle this web of clues really lends itself to being an individual experience – it really heightens those feelings of uneasiness and dread, as you explore how deep the mystery really goes. So, we wanted to keep Atomfall focused on single-player gameplay.
How far into development are the two planned DLCs? Any rough release windows?
The first DLC is called the Wicked Isle. It’s shaping up really well, but we don’t want to give away too many details just yet!
Unless we missed them, we never found any leads, documents, or people that explained who we were or why we were there. How come? What was the thinking behind that decision?
Atomfall is about giving the player the space to create their own story, and this extends to the player’s backstory. There are elements in the game that hint toward possible origins, but we really like the idea that players coming up with their own origin of how they ended up in the bunker will determine how they approach the game and make everyone’s experience of Atomfall unique.
For more Thumb Wars Gaming coverage, check out our interview with Mr. Hands and Jan Dolski himself, Alex Jordan, or our discussions with Dying Light’s Tymon Smetkala about the upcoming Dying Light: The Beast.
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!
