I have been anticipating Atomfall for a while now and I’m officially 7 hours into it. The game is beautiful, but oh my god, I am so tense playing it. Despite me basically putting the game on “baby” mode, I am still spending most of my gameplay crawling around and jumping at every little sound. Are you thinking about playing Atomfall and need to be convinced? I’ll try to get you on board with as few spoilers as possible. Let’s get into it!

Atomfall gives me Fallout vibes. You wake up, are immediately confronted with a weird situation and have to decide how to proceed. One thing I think is funny about this game is the fact that you can kill everyone. You know how in some games, there’s untouchable NPCs? Not in this game! I was sometimes saving the game and killing characters just to see if something would happen. Even this random bird sitting on a sign was not safe from my experiment. No one cared that I did it, but I just wanted to see if I could.

You can start helping people and change your mind at any point. One of the first “whoops” moments I had was with an NPC who asked for my help to get a tonic. I agreed – why not? Earlier when exploring the town, I found a key to a room in her house. After agreeing to help her, I went upstairs and unlocked the door… and well, play the video for a slight spoiler. As far as my choice? I just went with it and did not “undo” this.

There’s different types of enemies in the game and for the most part, they are pretty dumb. This is applicable only to the human enemies I have discovered so far. I don’t know if this is because I am on baby mode or if that is just the AI in the game, but I am okay with it because it makes some moments less scary. It does not stop me from being terrified every time I go into a dark room or through a locked door. Sometimes there is absolutely nothing there and I am crawling around for no reason. Other times, there are feral monsters that scare the absolute ish out of me and I am spinning around like a lunatic.

Part of what gets me scared is that the audio doesn’t necessarily align with proximity. The whistling of an outlaw will be so loud that it’s like they are right next to you, but you’ll look around and see nothing. There’s even some areas of the game where I think there’s an audio glitch and it just stops playing audio altogether. The subtitles and audio do not help me figure out my surroundings. There is no radar or tracking. I’m so scared to go places that I have resorted to a little cheat… Using photo mode to peek around corners.

Don’t judge me! I was just complaining that Avowed didn’t have photo mode, but that was because the game is so pretty. This game has it which is great because it is so pretty you’ll want to stop and take pictures! But it is also great because if you are a chicken shit like me, you can peek around a little to prepare for what is looming. Don’t worry – you’ll still die and totally mess up the fight, but at least you knew it was coming!

So far, I am really enjoying the mystery of the story. I have no idea who I am or how I got here. I don’t know who is “good” and who is “bad.” There’s some ominous voice randomly calling on the phone, but do you trust what they say? Just about everyone I meet is trying to kill me, even when I try to help them! One of the first places I ended up was a village where they don’t even want you standing too close to them. They even get mad if you are trying to help them… like when I accidentally aggro’d these bugs. I tried to fight them, but the soldiers wanted to attack me for it… So I just let them get stung and then they showed their true prowess in battle.

One of my gripes with the game is the inventory. I think we are so spoiled with games letting us carry around so much stuff that it sucks when we can’t. There’s no money in the game. Instead, the limited traders available only want to barter and trade items. They’ll have recipes or quest items that require a loooottt of valuable items to get. I am trying to hold onto items that are more valuable so I can get those things when I discover them, but then I don’t have room for other items. There are technically some locations where you can store excess stuff, but I think you can only access it by physically going to a location.

And that brings me to my next gripe. No fast travel! Again, another thing we are spoiled with, but having to walk out of a place when I am scared instead of fleeing through fast travel is the worst. Same with the trading. Want to go back to that trader you found? Walk through multiple regions to get to them. Don’t have enough items to trade? Walk to the storage (wherever that might be) and walk back! They’re not marked on the map or anything so good luck.

As you’re walking back and forth everywhere, you’ll stumble across “leads” to rumored locations, areas of interest, and if you have a metal detector, random caches of loot. Enemies do respawn in this game, however, so don’t bank on clearing out an area and returning safely to it later. If you go somewhere, I recommend clearing it out fully so you don’t have to encounter everything again. I was annoyed when I cleared out a tunnel only to find ferals inside again… But, only do that if you can afford to. I ended up in a spot and was very scared by the glowing eyes I saw at the end of the hallway. I tried to take it out quickly with a bow (because it is surprisingly deadly and fun to use), only to find out how fruitless it was. I decided to leave after this, but not before two more of these scary goons showed up.

Just for comparison, here is the bow against random human enemies. I thought I had this encounter in the bag because I had a false sense of power!

You can only carry a limited amount of ammo so encounters like that have me more worried for the future. There’s some enemy types I haven’t even picked a fight with yet because I know I am gonna be absolutely crushed. But maybe there’s more to discover and I’ll get more efficient with additional skill points? I’m scared, but I’m down to find out. I mean, there’s throwable weapons I haven’t even really used much yet. This is partly because of limited inventory space, but also, you have to find recipes to craft them. I’ve only used this grenade once, but it seems fun.

I know I still have a long way to go in the story, and even though I can feel my heart racing every time I play, I want to know what is going to happen. It’s been a while since I’ve played a game where the mystery of the story captured my attention and I actually want to read notes and discover what is happening. I’m usually a SKIP SKIP SKIP kind of person every time dialogue flashes on the screen, but not with this game!

I have a billion other screenshots and videos from this game, but I’m reaching the conclusion of this blog post. I intend to finish the game, but it might be a slow one for me because my heart rate can’t take it. But, I really am enjoying it and highly recommend it! If you like games with mystery, a bit of survival, limited resources, and beautiful locations, Atomfall is a game you should check out.

So, tell me. Are you playing the game? What are your thoughts? Don’t tell me how it ends (although it’s giving me the feeling there may be multiple endings)! I’ll share an update when I make more progress, but it’s so good, I had to talk about it now. Let me know if you’re playing and peeing your pants in the comments!