Rebellion Developments
27th March 2025
By God, a videogame is gracing the pages of STAT Magazine. We asked the developers of Atomfall – a game set in alt-history Cumbria where a Windscale-esque disaster leaves much of the Lake District in quarantine – for a copy of their latest release earlier this year. They did not provide us with one. Yet months later we emerge victorious with our coffers untouched, as the kind folk at Rebellion have gifted us with a code just in time for Chrimbo.
Atomfall is, reductively, just Fallout in Cumbria. Fall-owt, if you will. In classic RPG fashion, you wake up with no memories and are quickly set to task sorting out this scientific disaster lark. You loot, you craft, you shoot random bandits in the head without asking.
In truth, we are less interested in Atomfall as a game and more as a representation of our fair North West. In many ways, it succeeds. Whether it’s the quaint stone cottages of the fictional Wyndham, picturesque shores of the nearby mere, the subtle Lancastrian rose that festoons the old red telephone boxes, or simply the old boys who think they can take on a 10-foot robot, we couldn’t help but be charmed seeing pixels pretend to be located in our preferred cardinal direction.
The lack of Cumbric accents, however, is slightly perplexing, though the game does manage to sprinkle in some Scouse here and there. Just as an aside: for some reason all the bandits that roam the open world seem to be Irish or Welsh (we’ll let you interpret that one). In other disappointing ways the game also paints with a broader, less geographically specific brush: the cult of woodland druids are just the same tired Wicker Man folk horror that has become beyond pastiche; and for some reason the world is littered with “Cornish” pasties.
Still, for the gamers amongst you, we cannot help but recommend Atomfall. Afterall, this may be the best (and only) videogame representation of pre-1974 Lancashire that we’ll ever get.