Revisiting Atomfall’s pasty-pocalyse survival jaunt a year on, I’ve finally been seduced by its hallucinated monks and jarred brains

When I finished my first playthrough of Atomfall for review last year, I felt like Rebellion’s pasty-littered survival game was just starting to properly get its hooks into me.

I’ve dug plenty of short games over the years - Return of the Obra Dinn and The Red Strings Club are a couple of examples - but with that brevity comes the challenge of delivering on the promise of your premise in a briefer window than longer games are afforded. The base version of Atomfall instead reached its destination just as it was truly getting into its stride. The fact that the destination was more mundane and forgettable than the game had built it up to be only marked out that feeling of wasted potential more starkly. It was a good game, but one I couldn’t recommend without considering adding the phrase ‘for what it is’.

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