When I completed my initial playthrough of Atomfall for review last year, I sensed that Rebellion’s grimy survival game was only beginning to really capture my attention.
I’ve enjoyed numerous short games throughout the years – a couple of examples being Return of the Obra Dinn and The Red Strings Club – but with that brevity comes the difficulty of fulfilling the promise of your premise in a shorter timeframe than what longer games can offer. The standard version of Atomfall, however, arrived at its conclusion just as it was genuinely finding its rhythm. The reality that the conclusion was more mundane and forgettable than what the game had led me to anticipate highlighted that sense of squandered potential even more vividly. It was an enjoyable game, but one I couldn’t advocate without including the phrase ‘for what it is’.