Atomfall is a very British take on Stalker, where you explore a post-disaster Cumberland with a cricket bat

It's a sunny day in the Lake District, and I'm bludgeoning a man to death with a cricket bat. Welcome to 1960s Cumberland, where the locals are hostile and the nuclear power station is pouring out ethereal pillars of mysterious energy.

Atomfall is Stalker by way of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. It's an alt-history retelling of the aftermath of the Windscale fire—the largest nuclear accident in the UK's history. Set five years later, the military has occupied a nearby village, robots patrol the streets, and residents—"proper sober folk"—have wandered off into the woods talking about a new purpose in the soil. And that's to say nothing of the roving gangs of outlaws that have made their homes in the valley outside of the village—all face paint and rusty rifles. Mad Max, but with flat caps.

When Windscale—later renamed to Sellafield—actually caught fire in 1957, Harold Macmillan's Conservative government downplayed the incident, heavily redacting reports for fear of damaging the public's confidence in nuclear power. For Atomfall, Rebellion is taking that conceit and running with it. What else was the government covering up? Exploring the hills I find a bunker, abandoned except for the feral ghoul-like creature that instantly attacks upon my entry. So there's a little bit of Fallout here too.

These little mysteries are laced through my time with the demo, and they're the main thing that have me excited for the game's release next year. It opens on a ringing phone box. I answer, and a distorted voice informs me that "Oberon must die". When I talk to someone, or find a particularly interesting note, I'm not given a quest, but rather a "lead"—a breadcrumb trail leading to the secrets of this setting. This is the good stuff—scavenging through a valley, poking around abandoned bunkers and finding clues that point to somewhere on the map. Teasing out mysteries that lead to conspiracies and unexplained phenomena and weird sci-fi nonsense.

It's the actual moment-to-moment play that I'm less convinced by—at least based on the few fights I got myself into. My first attempts were clunky and panicked, wildly swinging with a bat, taking plenty of damage in return. Later, I learned the power of the kick—causing enemies to briefly stagger, and giving me a free shot or two. The kick was upgradeable too—you can upgrade skills thanks to some light RPG customisation, so eventually I had a battle plan that generally did the trick in smaller fights against one or two enemies. Unfortunately for me, most outlaws travel in packs.

There are guns, but this isn't the Zone from Stalker's Chornobyl. Over the course of the demo I find a bolt-action rifle, a double-barrel shotgun and a revolver—all slow firing, all basically falling apart. Ammo is scarce too. When dealing with a handful of outlaws, I might have enough bullets to take out a couple, but any more and I'll be putting myself in more risk for the next big fight. The outlaws sometimes have guns too, so if I don't prioritise the right targets, I'm better off just turning around and running away.

In all it's functional, but scrappy—a little bit janky and generally unrefined. Admittedly I don't know the progression curve here. With the military stationed nearby, presumably more powerful weapons will appear later in the game. There's also a lot of time left for the team to nail the overall feel of combat, but for the demo at least I ended up resorting to stealth where I could. Even then, patrols could be unpredictable. I attempted to sneak up on a few outlaws, but often they'd just turn around for seemingly no reason, opening fire on the guy who's just crouched in the middle of the road behind them.

There's a crafting system too, but I don't get the sense Atomfall is going heavily down the survival route. My recipe list here is basic: I can craft new bandages for recovering after a particularly brutal fight, and molotov cocktails for helping to avoid a future brutal fight. There are a handful of materials I can scavenge from loot caches and outlaw corpses, but—at least based on what I've seen—the onus is on making tools that help in combat rather than working through the standard survival crafting tree.

Despite my lingering uncertainty around combat, the Atomfall demo was one of the highlights of my time at Gamescom. And sure, some of that was because I spent a few years living in the Lake District—I am being very catered to here. But on a broader level, it's an interesting direction for a Stalker-esque FPS to take. It's bright and vibrant, a surface level idyll that promises something darker and more mysterious beneath the surface. And I'm fully prepared to haphazardly battle my way through hordes of deranged locals, cricket bat in hand, in order to get at it.