A number of weeks in the past, we launched the newest trailer for Atomfall, our upcoming recreation the place you’ll have to uncover the thriller behind what occurred on the UK’s Windscale nuclear energy station within the Nineteen Fifties. It is a fictionalised telling of what occurred following this real-life nuclear catastrophe in Northern England.
The trailer showcases the sport’s folks horror influences and provide the first glimpse of Casterfell Woods, an eerie location inside Atomfall the place you’ll encounter an unsettling wicker man and a ringing phone field that must be answered.
However what have been our influences behind Casterfell Woods? We thought it will be attention-grabbing to let you know the way we got here up with this distinctive aesthetic.
From the outset, we knew that we needed some spookier areas of the sport, the place we might emphasise folks horror and supply some distinction with our extra idyllic areas. Most of our outside environments are very inexperienced, vibrant, fairly, and really a lot British. However for Casterfell, we needed the participant to query what issues may occur within the deep darkish woods. Hidden issues can occur there, secret and historical issues… We knew that this is able to be a ton of enjoyable – so began doing our homework.
Our preliminary purpose was to determine the visible baseline for our sandbox areas, with a give attention to the content material that we wanted to construct out our varied pure biomes. Then, we might begin including our thematic twists.
Early within the mission, the staff took fairly just a few journeys as much as the English Lake District for reference gathering and to seize photogrammetry content material. For a number of of the non-Brits on the staff (myself included, as an American) this was extremely unique. For anybody who hasn’t been there, it’s a particularly various space of excellent pure magnificence and variety. It’s simply so moist and inexperienced, with lakes and streams all over the place, and super stone formations topping the excessive fells and hilltops. Your complete space is simply dripping with greenery, ferns, and moss.
As I used to be new to driving within the UK, I discovered these tiny Cumbrian roads terrifying! There are slate stone partitions on one edge, and steep drops right into a lake on the opposite. However the journeys have been very instructional, and the views have been sensational. By the top of the journey, we had a ton of implausible reference, fabulous photogrammetry content material, and have been assured that we might floor the sport visually within the north of Britain.
Subsequent up, have been the twists. How might we make our world totally different from a typical vacation journey to an exquisite pure vacation spot? How might we layer in an older period, and warp issues a bit extra?
We began storytelling targeted on folks horror, sci-fi, and old-school British imaginative fiction for inspiration. Movies like The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Challenge, Annihilation, and Midsommar have been nice to take a look at. Then after all we’ve BBC programming like Physician Who, The Prisoner, and The Quatermass Xperiment, in addition to books by John Wyndham, who has so many splendidly bizarre tales.
We needed the participant to really feel that they’re getting into an older period. The true Windscale nuclear accident was in 1957, which is when the quarantine started in our recreation. As we have been desiring to be a interval piece, how might we impress that right into a pure space? This was a troublesome one, and we had a number of conversations about it. I imply, particularly within the woods, the place timber just about would have appeared the identical in 1957, 2024, or 1066.
We started asking ourselves who was residing on the market, past the comforts of village life? How would they survive with no manufactured sources?
The reply was fairly easy in that these outcasts would survive simply as that they had in archaic instances. We’d regress them even additional again and have them use what was at hand. Wattle (and daub) development turned our go-to architectural model. Thatched roofs, woven branches and vines, and dry-stone constructions additionally appeared to suit. Regardless that many of those conventional strategies of development can nonetheless be seen within the modern-day, they’re actually historical and overseas to many people who grew up elsewhere.
Then, making an allowance for our inspirational media reference, and our want for extra Britishness, we started layering much more symbolic imagery. Historical markings, effigies, and wickermen, all intermingled with extra conventional maypoles and bunting to present sturdy pagan non secular overtones.
We expect you will love exploring Casterfell Woods and discovering the secrets and techniques that it holds when Atomfall is launched on March 27 for Xbox Sequence X|S and Home windows PC, and day one with Sport Cross. We are able to’t await you guys to get your fingers on the sport.
Atomfall
Rebel
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
A survival-action recreation impressed by real-life occasions, Atomfall is ready 5 years after the Windscale nuclear catastrophe in Northern England.
Discover the fictional quarantine zone, scavenge, craft, barter, combat and discuss your manner by means of a British countryside setting full of weird characters, mysticism, cults, and rogue authorities businesses.
From Rebel, the studio behind Sniper Elite and Zombie Military, Atomfall will problem you to resolve the darkish thriller of what actually occurred.
Participant Pushed Thriller: Unravel a tapestry of interwoven narratives by means of exploration, dialog, investigation, and fight, the place each alternative you make has penalties.
Discover this Inexperienced and Disagreeable Land: The picturesque British countryside, with rolling inexperienced hills, lush valleys, and rural villages belie the hazards that await you.
Search, Scavage, Survive: You’ll have to scavenge for provides, craft weapons and objects, and combat desperately to make it out alive!
Determined Fight: With weapons and ammunition scarce, every frenetic engagement will see you mix marksmanship with vicious hand-to-hand fight. Handle your coronary heart price to carry a gentle intention and guarantee you’ve got the vitality you have to attain in your cricket bat and land the killer blow.
Inexperienced and Disagreeable Land: The picturesque British countryside, with rolling inexperienced hills, lush valleys, and rural villages belie the hazards that await you. Navigate cult-controlled ruins, pure caves, nuclear bunkers and extra as you discover this dense, foreboding world.
Reimagining Windscale: A fictional reimagining of a real-world occasion, Atomfall attracts from science fiction, folks horror, and Chilly Warfare influences to create a world that’s eerily acquainted but utterly alien.
