If you’re just diving into Atomfall, you should know this survival title is designed to test your skills and patience (in a good way). With danger lurking around every corner and extremely limited resources at your disposal, you’ll want to approach every moment with caution and planning. Before you set off on your journey in Atomfall, here are three tips to keep in mind that can help improve your chances at survival.
Customize your experience as you see fit
Atomfall was created with exploration and immersion in mind, so it avoids spelling too much out for you on its default settings. If you play without any assists, you won’t get objective markers or clearly defined tasks. Instead, you’ll need to suss out things entirely on your own, figuring out where leads are asking you to go by following written clues and your own intuition.
If this doesn’t sound up your alley, that’s totally okay! You can make the game feel a bit more forgiving by heading into Options > Game > Playstyle and turning on various assists. You can even set it up so that there are waypoint markers and hints. This dramatically reduces how much additional work you’ll need to put into figuring out how to navigate Atomfall’s sprawling world.
Thorough exploration is the key to your success
Regardless of how you’ve customized your playstyle, exploration remains among the most significant parts of Atomfall. You’ll need to check every nook and cranny of the post-nuclear English countryside for leads that will direct you to side-quests, helpful crafting materials to improve your survivability, and all-important Training Stimulants and skill manuals to bolster your skill tree.
It’s worth noting that a lot of these things are easy to miss, so thorough observation remains key. Check for spots you can climb over or under to reach hidden rooms, and thoroughly examine every desk, shelf, and box in an area so as not to miss anything. Even just finding a few extra bullets or a piece of food can make all the difference in a game where resources are so scarce.
Stealth is your friend
Ammo is hard to come by in Atomfall, so you’ll spend a lot of time in melee combat. However, this means that facing off against tons of foes at once can be extremely overwhelming. When you’re trying to conserve ammo (or simply don’t have any), you’ll want to resort to stealth. Sneaking around an enemy encampment while slowly taking out unsuspecting foes and looting their goodies keeps more ammo in your magazines and more health in your, uh, health bar.
If you’re not prepared with adequate resources when all hell breaks loose, though, just run far away and try again later. There’s no shame in regrouping and taking things slowly in a game designed around tense survival mechanics. Your goal is to live to see another day, after all.
Atomfall is available on March 27 for PS5 PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PCs.