Atomfall Surpasses 1.5 million players

After a review, I love watching people clutch at straws to scream something they didn’t enjoy is bad. I’ve seen some bits said about Rebellion’s Atomfall that it looks like a 2010 game, simply because the graphical style is stylized to give a nostalgic feeling of 1960s Britain. Yes, indeed, how dare a studio make a stylistic decision that makes a game stand out against attempts at photo-realism that will age like milk by the fire, I’m sure the success Rebellion is celebrating right now is quite bitter. I’ll never understand those people.

Announced yesterday, the survival, crafting, sandbox, adventure, with a sci-fi bent to it has “significantly surpassed the one million player mark over the weekend,” as noted in the press release. The press release adds: “Atomfall is Rebellion’s most successful launch in the company’s 32-year history.” Yes, that includes the success of the stealth-focused Nazi-torture games, Sniper Elite.

Jason Kingsley, CEO and co-founder at Rebellion, said: “We are delighted that so many players are enjoying Atomfall. To have surpassed the one-million-players [mark] in such a short space of time speaks volumes for the creativity and dedication of the entire team here at Rebellion. Our size and stability mean that we can take risks to create something as different as Atomfall. Happily, that risk is paying off.” Yes please, give me more risky games that are interesting and difficult to talk about than bland open-worlds on the Assassin’s Creed/Far Cry/GTA models. Sorry, that’s opinion breaking through.

Kingsley goes on to say, “We are a British company, and the game is a true reflection of that. Not only is it set in the lush, beautiful countryside but Atomfall also draws inspiration from so many classic British books, films[,] and TV series. We hope that players continue to enjoy exploring the world of Atomfall and are looking forward to future content for the game.“

The press release also notes several stats presumably found through data collection, and interestingly there have been at least 3.7 million kills with a cricket bat. Half of which I assume are mine, as the Frankie Boyle joke goes, “Cricket is of course practiced in Scotland as a homosexual martial art.” Which, to the disbelief of the likes of Steven Seagal, is still more impressive than being a 7th-den in Aikido.

Somewhat offensive jokes aside, I’m glad something so different and unique is seeing a decent amount of success. I’ve said it for a long time. Studios need to be making smaller, more focused but riskier projects that may be a quarter of an Assassin’s Creed development cycle’s budget, yet won’t bankrupt the company and the success would bankroll several other projects. Atomfall, despite some of my misgivings as noted in the review, is exactly that: Smaller, riskier, but far more interesting than most.

Atomfall is available now on PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store, as well as the Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, alongside the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Atomfall is also playable on Steam Deck, though of course, performance preferences are the limiting factor there.