A cast-iron bathtub on cart wheels sits partway up a hillside in the Windscale quarantine zone. Three skeletons sit up inside it. One wears a flat cap. Another wears a knitted beanie low over the skull. Someone dressed them, propped them upright, and pushed the tub out into the grass. Atomfall never explains it.
The game has no quest markers. It gives leads instead—a note in a drawer, a set of coordinates, a name someone lets slip. I placed my own icons on the map from what they implied. I unpacked the zone rather than crossing it. That’s what I’d recommend it for.
Fallout is the comparison everyone reaches for. I think it’s the right one. Atomfall works the same post-apocalyptic ground without deriving from it. The place is bright green under a blue sky, all wet grass and birch scrub and wildflowers. The jokes are English. None of it reads as a wasteland.
I could carry four guns and sixteen other items, and no more. The game has no money at all. Trading means piling goods onto a set of scales until the merchant’s side balances. Reviewers named the inventory the worst decision in the game. I think they have it backwards. The limit stops the zone becoming a supply run. It was limiting and fun at once.
Red Strain and Wicked Isle are two more mysteries rather than more zone.
I chased most of the side stories, taking the leads I found and could resolve. I wasn’t going for completion. The side stories converge at the end all the same. The balancing gets wonky there. Six mutually exclusive endings collapse into whichever one you take. It’s satisfying in spite of that. The game expects a manual save beforehand and a reload after. That’s how it offers the other endings.
I never saw anything that explained the bathtub. I may have missed it.