Atomfall's Haunting Casterfell Forests Are Created – Check Out Exclusive New Screenshots

A few weeks ago we released the latest trailer for Nuclear fallour upcoming game in which you have to uncover the mystery behind the events at the British Windscale nuclear power plant in the 1950s. This is a fictional account of what happened after this real-life nuclear disaster in northern England.

The trailer shows off the game's folk horror influences and gives you your first look at Casterfell Woods, an eerie place within Nuclear fall There you will encounter a disturbing wicker man and a ringing telephone box that needs to be answered.

But what were our influences behind Casterfell Woods? We thought it would be interesting to share with you how we arrived at this unique aesthetic.

From the start, we knew we wanted some scarier areas of the game where we could focus on folk horror and provide some contrast to our more idyllic areas. Most of our outdoor spaces are very green, vibrant, pretty and very British. But for Casterfell, we wanted the player to wonder what could happen in the deep, dark forests. Hidden things can happen there, secret and ancient things… We knew it would be a lot of fun – so we did our homework.

Our initial goal was to create the visual foundation for our sandbox spaces, with a focus on the content we needed to build our various natural biomes. Then we could start adding our thematic twists.

At the start of the project, the team made numerous trips to the English Lake District to collect references and capture photogrammetry content. For some of the non-British people on the team (including myself as an American) this was incredibly exotic. For anyone who hasn't been there, it is an extremely diverse area of ​​outstanding natural beauty and diversity. It's just so wet and green, with lakes and streams everywhere and massive rock formations covering the high hills and hills. The entire area is covered in greenery, ferns and moss.

As I was new to driving in the UK I found these tiny roads in Cumbria terrifying! There are slate stone walls on one edge and steep slopes into a lake on the other. But the excursions were very educational and the views were sensational. At the end of the trip we had a lot of fantastic references and fabulous photogrammetry content and were confident that we could visually anchor the game in the north of the UK.

Next came the twists. How might we differentiate our world from a typical vacation trip to a beautiful natural destination? How could we incorporate an older era and distort things a bit more?

For inspiration, we began looking into storytelling that focused on folk horror, science fiction, and old-school British fantasy novels. Movies like The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Project, Annihilation, and Midsommar were great to watch. Then of course we have BBC programs like Doctor Who, The Prisoner and The Quatermass Xperiment, as well as books by John Wyndham, who has so many wonderfully strange stories.

We wanted the player to feel like they were entering an older era. The actual Windscale nuclear accident occurred in 1957, just as quarantine began in our game. Since we intended it to be a period piece, how could we translate that into a natural setting? That was a difficult question and we had many conversations about it. I mean, especially in the forests where the trees would have looked pretty much the same in 1957, 2024, or 1066.

We began to wonder who lived out there, beyond the comforts of village life? How would they survive without manufactured resources?

The answer was pretty simple: these outcasts would survive just as they did in archaic times. We would take them back even further and let them use what was available. Wattle (and daub) construction became our preferred architectural style. Thatched roofs, woven branches and vines, and drywall structures also seemed to fit. Although many of these traditional building methods can still be found today, they are truly ancient and alien to many of us who grew up elsewhere.

Taking into account our inspiring media reference and our desire for more British flair, we then began to overlay even more symbolic images. Ancient markers, effigies and wicker men all mixed in with more traditional maypoles and pennants to create strong pagan religious undertones.

We think you'll love exploring Casterfell Woods and discovering the secrets it holds Nuclear fall will be released on March 27th for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC and on day one with Game Pass. We can't wait for you to get your hands on the game.