Atomfall
A survival-action game inspired by real-life events, Atomfall is set five years after the Windscale nuclear disaster in Northern England.
Explore the fictional quarantine zone, scavenge, craft, barter, fight and talk your way through a British countryside setting filled with bizarre characters, mysticism, cults, and rogue government agencies.
My Role
As part of my systems design responsibilities on Atomfall, I was in charge of creating the game’s skill system. This involved designing all player skills for the base game, from planning the categories and overall layout to mapping out progression and acquisition. I worked closely with other disciplines to implement the skill mechanics in gameplay, and coordinated with the narrative team and key stakeholders to ensure everything aligned thematically.
The Skill System
The skill system is designed to support players as they face the challenges of Atomfall’s world. It combines physical enhancement abilities, practical skills tied to weapons and tools, and survival-focused upgrades to help players adapt as they explore.
To unlock new skills, players first need to find training manuals scattered throughout the game world. These manuals make the corresponding skills available for purchase in the skill menu. To actually acquire the skills, players must collect training stimulants, which are found across most areas, especially in B.A.R.D. themed locations. It took us a while to land on the right balance for manual and stimulant acquisition and progression. Originally, the plan was to include just enough stimulants for players to unlock about 75% of the skills. However, after gathering feedback, I adjusted the system so that players can now find more than enough stimulants to unlock every skill if they choose to.
The backstory is that the training stimulants were developed by B.A.R.D. scientists, using the macrobiome, to unlock latent abilities that already existed deep within the player character’s mind.
Early Exploration
Our initial exploration into the skill progression system included a structure where spending accumulated skill points would gradually unlock new tiers of abilities. Each skill tree would culminate in an ultimate skill, significantly more powerful than the others, that players could purchase once they reached the end of the category.
During this phase, I also explored different skill icon layouts and experimented with adding skill dependencies in each category, where certain skills could only be unlocked after acquiring their prerequisite skills.
Final Design
Ultimately, I removed most of the restrictions around skills progression, as they didn’t align with the game’s open-ended design. We wanted players to have the freedom to choose any skill they wanted, provided they had found the corresponding manual and had enough stimulants to unlock it.
Once the categories and their names were finalised, the base game launched with a total of 36 skills.
