Fallout and Wasteland-inspired RPG Atom leaves Early Access next week

Post-apocalyptic RPG Atom, an indie game inspired by Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Wasteland, will leave Early Access next week, developer AtomTeam has announced.

It has turn-based combat, dozens of skills and heaps of character stats, and AtomTeam says that different stat combinations will open up new dialogue options and new ways of solving quests. You'll be exploring a Soviet wasteland following all-out nuclear war in the '80s, investigating a "shadowy conspiracy aimed at destroying all that is left of life on Earth".

It's not one I've had my eye on, but the user reviews from Early Access look promising: nearly 90% of them are positive, and lots of players are saying that it reminds them of both Fallout 1 and 2.

It's going to be out on December 19 (Wednesday), and the 1.0 update will add a new city to the game that sets the stage for the end of the main quest.

At $15/£11 it's relatively cheap, and fans of old-school RPGs might want to check it out. Don't expect it to be as sprawling as the games it's inspired by, but it'll have several large side quest lines, lots of smaller side quests and many random encounters.

The Steam page is here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.