Creating the haunting Casterfell Forest for Atomfall – check out the new, exclusive screenshots

A few weeks ago, we released the latest trailer for Atomvaleour next game where you will have to uncover the mystery behind what happened at the Windscale nuclear power station in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. This is a fictional account of what happened after this real-life nuclear disaster in northern England.

The trailer showcases the game’s folk horror influences and gives you your first glimpse of Casterfell Woods, a strange location within Atomvale Where you will encounter a disturbing bamboo man and a ringing phone box that needs an answer.

But what are our influences beyond Casterville Woods? We thought it would be interesting to tell you how we came up with this unique aesthetic.

From the beginning, we knew we wanted some of the scarier areas in the game, where we could focus on folk horror and provide some contrast to our more poetic areas. Most of our outdoor environments are very green, vibrant, beautiful and very British. But for Casterfell, we wanted the player to wonder what things might happen in the deep, dark forest. Hidden things could be going on there, secret and ancient things… We knew this was going to be a lot of fun – so we started doing our homework.

Our initial goal was to create a visual baseline for our sandscapes, focusing on the content we need to build our diverse natural biomes. Next, we can start adding our thematic developments.

Early in the project, the team made a fair number of trips to the English Lake District to collect references and capture photogrammetric content. For many of the non-British people on the team (myself included, as an American) this was incredibly strange. For anyone who has never visited before, it is a very diverse area of ​​great natural beauty and diversity. It is very wet and green, with lakes and streams everywhere, and enormous stone formations towering over the high plateaus and hilltops. The entire area is full of greenery, ferns and mosses.

As I was new to driving in the UK, I found those little roads in Cumbria terrifying! There are slate stone walls on one edge, and steep cliffs into the lake on the other. But the trips were very educational, and the views were exciting. By the end of the trip, we had lots of great references, great photogrammetry content, and were confident in our ability to visually set the game in northern Britain.

After that, it was the ups and downs. How can we make ours a world different from a typical holiday trip to a beautiful natural destination? How can we layer in an older era and distort things a little more?

We started looking to storytelling focusing on folk horror, sci-fi and old British fantasy for inspiration. Movies like The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Project, Annihilation, and Midsommar were great to watch. Then of course we have BBC shows like Doctor Who, The Prisoner and The Quatermass Xperiment, as well as books by John Wyndham, who has a lot of weird and wonderful stories.

We wanted the player to feel like they are stepping into an older era. The real Windscale nuclear accident occurred in 1957, which is when the quarantine began in our game. Since we intended it to be an antique, how could we integrate it into a natural area? This was a tough one, and we had a lot of conversations about it. I mean, especially in the forest, where the trees would have looked roughly the same in 1957 or 2024 or 1066.

We began to ask ourselves who lives there, away from the comforts of village life? How can they survive without manufactured resources?

The answer was very simple, these outcasts would survive just as they had in ancient times. We will take them back and have them use what is at hand. Putty (and plaster) construction became our favorite architectural style. Thatched roofs, woven branches, vines and dry stone structures also seem to be appropriate. Although many of these traditional building methods can still be seen in modern times, they are very old and foreign to many of us who grew up elsewhere.

Then, taking into account our inspirational media reference, and our desire for a more British feel, we started creating more avatars. Ancient signs, statues and wickerwork are mixed with more traditional poles and banners to give strong pagan religious overtones.

We think you’ll love exploring Casterfell Woods and discovering the secrets it holds Atomvale It will be released on March 27 for Xbox Series We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the game.