The year is 1962 and you’ve just woken up in the shadow of the Windscale (now Sellafield) nuclear power station in Cumbria, five years after its catastrophic meltdown. Trapped in the sizeable quarantine zone surrounding the accident site, you must stay alive long enough to figure out how to escape – a task made rather more challenging by the presence of aggressive cultists, irradiated monsters and highly territorial terror bees. Imagine Stalker, but set in northern England, and you’re edging towards what Oxford-based developer Rebellion has in store.
Fallout may seem like another obvious inspiration for this irradiated game world, but after playing a two-hour demo, it’s clear the game draws more from classic British sci-fi. Here you are, stuck in the picturesque Lake District, with its lush woodlands, gurgling rivers and dry-stone walls. But all around you are the burned-out remains of 1960s cars and tanks, abandoned farm buildings and odd sounds and symbols that suggest something extremely sinister is happening. The development team have mentioned Dr Who, The Wicker Man the novels of John Wyndham as key inspirations, and you can see it in the grubby dislocated scene all around you. Approach a phone box and pick up the ringing handset, and you may hear a disembodied voice warning you about an apparently friendly character you met up the road. Stray into a cave and a ghost-like monster comes at you, infecting you with a paranoid mind virus. This is very much the stuff of Quatermass and Jon Pertwee-era Who.
