Earlier this year, Atomfall took us on a weird and wild jaunt through the English countryside. Influenced by classic British speculative fiction, the game imagines a timeline in which the Windscale Disaster took a turn for the worse, creating a quarantine zone for our player character to escape. But British spec-fic is a deep well, so Wicked Isle draws from it for Atomfall’s DLC expansion.
Game Name: Atomfall: Wicked Isle
Platforms: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Publisher: Rebellion Developments
Release Date: June 3rd, 2025
Price: $19.99
In a game that runs the gamut from quaint British village mystery to atomic-age sci-fi, you can’t blame Rebellion for wanting to explore even more genre territory in Atomfall. Wicked Isle fleshes out the folk horror side of the equation, with a Wicker Man-flavored excursion to Midsummer Island to see what the inhabitants have to offer. And as British horror iterates on itself, it also lines up nicely with the release of 28 Years Later. So Wicked Isle is a timely expansion.
Chasing Leads and Running Errands in Atomfall Wicked Isle
Brought to the isle by Bill Anderson, players receive a task from the grizzled fisherman to find some kind of secret ingredient hidden in the Abbey. Since this is Atomfall, players can decide to do that or just venture off on their own. Since helping this man make his mead didn’t sound too enterprising, I went off on my own. And it’s good that I did, as the ingredient search is oddly a red herring, simply existing to get you to explore when you do follow it.
Midsummer Island has a few neat locales, from the central crumbling Abbey that the game clearly wants you to investigate, to a rundown fishing village, a raider camp run by a pirate cosplayer, and the obligatory cult in the woods. Exploring the area is engaging, but since it’s an island, it doesn’t take too long to see everything. But what you do see is eerily gorgeous, from fog rolling across the waves to the glow of iridescent vegetation.
And there are some neat surprises here and there. My favorite detour involved stumbling upon a stranded journalist. She asked me to return to the mainland to gather documents from her source about what happened at the Windscale plant. Despite being a fetch quest, it did shed more light on Atomfall’s mystery than anything I encountered while playing the base game. Admittedly, I had mostly focused on escaping in my first run.
The problem is that a few of the quests in Wicked Isle involve collecting documents on the mainland. Atomfall’s lack of a fast-travel system never bothered me in the main game, since I got to see new sights. But sending players back to the original areas in the DLC? Fast-travel would’ve come in handy.
In the Shadow of Atomfall
Unfortunately, Wicked Isle leans heavily on the main campaign of Atomfall, to its detriment. You can’t start Wicked Isle if you’ve finished the game. Instead, you have to reload an earlier save or start from scratch. The latter wouldn’t be too bad, except Wicked Isle‘s new endings also rely on you finishing the game to unlock them. It’s one of those expansions that is literally that: expanding the base game with extra content, but not extending it to a post-game experience.
That said, when Wicked Isle unmoors itself from the main campaign, it has glimmers of intrigue and novelty. There are new enemies, fish-people who emerge from the water to leap towards you menacingly. There are new weapons, including the piratical blunderbuss shotgun and the eerie corrupted daggers. They’re new, but couldn’t pry me away from my tried-and-true cricket bat. Though I did employ a new version of the bow for ranged attacks. And there are new skills. One that lets you see movements of enemies through walls is particularly useful.
The Mysteries of Wicked Isle
And, of course, since a major joy of Atomfall was the choose-your-own-adventure level of freedom, Wicked Isle has some of that here. Some. There are three new endings players can get. They funnel back into the main campaign. These endings are more like new flavors for the main campaign as opposed to their own standalone stories.
But in getting to them, the core mystery surrounding what became of the monks in the Abbey is one of the better storylines in either the game or the DLC. Getting to see flashbacks makes the stakes feel higher, as opposed to reading about what happened through notes and letters. Again, because it’s on an island, Wicked Isle can’t offer the boundless freedom of Atomfall itself. But what it lacks in diverging paths, it partially makes up for with its more cohesive story. It’s just a shame that it has to funnel into Atomfall‘s primary narrative about The Interchange.
It’s worth mentioning who Wicked Isle is for and who it is not for, and what to expect as a result. If you finished the game and want a nice standalone story expansion, Wicked Isle may not be for you. And if you didn’t enjoy Atomfall to begin with, the DLC won’t make you a fan. But if you haven’t played Atomfall, or plan on replaying the whole game, Wicked Isle is a pleasant enough way to add a five-hour tour’s worth of content into the core experience.
Review Disclosure Statement: Atomfall: Wicked Isle was provided to us by Rebellion Developments for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.
Atomfall Wicked Isle
Summary
Atomfall Wicked Isle starts off promising with a trip to an eerie island inhabited by cults and creepy fish people. But the call of the mainland proves too much as it segues back to the base game in many ways. It’s a fine diversion, but doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from what’s already in the game.
Pros
- Eccentric characters and storylines.
- Excellent ethereal visuals.
- Inventive new skills.
Cons
- New endings are just variations of those of the original narrative.
- Too reliant on fetch quests that bring you back to the base game.
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Atomfall Wicked Isle
