Everything we know about Atomic Heart

Next to nobody had heard of Atomic Heart before it dropped a disturbing, explosive trailer in May 2018—now, it's one of this year's most anticipated shooters. 

Its inspirations are varied: you'll spot flashes of Metro, BioShock, Nier: Automata and Stalker in its art and gameplay footage, while the world is a product of both Russian sci-fi and the experiences of the dev team, some of whom grew up in Russia. But what do you actually get when you mix all of those influences together? Here's everything we know about Atomic Heart.

What is it?

An alternate reality Soviet-era first-person combat game with killer robots, clown-themed torture chambers, and grandmas trapped in flowing molecular gloop. Yeah, it's weird. Its combat is a mixture of shooting and melee swinging with improvised weapons, and the scarcity of ammo means you'll want to sneak through some areas, too.

What's the story? The premise?

The devs say the story is a bit like an episode of Black Mirror—if the show were set in a warped version of the Soviet Union sometime between the '30s and '60s. As Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni told IGN last year, the USSR still exists in this reality, "but a technical revolution has already taken place: robots, the Internet, holograms have already been invented ... all these innovations are submerged in the atmosphere of communism, confrontation with the imperialism of the West and all the other inherent political and social aspects of the time.”

Robots have been mass-produced to help with agriculture, defence, timber production and simple household chores—and now they're starting to rebel. You're a mentally-unstable KGB special agent called P-3, and the government has sent you to investigate a manufacturing facility that's fallen silent. 

On arrival it's clear that everything is, to put it mildly, royally fucked. Robots are out of control, once-dead creatures walk again, and traps are set to ensnare any who enter. It's your job to find out what's happened and put an end to the chaos. 

Somewhere between the murdering and madness is a love story, although we don't know how big a part it will play.

Here's all the Atomic Heart gameplay you need to see

Mundfish tend to go a while between gameplay videos but when the show up they really show up. Atomic Heart gets weirder, wilder, and prettier every time we see it.

In summer 2020 Mundfish published a 7 minute gameplay and mini-boss fight video introducing the enemy Plyush. It starts off with the protagonist exploring a museum and clearing out less-threatening enemies before encountering a spooky mess of a boss.

In February 2020 we got to see a quick gameplay teaser showing some of Atomic Heart's retro-tech environments and a few really huge enemies including those wild drill snakes. 

Just before that official teaser in 2020 we also saw some footage courtesy of Russian gaming service 4game who played four hours of an in-development build spanning five in-game areas, and has released a lengthy video detailing just about everything they saw. It's a slightly tough watch—being entirely in Russian with less than fantastic English subtitles—but it's good to see some gameplay after all of 2019's doubts about the game. 

The neatest bit discusses enemy ecosystems. The bee-like security cameras live together in a hive from which they'll emerge to hunt you down if you're detected by another enemy. Hacking or disabling these hives limits how many of the bee drones are active, meaning you'll want to plan your targets as you progress through an area. 

There's also this cinematic teaser that depicts a cryptic conversation between what we assume is your main character and a shadowy figure on a screen. The trailer is only in Russian, but you can turn on closed captions to get the full picture.

Mundfish released 10 minutes of Atomic Heart gameplay in 2019. It gives you a glimpse at both the shooting and melee combat, as well as the weird world the devs have created. Also note the zipline ropes, the use of quick-time events, and the large robot enemy at the end of the video, which we suspect is some sort of boss.

Atomic Heart system requirements

Atomic Heart's Steam page lists both minimum and recommended system requirements. You'll need at least an i5 4460 / AMD FX-6300 CPU, 6 GB of RAM and a GTX 760 or R7 260x to run it. The recommended specs are an i7 3770, 8 GB RAM and a GTX 1060. 

However, there's a chance those are both placeholders: the game's website says it's "hard to tell exact requirements at the moment" (although it does say they'll be "modest"). 

Is Atomic Heart an open-world game?

It's not clear. The world encompasses "the entire Soviet Union—a vast circle, the borders of which reach the Arctic in the north, Altai Mountain in the south, and with plains, lakes and much more in the middle". Different areas of Plant 3826 will be spread "all over the map". You'll get some choice about the order you tackle them in.

In an interview last year, Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni told Austin that Atomic Heart was "conceived as an open-world game", but later declined to confirm that the map was fully explorable. When asked whether the world was seamless, he told Wccftech he couldn't yet answer. "Now, I can say that there will be many different biomes," he added.

We reckon it might be a series of connected levels spread out across a large map, Metro Exodus-style. It has a railway system to whisk you between different locations.

Atomic Heart will have a crafting system for makeshift weapons

Atomic Heart's weapons are makeshift, and you'll piece them together from "various metal parts, detached from robots or taken from the household appliances or fragments obtained during the game". It's not known exactly how the crafting system works, but the image above suggests there will be plenty of ways to boost your damage stats.

Will Atomic Heart support VR headsets?

A 2017 teaser listed SteamVR and PSVR as release platforms for Atomic Heart, but Mundfish has since said the game won't get a full VR release. "There are no such plans now," it told Wccftech earlier this year. "Maybe as we get closer to the game release, some elements of the game will be available in VR, but now it’s hard to say which and in what form."

The devs previously released a VR game called Soviet Lunapark VR that was set in the same universe as Atomic Heart, but it was removed from Steam earlier this year. Anyone that had paid for Soviet Lunapark will get a free copy of Atomic Heart.

Atomic Heart will have PvP multiplayer—and maybe co-op too

Atomic Heart's story is designed to be played solo, but the devs say they're "thinking about co-op mode". They've kept schtum about what exactly they're planning. 

They've revealed more concrete plans for PvP multiplayer. "If you are ready to challenge other players, a secret railway will get you to a special region meant for PvP battle," reads the game's website.

Atomic Heart development controversy

If you've been following Atomic Heart's development, you'll probably know that a bit of controversy bubbled up in January 2019 after a report—citing anonymous sources within Mundfish—told of mass layoffs and incompetency at the studio. A summary of the report, posted on a Russian gamedev-related Telegram channel (an instant messaging service), can be found on ResetEra.

The devs partially responded to these claims in a later interview with a Russian outlet. The (roughly) translated interview is here: basically, they dispute the initial report, and say the game is far more polished than the Telegram channel claimed.

In its Wccftech interview, the team also moved to reassure fans about its development process. "[Our] experienced developers, who worked in large game companies like Ubisoft … are experts in making AAA games and complex subsystems such as online multiplayer, AI ecosystems, analytics and scoring systems and other complex and high-tech tasks," they said. 

"Also, we’re working closely with Epic Games and we stay informed about all the latest technologies and UE4 features before they actually get publicly available. Our partners from Nvidia help us in graphics and performance optimization. So, for all the reasons described above our game is being developed at the highest technical level."

Mundfish has provided development updates infrequently, although a Discord post—copied and pasted to Reddit—hinted at more regular updates going forward. The team is currently putting together a video to show what it has been working on, and has opened a new office in Moscow, the Discord post said.

Atomic Heart RTX raytracing demo

The game is being built with Nvidia's latest RTX tech, including raytracing and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), and the team has released a tech demo that you can download and try here.

If you'd rather just watch a video of the tech in action, this video will do the trick. The team is particularly happy with how the tech improves lighting and shadows, and says the performance is holding up well.