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.

Watch the trippy Atomic Heart cinematic teaser

Developer Mundfish put out a new 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.

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.

10 minutes of Atomic Heart gameplay

Mundfish released 10 minutes of Atomic Heart gameplay earlier this year, and you can watch the full video below. 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 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 recent 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 recently 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, the video above 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.

We've previously described Atomic Heart as an "offbeat Soviet-era shooter," and also "strange" and "weird," but all we've actually seen of it so far are a few brief, bizarre clips that look like—well, the truth is, I don't even know. I like it an awful lot, though. And now, courtesy of IGN, we can finally lay eyes on some proper gameplay—and as promised, it is weird. 

There's a lot going on here: You can see elements of BioShock, Stalker, Zeno Clash, Cradle, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and Fallout, and that's before you get to the underwater farm animals and Brezhnev disco. I love the way it looks but I wonder if developer Mundfish will be able to meet its ambitious goals: Its previous game, Soviet Lunapark VR, launched on Steam last summer to decidedly "mixed" reviews, and by all appearances Atomic Heart is a much greater undertaking. 

As for what it's all about, the Mundfish website is sort of helpful, but mostly not. "The story is about all the things that could have happened in the reality of the USSR but didn’t. Technical revolution has already occurred, robots, the Internet, holograms have already been invented, but all these innovations are immersed in the atmosphere of communism, imperialism and confrontation with the West," it says. "The protagonist of the game is a Soviet KGB officer and his Party sends him to the facility 3826 and are waiting for the report." 

As shown in the trailer, the game world will be divided into several different regions, some on the surface and some in the abandoned underground areas of the facility. Melee combat will be a big part of the game, and most of the enemies will be robots constructed at the facility that are basically commu-Cylons, "made to serve the needs of the Soviet industry or to help Soviet citizens in daily life." Naturally, they also come equipped with combat subroutines in case war breaks out.   

Atomic Heart is expected to come out sometime this year, and I am very much looking forward to it. 

In today's showing of Weird But Cool Atomic Heart footage, a character appears trapped in a tunnel of molecular mass. Even from the little we've seen so far, I'm certain that won't be the strangest sentence ever written about Munfish's upcoming alternate Soviet-era shooter.  

Named '"Baba" (Grandma) Zina trapped in Polymers. Facility 3826', the latest short depicts a fluid, Donnie Darko-like structure, weaving its way around the same deteriorated compound we saw last week. Check it out above. 

It's not clear how long Baba Zina's been trapped in suspended animation, but it seems she's been caught off guard as her handbag and personal effects lie strewn around the floor. There are also fish swimming around in the tunnels because, well, of course there are. 

Do the rumpled rugs underfoot mean Baba was dashing around/away from something in a hurry? And who's the dude creeping around ominously in the backdrop? Like last week, I do not know (and I'm not sure I want to).  

Atomic Heart is without a concrete launch date, but is due in 2019 as per its Steam page. Here's last week's facility footage, too:  

Hot on the heels of last week's horrifying Clown Trap video, Atomic Heart has shared another short but intriguing snippet of footage. Titled 'Soviet Television at Facility 3826', it looks like this: 

Posted to developer Mundfish's YouTube channel, the above comes without a description and leaves us with more questions than answers. 

My geography's rubbish, but I think the circled facility location at the trailer's outset is in the north east area of Kazakhstan, at the borders of both Russia and Mongolia. The facility itself has clearly been ransacked, but the peeling wallpaper and general state of disrepair suggests some time has passed since whatever went down. 

That said, the dead bodies strewn around the floor appear fresh—and the room's electricity is clearly still switched on, with the television set rolling and that ceiling-hung robotic arm, grabber thing flexing away. 

It's weird, it's intriguing, and it's what we've come to expect from the game we so far know very little about. Note the desk items that briefly appear around the eight second mark above—that blue glow suggests they're collectables, which in turn suggests the above might be in-game footage. 

Who knows. Atomic Heart is without a hard launch date as yet, but is due in 2019 as per its Steam page.

Atomic Heart is an alternate Soviet-era shooter that echoes BioShock, Nier: Automata and Stalker. Its trailer is… well, have a gander at the above and decide for yourself. Let's agree that it's out there. 

And let's agree that its latest Clown Trap teaser is awful. 22 seconds of awful.

I've so many questions. Who designed this thing? Why is it here? What's with all the scaffolding? And what about the solitary wooden chair in the background—which, if horror films have taught us anything, we'll probably be strapped to against our will at some point. 

That head rotation. Those pop-up blades. The fact that that's probably blood and not red paint. I'm scared.

No launch date beyond "2019", as per Atomic Heart's Steam page. Let me leave you with the blurb that features there: 

Atomic Heart is an adventure first-person shooter, events of which unfold in an alternative universe, during the high noon of the Soviet Union. The main character of the game is a special agent, who was sent to a highly secret object by the Soviet government after it went radio silent.

Soviet setting with a pitch of insanity, action-packed gameplay and a thrilling story will keep you entertained for the whole duration of your journey into the world of Atomic Heart. Unfold the secrets, restore peace and order, and show the Motherland what you got!

Responses edited for clarity and length.  

Russian developer Mundfish quietly released the first trailer for Soviet-era shooter Atomic Heart last week, and it drew a crowd almost immediately. As Joe said, at first blush Atomic Heart echoes games like BioShock, Nier: Automata and Stalker in its art and themes. A closer look reveals a dash of Destiny and some open-world inklings, to say nothing of the killer clowns and robots. Just what the hell is Atomic Heart? I spoke to Mundfish to find out.

"Atomic Heart was conceived as an open-world game," said Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni. "We want to enable players to choose the sequence of actions themselves instead of limiting them to a linear path. The world of the game is in fact 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. At the same time, the huge infrastructure of Plant 3826 and its underground facilities are spread all over the map. The key infrastructure elements are connected by railways. As for whether this is a shooter: in some places it is, it depends where you can find ammo." 

So, Atomic Heart is an open-world first-person shooter set in an alternate Soviet Union where some seriously strange stuff's going down. The railway infrastructure Bagratuni touched on makes me think of Metro, which is another game for our already towering pile of speculative influences. But while some elements of Atomic Heart are undeniably similar to other games, what actually inspired its bonkers setting?

"There's no simple answer," Bagratuni said. "Artyom, the author of the Atomic Heart synopsis, has been working on the script for more than seven years. Since he and some of the other members of the team were born in the USSR, many ideas came from those times. Many are comparing it with BioShock and Fallout, but in fact we took the atmosphere from our childhood, from books we grew up on. Strugatsky, Lem, Harrison. That fantasy had a special place in the life of a Soviet citizen. And when all this is merged with the internet, robotics, the Soviet Union and food coupons, you get Atomic Heart."

Robotics, in particular, is a driving force in Atomic Heart's wild Soviet Union. "Plant 3826 was originally producing agricultural robots for working in the fields, gathering timber, protecting the peace and working at homes," Bagratuni said. "They were very popular in the USSR, so the machines were everywhere. There was a robot in every house, in every enterprise. Then they went mad." 

In a blog post, the studio also mentioned "tales of the dead rising back up and walking among the living" following an experiment by one Dr. Stockhausen. So not only killer robots, but also bonafide zombies. And yet, as another blog post explains, Atomic Heart has a love story at its core. "Even the toughest times can't stop two loving hearts from embracing each other," it reads, referring to two employees from facility 3826. Bagratuni described Atomic Heart's protagonist as "crazy" but inventive, which leads us to Atomic Heart's crafting system.  

"The main character's weapon is made in a post-apocalyptic manner," Bagratuni said. "He is crazy but he is not a fool. He can solder and work with technology. Weapons are assembled from various metal parts, detached from robots or taken from the household appliances or fragments obtained during the game. Almost everything on your path can be used as a murder weapon. The approach to close-range weaponry is the same: you use whatever you can find." 

Mundfish is keeping Atomic Heart's mission structure and the specifics of its world close to its chest, but Bagratuni did address the confusion surrounding the studio's other game, Soviet Lunapark VR. "This is a VR arcade shooter which is not connected plot-wise or gameplay-wise to the main game," he said, "but the events of Lunapark are happening in the same universe and give the opportunity to see some zones from Plant 3826." 

Think of it as a primer for Atomic Heart. Soviet Lunapark VR is scheduled to release later this month. Atomic Heart is listed for a 2018 release on Steam, and Mundfish says they're hoping to share more precise information within the next three months.

Atomic Heart's abandoned Soviet-era setting echoes Stalker. Its incongruous architecture, reclaimed by nature, and hostile automatons reflect Nier: Automata. And its ensemble of gibbering nasties, first-person perspective, and, of course, penchant for battering baddies with blunt objects reminds me of BioShock. 

Which is to say: Atomic Heart looks promising. Developed by Moscow outfit Mundfish, it's due at some point this year. Feast your eyes on an action-packed trailer:

Atomic Heart describes itself as an adventure first-person shooter, set in an alternative universe "during the high noon of the Soviet Union". Players fill the shoes of a special agent sent to a top secret facility—Facility 3826—by the Soviet government, after contact with the area was lost. 

Within, players are met with a robot revolt, the dev explains on its official site, as they strive to restore peace and order. Moreover, Mundfish makes mention of "mind-boggling" abominations, experiments and the dead rising—which may be what's driving those gazeless gigglers in the trailer above. I'm terrified already. 

Again, no hard launch date for Atomic Heart just yet, but its Steam page reckons its due in 2018. Mundfish is also working on Soviet Luna Park VR, which is due at some point this month.