Mundfish has released a new trailer for its upcoming first-person shooterAtomic Heart, and it’s fair to say that the footage in the short gameplay montage clarifies almost nothing about the game but definitely serves to pique interest.
The first three seconds of the teaser seem innocent enough, with a couple of vehicles broken down in a mud-filled clearing…until a transparent globular structure as tall as a building becomes visible on the far side of said clearing. Then weirdness ensues. A gigantic metallic worm flies across the sky, a strange machine with a humanoid face stands in an empty room, glowing cables emerge from a gloved human hand. And that’s just what happens up to the halfway point of the Atomic Heart trailer.
For those who may have forgotten about the existence of this sci-fi open world shooter, that’s no surprise. Atomic Heart was first announced by Russian game developer and publisher Mundfish in 2018, but very little has been shared about the game since other than an occasional YouTube video and images posted on Twitter. Originally, the official Atomic Heart website listed the end of 2019 as the release date for a beta version of the game, but that date has now changed to simply TBA.
Atomic Heart has been described as a cross between Bioshock and Fallout with a creepy and otherworldly twist, and the little that has been revealed about the game corroborates that. Set in an alternate universe during the peak of the Soviet Union, sometime between the ‘30s and ‘60s, Atomic Heart follows the story of a special agent called P-3 who is sent by the government to investigate facility “3826” after it goes radio silent, only to discover that things have gone horribly and sometimes gorily wrong.
In a 2018 interview, Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni explained that in this alternate version of the Soviet Union, a massive technological revolution has taken place, which resulted in the internet, holograms, and robots already being integrated into everyday life. The humanoid machines have been mass produced to help with agriculture, defense, and even simple household chores, but in Atomic Heart they for some reason have gone a little haywire and are beginning to rebel.
Fighting in Atomic Heart is about what one would expect from an FPS, with a sneaking mechanic as well as gunplay and melee combat using improvised weapons. A crafting system will allow players to construct their own weapons using parts found on household appliances or robots.
Atomic Heart will be released for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
