When Mundfish’s Atomic Heart launched on February 21, 2023, nobody quite knew what to expect. The Cyprus-based studio had never released a full commercial title before (their only prior work was a minor VR experiment) yet they had been teasing a strikingly original vision for years: a first-person shooter set in an alternate-history Soviet Union of 1955, where advanced robotics and AI had transformed society, only for everything to go catastrophically wrong.
Players stepped into the boots of Major P-3 (nicknamed ‘Nechaev’), a Soviet special agent dispatched to Facility 3826, a vast research complex, to investigate a catastrophic robot uprising. What followed was a delirious blend of retrofuturistic aesthetics, bizarre Soviet propaganda imagery, surreal horror, and propulsive FPS combat. Critics immediately compared it to BioShock, and not without reason: like that 2007 classic, Atomic Heart built a broken utopia around a single powerful idea and populated it with memorable, unsettling set-pieces.
The game earned solid, if mixed, reviews. On Metacritic, the PC version scored a 78, the PS5 version a 75, and the Xbox Series X/S version a 72. Many praised its wild imagination, visual artistry, and memorable boss encounters, while some took issue with uneven pacing and a divisive open-world structure.
“Deeply ambitious, highly imaginative, and consistently impressive atompunk-inspired attempt at picking up where the likes of BioShock left off“
– IGN
But commercially, the game was a smash. Within just two hours of its Asian launch on release day, Atomic Heart had already generated $2 million USD in sales. Its availability on Xbox Game Pass on day one supercharged its reach dramatically, and by the time Summer Game Fest 2025 rolled around, Mundfish celebrated a milestone that few debut studios ever reach: 10 million players worldwide.
The studio followed up with a series of DLC expansions: Annihilation Instinct, Trapped in Limbo, and Enchantment Under the Sea, each expanding the lore, adding new mechanics, and continuing the story of P-3 and his polymer glove. The final DLC is still expected to be released in April in 2026, rounding out what has become one of the more substantial post-launch content plans in recent memory.
So… Atomic Heart 2 Is Actually Happening
Plans for a sequel were reportedly in motion as early as 2021, before the original game had even shipped. In June 2023, just months after the first game’s release, Mundfish studio head Robert Bagratuni confirmed publicly that development on a sequel had begun. But the formal, unmistakable announcement came on June 8, 2025, during the Summer Game Fest showcase, where a dazzling reveal trailer dropped and made it official: Atomic Heart 2 is real, it’s in active development, and it looks enormous.
The timing was no accident. Mundfish had announced that same week that the original game had surpassed 10 million players. The sequel reveal was, in many ways, a victory lap and a promise simultaneously.
“Ever since the launch of the original Atomic Heart, we’ve been floored by the unwavering support and enthusiasm of our playerbase,” said Bagratuni in an official statement. “It’s been hard sitting on this announcement for so long, but today we’re incredibly happy to finally and officially announce that Atomic Heart 2 is coming, and it’s bigger and bolder than the original.”
Story: The World at the Brink of Collapse
Atomic Heart 2 picks up directly where the first game left off, including events from the DLC story content. Major Nechaev (P-3) has been freed from the Limbo state induced by the mysterious Charles at the end of the canonical first-game ending. What lies ahead is a world on the verge of total collapse.
Where the original game confined players mostly to the grounds of Facility 3826, the sequel dramatically expands its scope. The narrative now plays out on a global scale, exploring the full consequences of the robot uprising and the technological catastrophe set in motion at the end of the first game. The tagline – “The truth runs deeper than you think” – suggests that the conspiracy and the secrets behind the Atomic Heart universe are far from fully revealed.
The reveal trailer showcased a stunning mix of new locations far beyond the rusted Soviet complex of the first game: sweeping futuristic cityscapes, sprawling wilderness, and what appears to be a massive neo-futurist metropolis that Bagratuni has confirmed will be “an integral part of the game loop.” New characters appear alongside returning fan favorites, and early glimpses suggest a narrative with higher emotional stakes and greater moral complexity than before.
Gameplay: Bigger, Bolder, More Open
If the first Atomic Heart was a corridor-and-open-world hybrid, the sequel sounds like a full leap into a living, breathing open world. According to the official Steam page, Atomic Heart 2 features a “living world” packed with side activities alongside a main story that unfolds at global scale.
Getting around this world will be a serious upgrade from the battered cars of the first game. The announcement trailer alone showed players using a neo-futurist glider jet, a parachute, a surfboard (presumably on water), a returning grapple hook from the DLC, and a spherical robot companion that can transform between a bipedal brawler and a futuristic vehicle.
Combat is also receiving a significant overhaul. Mundfish is promising an “enhanced, explosive combat system” that lets players use both hands simultaneously, combining the iconic polymer glove’s supernatural abilities with traditional melee and ranged weapons at the same time, rather than switching between them. This was a frequently requested change from players of the original.
The RPG layer is also being deepened considerably. Bagratuni described the new system as featuring “more complex and branching skill trees,” adding a more RPG-like layer to the gameplay. The studio has called the sequel a “living world” full of diverse opportunities for exploration and player expression.
Boss encounters, perhaps the most universally praised element of the first game, appear to be back in spectacular form. The reveal trailer showed a massive, Attack on Titan-style giant stomping through a cityscape, suggesting that the set-piece design ambitions have only grown.
Who Is Making It and When Can We Play It?
Atomic Heart 2 is being developed by Mundfish, the same studio behind the original. Robert Bagratuni, founder and CEO of Mundfish, is personally directing the sequel as well, signaling that creative continuity is a priority. The studio has expanded significantly since the first game’s release, buoyed by its commercial success.
The game is confirmed for PC (Windows), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
As for a release date: don’t hold your breath just yet. Bagratuni was candid in post-announcement interviews, describing Atomic Heart 2 as “a few years out from release.” Most analysts and outlets expect the game no earlier than 2027, and possibly later, particularly since Mundfish still has one final DLC for the original game to release first. And they’ve simultaneously announced The Cube, a standalone multiplayer action MMORPG set in the same universe, which is also in development.
The Cube, revealed alongside Atomic Heart 2 at Summer Game Fest, centers on a mysterious giant levitating cube that appears in the sky, creating a constantly shifting battlefield for players to explore and fight within. It’s a bold expansion of the Atomic Heart universe into multiplayer territory, and suggests Mundfish has very big ambitions for what they’re now calling the “Atomic Universe.”
Final Thoughts
Atomic Heart was a remarkable debut: flawed, divisive in places, but unmistakably original and wildly imaginative in ways that few shooters manage. The fact that it found 10 million players despite its rough edges and a complicated launch environment speaks to the genuine appeal of its world-building and vision.
Atomic Heart 2 looks (at least on paper and in its reveal trailer) like a studio swinging for the fences with the lessons of their first game fully absorbed. A global scale, an open living world, revamped combat, deeper RPG systems, and the same commitment to stunning retrofuturistic visuals, it’s an ambitious brief.