Atomic Heart is one of the main surprises of 2023. It was difficult to imagine that the Russian game industry is still capable of something so complex and large-scale. At the same time, the development of the project, despite the German name of the Mundfish studio, went in the best Russian traditions – contrary to everything, with overcoming and pursuit of the dream. Where did the main game of recent years come from for our latitudes, what it could be and what has reached – today we will discuss, dear comrades.
The beginning began
Like any large work, Atomic Heart began with the idea of one person-the creative art director of the Mundfish studio Artyom Galeev.
In the zero years, Galeev was engaged in advertising, and not where, but on the Muz-TV, which was then stylish, fashionable and youth. There, by a happy chance, he met Robert Bagratuni, the future head of the Mundfish studio.
Galeev, like a real creator and GIK, had long dreamed of creating his own game universe. Therefore, in parallel to work in advertising, it corps over the setting, where the theme of alternative USSR was already clearly visible. On YouTube, you can even find a collection of its early developments – a video called Escape, where some familiar images are visible. Galeev called that universe “3826”, and this number will become very important for Atomic Heart.
It is noteworthy that the artist had to work on a setting on pure enthusiasm, hiding from everyone he does. Nevertheless, in Russia, those years were treated as children’s fun, to which adult wealthy uncles should not have a relationship.
Galeev showed the fruits of his work only Bagratuni or according to the passport Maxim Zatsepin, with whom they had already made friends at that time. Roberta was impressed in earnest: “I saw that this was a real art, and realized that I wanted to develop in the direction of computer graphics,” Bagratuni said.
But from this, their path in the gaming industry, of course, did not begin. Artyom and Robert worked in the field of advertising until 2008, when the global financial crisis struck. The economy sagged strongly, orders disappeared, plans for life collapsed-it was necessary to do something.
And then the light of mobile and browser games shone on the horizon, whose simplicity and profitability promised good prospects. Bagratuni, who from 2008 to 2016, where he did not have time to work, dived into this path, which allowed him to make the necessary acquaintances. In Newmedia Stars, for example, he met with Evgenia Sedova, one of the future founders of Mundfish.
A little later, Galeev decided to give up an advertisement and leave his head in the game industry, as he saw in this area the opportunity to truly realize his ideas and talents. According to him, it was a good way to “transform creative pride into a quiet profitable harbor”.
The first steps
In 2017, Robert Bagratuni, Evgenia Sedov and Artyom Galeev founded the Mundfish game studio to make a large -scale project at the Bioshock and Fallout level. They could continue to successfully rivet mobile game, but they felt that it was time to move on. Bagratuni recalled: “We did not consider mobile or casual games, not because they are bad or we are some special, I just like to do what I would like to play in. I have no mobile game ".
The guys made Napoleonic plans and, of course, serious budgets were required for such manners. Sedova and Bagratuni put their savings in production, but this was not enough. Therefore, 50.5% of the shares of the company sold to a certain Tatyana Korchagina, the wife of their long -time partner Sergei Korchagin, the owner of one of the largest milk processing enterprises in Altai.
Later Mundfish has concluded a partnership agreement with NVIDIA. Technoigant helped novice developers not only with the development of Unreal Engine 4, but also with the promotion of the project.
Looking ahead, I note that among other things, in 2021, Mundfish managed to reach the Chinese media giant Tencent. How much money the Chinese have allocated is unknown, but for sure these resources have helped a young company a lot.
It is also important to note that Mundfish initially emphasized that they did not want to cooperate with major publishers, afraid to lose their rights to the universe. Therefore, they agreed to work with modest, but respected French from Focus Entertainment, under the wing of which a series as Plague Tale, Sherlock Holmes, Styx and others visited.
At the beginning, the studio had only 20 employees and they did … no, not atomic heart yet. The first Mundfish project was the SOVIT LUNAPARK VR game. Lunapark was a pen of pen for the developers and a testing grounds, in which the features of the future universe of the Atomics are visible.
The main task of the game was the shooting of the zombie in the lunapard at the enterprise 3826, where everything went through one well -known place.
Soviet Lunapark meant cooperative passage from 2 to 4 players. Everyone was given a choice of 4 characters: engineer, nurses, soldier and officer. All of them possessed a unique arsenal and abilities, such as slowing the time and taming zombies.
Despite the potential and good graphics, the Mundfish debut project has little reviews and he did not use success. Now Lunapark is removed from all digital stores and it is impossible to buy it.
Let the first game of the studio not enough stars from the sky, but she let many creative ideas and became the first step towards a truly great success in practice. Probably, if Soviet Lunapark had not come out – Atomic Heart would not have come out.
Through thorns to the stars
Atomic Heart to release was not easy. On the one hand, on the very first promotional Roll in 2017, the project captured the attention of a large number of gamers.
But a few days after the publication of the video, a scandal occurred, and a lot of. Telegram channel “Gamdev, which we deserved” dumped the sea of insiders allegedly from former mundfish employees. According to them, Atomic Heart at that time moved nowhere, no one had a whole vision of the game, and sensible personnel constantly left the studio. At that time, there was no other information, so the people did not know what to believe, what only filed indignation and misunderstanding.
Before the release, the heads of the studio had big problems due to their persistent unwillingness to communicate and share the details of the development. It is clear that, due to pandemia and the complications of business relations, it was difficult to work in the background, and taking the IC from the hut is a stupid idea.
However, the lack of information tropicanzacasino.uk always gives rise to distrust and speculation. For a long time, people simply did not believe that the game exists and could enter the market. Even the demonstration of gameplay in 2019 did not correct the situation. Soviet utopia, steep robots, combat system from BIOSHOCK – one audience rejoiced and demanded additives, the other talked about fakes and photoshop.
To correct the situation, Mundfish took a strong step – they invited the correspondent from the DTF website Artemy Leonov to personally check if the game exists. Despite the lack of footage, he brought information from the studio with more than.
According to Leonov, there were really dismissal, but for the most part they concerned the Soviet Lunapark VR team, and these employees had no relations to Atomic Heart at all. Accordingly, they could not really know anything. The game existed and Artemy calmly passed several levels. Work on the project went clearly and according to plan.
Unfortunately, the public skepticism did not fade away after that. The case was not helped by either the cancellation of the promised multiplayer, nor a rather lengthy manner of communication between the heads of the studio. In various interviews, Bagratuni was ready to talk about anything, but not about developing the game. The people did not like it.
In 2020, the situation was somewhat corrected. Mundfish presented the world a video with an updated gaming process, where the bossFite with ivy, one of the few organic opponents, even lit up. It was shown to journalists much more, and their stories have already inspired more optimism.
Atomic Heart at that moment was presented to the audience as a plot action game with great attention to the open world and its systematic. How robots at different levels controlled the locations at the enterprise 3826 and reacted to the player’s atrocities, boldly PR as one of the main chips of the project. Controlled the behavior of mechanisms in the world of the game Operating system "team". Developed it, like much more in the world of Atomic Heart, Academician Sechenov.
The “team” system included cameras, “bees” repair drones and a variety of combat models of robots, which were dumped on the player who discovered himself. Accordingly, the important aspects of the game were stealth and the ability to navigate the terrain to search and disconnect the subsystems of the “team”, to facilitate further study of locations.
Although Atomic Heart was compared with Bioshock, big differences were already visible in the rollers. Yes, the Mundfish project also included combining firearms and various abilities, such as current discharges and frosts, but it was noticeable that there was often a close battle, since there were a lot of enemies and they all strive to reduce the distance. Journalists really liked such dynamics, but everyone noted a cotton impact from enemy hits, so the developers had something to correct.
What they are in the future, in fact, and. Despite the pandemic, in 2021, Mundfish announced that the game was generally ready and sent to post-production and polishing the main elements. They were not afraid to appear for the presentation of Microsoft on E3 2021 with a steep trailer for remix the track “Mirage”-“Music tied us up”.
In our media space, because of this song, a scandal even erupted. Andrei Littyan, the founder of the group, believed that Mundfish violated copyright, threatened the court and demanded compensation. As a result, the studio fought back from him, and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled that there are no grounds for claims. Latyan wanted to make money, but only black PR for video games came out.
After that, Atomic Heart is already slow, quiet, but went to the release. Although the e3 announced the release date “** BR 2022”, that is, hinted at the end of the year, as a result, Atomic Heart was released only on February 21, 2023. And how loud it was ..
Miracles of advertising
To figure out what the game about the Soviet atomopanka captured the minds of millions of gamers, you should consider what Marketing had a marketing.
From the first trailer, Mundfish clung the viewer with a bright and rapid installation, which represented their unique setting in a profitable light. It was strange, but unique and knocked out of the general series of AAA-projects.
First of all, Baggatuni and Ko correctly used images popular in the expanses of the CIS. The same can of condensed milk with a legendary design, also opened with a knife – such symbols warmed the soul of our gamer. For a Western player, it was rather funny and unusual, but also worked on its originality.
Another cool example of the use of Soviet aesthetics is animation videos with pioneers that fight the bourgeoisie. This is visible both a sense of humor of the authors and references to Pip-Boy from Fallout and similar videos from the Bioshock series.
Well, and now you can switch to more important symbols of Atomic Heart-robots of twin ballerinas. With the first appearance, these cold as steel, but still hot young ladies fascinated the Internet. It is difficult to say whether they were planned as symbols of the game, or the meme got out of control, but the twins definitely won the hearts of millions of players.
For becoming and an expressive gait of twins, it is worth saying thanks to the professional ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater Anita Pudikova, who was happy to respond to Mundfish’s proposal to participate in the project. She was filmed in a suit to capture movements. And later a photo shoot came out with her in the image of one of the twins. It turned out quite worthy.
Note that Atomic Heart conquered the audience not only by his native visual, but also not even less colorful soundtrack. Great masters of their craft worked on music: Mick Gordon, Jeffrey Day and Andrey Bugrov. For the project, they wrote not only original compositions, but also made remixes of cult Soviet songs: “Komarovo”, “Grass at the house”, “Konyushin’s mowing”, “Arlequin” and others.
It was these alterations that in fact hooked most of the people. They not only organically fit into the world of the alternative USSR, but also sound great on their own. Elements of rock music and electronics were added to the classic melodies, which in a sense brought closer to the geek audience and ordinary people that are far from video games.
Many of those very remixes visited the tops of music charts. "Komarovo" generally for a long time was the top-1 in Yandex.Music ", which in itself is a huge achievement.
All this gave the game a powerful start, but atomic also kept the attention of the audience after time. The case was facilitated by Easter cards for pop culture and Internet memes.
Heipalu and Eleanor noble-a lustful Robot Arsenal in the form of a refrigerator, which has become one of the favorite characters of the players.
Not without black PR. Moreover, in this case, literally. There are special safezones in Atomic Heart, where a player can maintain progress and take a breath. Each of them has a TV, along which excerpts from the animated series “Well, wait a minute!". An episode with the amusing and caricature of the African native of the Metacher from the series, where the wolf pursued the hare in the museum fell into this cut.
But what for the Russian man Hihanka and Hahanki, then in the West violation of taboos and racism. On Twitter and some Mundfish media began to be accused and criticized. And although the developers surrendered and cut out a provocative moment from the game, the excess discussion of Atomic Heart was still a plus.
Mundfish also turned out to be masters in organizing various kinds of collaborations. Game chairs, condoms (although why are they to geek?), Yandex, energy, other video games – what they just did not try.
Separately, I will note the advertising video with the participation of actor Jensen Ackles, the star of the series "Supernatural". Firstly, it is cool and unexpected that, apparently, through Nvidia or other Western partners, it was possible to reach such a celebrity. Secondly, the video itself is quite competent and stylish.
Atomic Heart marketing is the ideal indicator that the creators of the project and managers not only knew what the main feature of their game was, but also skillfully untwisted it.
Great possible USSR
One of the main advantages of Atomic Heart is its setting. The utopian USSR with stunning fantasy technologies is the dream of many generations of science fiction writers, which Mundfish studio was phenomenally visualized.
The Stalinist empire with massive spiers, large arches and buildings of granite is surprisingly combined with flying drones that help people with robots and other achievements of Soviet scientific thought. It was the greatness of scientists, the triumph of intelligence and the invention of a mysterious polymer allowed the USSR to become a thrill, a great state that we see at the very beginning of the game.
But later, as in any other utopia, the most pleasant gut of the Soviet power begins to open. Next to monumental structures, high technologies and cozy decor elements, old TVs and on the conscience of knocked out furniture are lying, everywhere devastation and guts on the walls, and in the underground laboratories of the enterprise 3826 there is such that an ordinary person is better and not know.
Developers use this visual contrast to report simple and understandable ideas. In the process of passage, the player understands that the value of human life in this world is minimal, the same technologies at any moment can cause death in the world, and the powers of this world thirsty for total control at all costs.
Even the greatness of the USSR is based not only on robots and polymer, but also on real war crimes. It was the Union that used the biological weapon of brown plague like to prevent a nuclear strike from Germany. And in fact, there were much more victims and only academician Sechenov was able to stop the epidemic. Very successful coincidences, you can not say anything.
Atomic Heart, it is important to emphasize, does not try to give out some kind of political comment or express the position that, they say, the USSR was such a bad state. No, Soviet retrofuturism is simply a perfectly suitable and completely unlucky setting, so that, against the background of this stylistics, telling a simple, but well -written story about the value of freedom of choice.
Game process
Atomic Heart – at the first person with a large number of capabilities. This is not Immersive-SIM in the style of the first Bioshock or Prey 2017, but there is definitely something to talk about.
Atomic Heart – a game in an open world where large territories of the enterprise 3826 contain plot locations, additional complexes and just streets for the study and search for Easter. Despite the initial desire of the developers to give the open world a systematicity and meaningfulness, as well as create a contrast between the sun -flooded rays of the sun upstairs and gloomy bloody laboratories underground … Everything turned out not quite perfectly.
Plot tasks work as an excellent stripped action movie. These locations have both high dynamics, diversity in the design of the premises, and exciting stories that the environment sometimes tells. And not only through notes, but also thanks to the design of the situation.
Additional landfills are creative dungeons-heads, in which the inspiration of the Japanese series of games The Legend of Zelda is visible. Each similar level is a good test of players for attentiveness and quick wits.
Adds points to the landfills that the puzzles are not only perfectly thought out from the gameplay point of view, and make the player move their brains, but also spectacularly visualized. All these rotating platforms and mechanisms are inspired by their details and elaboration. These locations are not required for passing, but allow us to earn resources and improvements for their arsenal, therefore it is undesirable to avoid them.
The open world itself is as unnecessary as possible, although it contains hints of content. The “team” all also monitors the player through the cameras, and sends “bees” and fighting robots of various types and forms to beat the main character at the fifth point. Actually, observation can both be disconnected and used for your own purposes to look for those very side lands.
But, unfortunately, that’s all. There are no activities and buns in the open world, except for a variety of Easter challes and funny notes. Perhaps the developers simply did not manage to fill these open spaces with content and decided to focus on what was already working. It is impossible to condemn them for this, but the space for improvement in the sequel is certainly there.
Now let’s move on to the combat system, which came out much more saturated and complex than it seemed to the trailers. Atomic Heart is very focused on battles using the entire arsenal, which turned out to be quite rich. The player at the disposal of both various samples of firearms, energy guns, and more exotic polymer abilities and near -battle weapons.
In battles, knowledge of the skills of enemies and timings of their attacks is of great importance, which makes the ATOMIC Heart gameplay a little more complex than in ordinary shooters. It becomes especially difficult in the bossFites, where opponents show all their power, capable of crushing a sluggish player.
The only obvious problem of the combat system was a small number of tools for combating crowds of enemies. In addition to telekinesis in the player’s arsenal there is no opportunity to fight with several robots at once, especially if they have unique attacks, behind which there is no time to follow the battles in the thick of the battles. And if closer to the end of the plot, the main character, Major Nechaev, is tough enough to ruin a group of opponents in one gulp or lightning, then until the middle of the game, such hooks cause discomfort.
Models and characters
One of many distinguishing features by Atomic Heart is to study the design of the main characters and opponents of Major Nechaev. Each stylistic solution had both narrative and purely aesthetic reasons.
Take, for example, twins. They underwent quite significant changes during the development, take a look at yourself:
