Atomic Heart is a game that has been teasing us for years with beautiful concept art and interesting gameplay mechanics. In it, the protagonist is born into a utopian world, where humanity lives in tranquility with their loyal and impassioned robot servants. However, a global conspiracy threatens to destroy that idyllic life forever, as the robots’ rebel against their human oppressors’ creators. Fortunately, the protagonist is equipped with an experimental power glove that will let them tear apart any machine. But how long has Atomic Heart been in development?
How Long Has Atomic Heart Been in Development – Answered
The Russian Studio Mudfish began working on Atomic Hearts all the way back in 2017, making this their fifth (almost sixth) year of development. Since then, the development team has put in 630,000 hours into crafting this ambitious open-world game.
In an interview, Mudfish provided this quote about the game’s early development:
“The project began in early 2017. Back then, we wanted to test the waters of the VR market, started with a small project, and released it. But as the studio grew, the ambitions have also gone bigger. A year after, we realized that we had gathered an extremely talented team that was brought together by a single idea – to create a big, awesome, story-driven game,” the studio said. “That’s how it all started. When the first trailer in 2018 has gone viral, we finally understood that we have something truly special on our hands, which motivated us to give it all to this project.”
Related: Biggest Video Game Releases of 2023 Listed
Since its inception in 2017, Mudfish has admitted that the development of Atomic Heart has suffered through many setbacks. Miscommunication from management, crunch time that ate into employee weekends and vacation time, missed milestones, and feature creep were all reasons development was slowed.
But with a release date set for February 21, 2023, we will finally get to see this Black Mirror episode set in 1950’s USSR.