Mundfish Studio CEO Talks Forming the Atomic Universe with Atomic Heart 2 and The Cube

It has only been a little over two years now since Mundfish Studio’s Atomic Heart arrived on the scene. Despite initial comparisons to BioShock and Half Life, it managed to forge its own identity with its unique Soviet-inspired world. Now, the developer is expanding what it calls the “Atomic Universe” with Atomic Heart 2 and a new IP dubbed The Cube, which finds its roots in MMO shooters like Destiny and Warframe.

Game Rant recently spoke with Mundfish Studio founder and CEO Rob Bagratuni about Atomic Heart 2 and the developer’s brand-new IP The Cube, which is also set in the Atomic Universe. During the interview, Bagratuni went into detail about the development process behind each game and what they will look like in terms of world-building, story, and gameplay. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

From Atomic Heart to Atomic Heart 2

Q: Atomic Heart 2 expands the narrative globally. What inspired this shift in scope, and how does it impact the story’s tone and stakes?

A: The story of Atomic Heart is going to be wrapped up with the fourth DLC, so the story of P-3 and Charles is going to end in that DLC. The technology and all the events of Atomic Heart impacted the world in a huge way, so we’re continuing the story of the world. Of course, with such technology, the story becomes more complex but also more global. We want to explore that. We want to explore how this technology affects the world on a global scale, so it’s a natural evolution, I would say.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in building a sequel that expands in nearly every direction, including combat, narrative, RPG mechanics, and world scale?

A: Right now with Atomic Heart 2, we’re somewhere in the middle of development, so we’re going to be doing a lot of internal playtests. One of the things we learned from Atomic Heart‘s development is that we need to start playtesting earlier, so we’re going to start seeing how everything is going to work. If you remember from Atomic Heart, we had a lot of mechanics that aren’t regular for an action shooter game, so the same goes with Atomic Heart 2.

We want to add mechanics that aren’t regular for the genre. We’re definitely leaning more towards exploration and an emphasis on the RPG elements of the game, so we want to start testing those mechanics very early on and see how they blend together and what kind of experience they are going to bring. As far as the challenge goes, we think the challenges are ahead of us.

Q: How have returning characters evolved since the events of Atomic Heart, and what role do they play in this new crisis?

A: We’ll try to avoid spoilers here. Of course, there will be returning characters, and we can safely say that the characters you love from Atomic Heart — at least, the ones who are not dead — are going to be returning. You can imagine what happened with P-3, who had such an important role in saving the universe. You can expect him to go up in his rank a bit, so there’s definitely an evolution of main characters who played a major role in Atomic Heart, but we don’t want to spoil much. The story will definitely continue in a cool way though.

Q: How is the world design of Atomic Heart 2 going to impact the game’s narrative?

A: We put a lot of emphasis on the world of Atomic Heart 2, like this retro-futuristic world. Our goal was to make it very believable. We want to immerse the player in this setting where you have the robots who are doing everything for you, this retro-futuristic, dystopian feel. If you remember in Atomic Heart, we had this flying city, the Chelomey flying city. You get there at the very beginning and then the action starts, and you live it. We want to try and make the city very accessible to the players, so they can come back there, explore it, and immerse themselves in it.

Q: The glove-and-weapon duality is returning with enhancements. How have you reworked the mechanics to feel more fluid or empowering in combat?

A: We’ve been doing a lot of experiments on how to ensure the fluidity between the three different playstyles — the glove, the melee, and the ranged weapons. We’re really working on how to make it very smooth, very intuitive, with the fighting style blending between those three. This is actually something the team is working on right now.

Q: How much player agency is there in combat style? Can players build around different playstyles?

A: We’re working on a deeper approach to the RPG elements and progression. Of course, we want to give players more freedom in what kind of character they will become with skill branching and progression, but actually, we’re trying to bring more depth and freedom to everything like core gameplay mechanics. We just want a deeper experience overall. We especially want to focus on boss fights. We saw in Atomic Heart‘s third DLC, the reaction to the last boss fight, that people liked it, so we want to make Atomic Heart 2‘s boss fights a little bit harder.

We jumped into the streams of some content creators who were playing the hardest difficulty of the last boss fight. They were dying, and it created so much reaction. It was a lot of pain, but it was so visceral and incredibly fun to watch. It was a memorable experience for them too, and they’ve been very vocal about it on their streams. We really wanted to work on the sequel’s boss fights and make them more meaningful, and even more painful.

Q: Atomic Heart 2’s world is filled with various activities for players to complete. Can you tell me a bit more about what players will be encountering in terms of these activities?

A: The players who come from Atomic Heart and want to play Atomic Heart 2, they’ll get everything they love about it. We also like to experience with meta gameplay like with different elements and mechanics. We like to blend together. In games like Palworld and Schedule 1, you have your base, you start to grow in it, and it starts to grow around you. Then it sucks you in and gives you a reason to come back and spend time there. We’re kind of thinking in that direction as well. In general, we’ll be experimenting a lot with different mechanics, trying to bring something unusual and unexpected into the established genre.

The Cube Is a Product of Mundfish’s ‘Craziness and Bravery’

Q: The Cube itself is both a setting and a mystery. How did the concept of a levitating, rotating structure come about, and what does it represent thematically?

A: We’re the kind of team that always has some kind of crazy idea. We call it “craziness and bravery.” Sometimes they’re hard to grasp. Particularly with The Cube, I was on call, a very boring and very long call, and the person was talking for a very long time. It was really not exciting. It was very hard to concentrate, so I started drawing Tic-Tac-Toe squares in my notebook.

Suddenly, this cube just appeared in my head. It was just there and connected. Our co-founder, executive producer, and myself left the meeting; we excused ourselves, telling the others that we needed to leave urgently. Then, over the next two hours, we started brainstorming and coming up with the concept of The Cube. The whole idea just kind of came together.

Q: How is this new story tied to the Atomic Universe, and should players of Atomic Heart or Atomic Heart 2 expect any connective threads?

A: The events of Atomic Heart will wrap up in the fourth DLC. Several years after those events, this cube appears, and this is a big challenge for all the scientists around the whole world, but especially for the scientists of the facility. It becomes the center of attention, this huge mystery that everyone is trying to solve. Narratively, The Cube is a very important part of the Atomic Universe and the storytelling. You do not have to play Atomic Heart to understand The Cube, but it is in the same universe. You can enter the universe of Atomic Heart through different angles. You can enter it through The Cube.

Of course, when players come into the universe through The Cube, they’ll have a lot of questions. They’ll be like, “What in the world is going on here?” They might want to go back and play Atomic Heart and play it to better understand how all of this started. It’ll be a pretty crazy thing to see.

Q: How difficult was it to build a stable online experience in a world where the terrain and geometry constantly change?

A: It’s probably the first time in the industry that something like this is possible. It’s definitely a technological breakthrough because, before, it was impossible to use the engine to ensure that so many objects could be simultaneously rotating and still provide a stable online experience. There was a lot of effort put into it. People were telling us it was crazy, that it couldn’t be done, but here we are. Here we are.

If you remember when the Crysis game came out, it really shaped how we look at what is possible in games in terms of graphics and the technology behind it. We’re kind of trying to do the same thing — trying to bend those borders of technology in order to get a very different player experience. We take a lot of inspiration from that time, but we are also asking ourselves, “Why do we have to play on flat worlds?” We’ve really been trying to think outside the box and challenge ourselves with that question, and we ended up with this giant rotating cube.

Q: How does the rotating world structure affect gameplay moment-to-moment? Does the world physically shift during combat or exploration?

A: There are different phases of the Cube, and once they rotate, those very different biomes and environments start shifting and interconnecting with one another. It really affects your playstyle. Your tactical decisions start to change. Some may ask you to be more action-oriented, and some might require more stealth gameplay.

This constant shift in the environment will force you to change your playstyle and to look at the whole game from a different angle, perhaps multidimensional. Imagine you are in the Maldives on the beach with those luxurious bungalows and white sand, but then there’s a shift and you see a frozen city with skyscrapers in front of you. That’s what it will be like.

Q: How does character progression work in The Cube? Are there traditional classes, or is it more of a modular, skill-based system?

A: There will be character progression tied to a skill tree, but we don’t really want to get into the details about the classes just yet. It’s a bit too early to say that, but it will have an RPG progression system.

Q: What do you hope players walk away with after spending time in The Cube? Is this meant to be a power fantasy, a survival challenge, or something more thought-provoking?

A: First of all, we see it as an opportunity to really deeply explore the world that we’re building in The Cube. We want to get players engaged and drawn into that world through exploration. They’ll encounter different monsters and enemies. They’ll learn how they live and how they communicate, and maybe they’ll communicate with them as well.

We wanted to create this exciting experience but also wrapped up in a cool, engaging meta around it. There are always unanswered questions, some mysteries are there. There’s just this huge, interesting world that we want players to come back to. We see the player as this explorer who doesn’t ever clock out, who always has this world to come back to.

Q: And is there anything else that you wanted to add about Atomic Heart 2 or The Cube that we haven’t talked about yet today?

A: We’re really excited about the announcements. The whole team has been working really hard, so we can’t wait to show the trailers and see the reaction, read the comments, and see what has people excited. It’s a big personal moment for us, for everyone on the team. We just can’t wait to see what it’s going to bring.

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