Atomic Heart is one of the strangest games coming to the Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, and the PC, PS4, and PS5 this year.

In Atomic Heart, you are sent to the Soviet Union in 1955 to fill the boost of a KGB agent, P-3, sent to investigate a silent manufacturing facility. The twist. It takes place in an alternate universe where technologies like the Internet, robots, and holograms exist long before their time and are created in more advanced and macabre ways.

It's an interesting blend of Stalker and BioShock action, with a little Dishonored mixed in. Soviet-era architecture, telekinesis, and AK-47 assault rifles make an appearance.

So here's everything we know so far about Atomic Heart from developer Mundfish.

Just announced at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase at E3 2021, Atomic Heart will be released at some point in 2021. Unfortunately, the game's video trailer gave no indication of when it will be released.

Given that we are already halfway through 2021, one would expect Atomic Heart to appear in the fall or perhaps during the holiday season; the E3 trailer gave the impression that the game is in fairly deep development, so it is quite possible that it will appear soon.

Atomic Heart has a series of trailers that have appeared over the past few years and can be seen on the game's YouTube channel.

The latest, courtesy of E3 2021, gives a quick but rather through snapshot of the game and its action. [Rumors about Atomic Heart have been circulating for several years now, so there's a lot to talk about. Let's break them down into their own subsections below.

Plot and Setting: Atomic Heart is a first-person action RPG set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union still exists. Science has made great advances, including robotics. You play as Major P-3, sent to investigate the silenced Plant 3826. You will encounter killer robots and other strange creatures as you fight to survive and uncover the truth.

In a 2018 interview with PC Gamer, Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni said that Atomic Heart was "conceived as an open-world game" and that the game's map is "a vast circle, whose boundaries are the Arctic Circle in the north, the South reaches the Altai Mountains, with plains and lakes in the center," he said. Plant 3826 itself is spread out on the map, with different areas for players to take on.

Combat: In Atomic Heart, players use a combination of ranged and melee weapons to fight off enemies and bosses. Ammunition is probably scarce, and from what I have seen in some videos, even basic enemies seem to attack stronger and faster. Weapons can be crafted or perhaps even found.

Crafting: some weapons may be found (we don't know for sure), but there is a crafting system to create makeshift weapons to fight off bad guys. How it works remains a mystery, but some of the gameplay footage shows that the loadout can be changed to increase status.

RTX Raytracing Support: Atomic Heart will support Nvidia's RTX and DLSS technologies; minimal information is currently available regarding AMD's ray tracing support on RDNA2 GPUs. Previously, Atomic Heart's RTX demo was available for download, but it now redirects to the game's homepage.

Impact: If you check out the gameplay footage, you can see Atomic Heart's obvious homage to BioShock, Stalker, and Nier: Automata. That's great, because they are great games to draw inspiration from.

From what we know so far, Atomic Heart looks like a fun and spooky adventure that could have been a Soviet golden age. This Russian sci-fi epic is pretty graphic, so it may not be for everyone, but we're certainly excited.

Needless to say, the big news is that there is no official release date for "Atomic Heart" yet; if you add it to your Steam wish list, you'll be notified when it's available.

For now, we can only be content with a gameplay trailer and a bunch of screenshots.