Exactly how long is Atomic Heart? Mundfish’s absurdist shooter features a robot uprising like no other. Taking its inspiration from Bioshock and Far Cry, Atomic Heart drops you into Facility 3826, a top-secret military base under hostile takeover from the servile robots manufactured within. But exactly how long can we expect to fend off waves of drones and companion bots before order is finally restored?
As with most open-world games, Atomic Heart’s total playtime varies wildly depending on how you approach it. Are you dead set on barrelling through the story with the single-minded determination of Atomic Heart protagonist Major P-3? Or are you intent on combing every inch of Facility 3826 to unearth the best Atomic Heart weapons? Either way, here’s how many hours you can expect to clock in during your first playthrough of Atomic Heart.
How long is Atomic Heart?
Atomic Heart will take around 25 hours to complete as standard, while a 100% completionist run will take approximately 35 to 40 hours.
Atomic Heart’s total playtime is split across five scientific complexes within Facility 3826, though there are Atomic Heart Testing Grounds to complete and secrets to uncover in the Atomic Heart map. We also can’t ignore the many puzzles standing between P-3 and his mission to restore Dmitry Sechenov’s neural network – the Atomic Heart ballerina puzzle in particular can be a real head-scratcher.
Your total Atomic Heart playtime will also largely depend upon the difficulty mode you choose: easy, normal, or hard. The easy difficulty, otherwise known as ‘story mode’, is guaranteed to appeal to players who’d prefer to eschew challenging Atomic Heart bosses in favour of experiencing Major P-3’s journey through Facility 3826. It’s a foregone conclusion that playing on this mode will cause you to reach the Atomic Heart ending earlier, but here’s a list of the Atomic Heart cast if you’d like a gander at the credits ahead of time. Regardless of which difficulty you choose, we’ve got plenty of Atomic Heart tips to see you through to the end.
Now you’ve got a rough idea of how long you can expect your trip to the Kazakh mountains to last, your next stop should be our Atomic Heart system requirements primer to find out if your rig will revolt while trying to play Mundfish’s cybernetic FPS game. If you’ve got questions, about Atomic Heart romance and fast travel, we’ve got answers. Finally, take a gander at our Atomic Heart review to discover how we found Sechenov’s scientific playground, then our list of the best PC games for what to play next.
Developer Mundfish has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks after it was alleged that the Russian government stands to gain financially from the release of Atomic Heart. This is due to the fact that investors involved in financing Mundfish include GEM Capital, an investment fund whose founder has ties to Gazprom and VTB Bank, both of which are majority-owned by the Russian state.
Further, Mundfish is partnering with VK (formerly Mail.RU) for the Russian release of Atomic Heart, evading sanctions on Steam. VK is also majority-owned by the Russian state through Gazprombank, and Mundfish’s CEO is a former Creative Director at Mail.RU.
With Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, many players are choosing to boycott the game in protest and donate money to organisations like The Ukraine Crisis Appeal, International Rescue Committee, and the British Red Cross.