Designed as a single-player level, Atrocity presents the player with a largely linear progression through challenges of increasing difficulty. In addition to enemies and obstacles, multiple puzzles need to be solved along the path to success. Atrocity also contains numerous secret areas, to reward those players with a penchant for exploration.

Beyond the single-player experience, Atrocity also accomodates cooperative play and multiplayer deathmatching. Atrocity was created using Worldcraft™, an editing tool for creating binary-space-partitioned (bsp) worlds. All buildings and other 'solid' objects were designed and constructed using this 3D editor.