HomeFeaturesAmnesia: The Bunker
The RPS Advent Calendar 2023, December 19thTunnel vision
Tunnel vision
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Advent calendars are all about opening doors in search of wonderful treats, but you should probably leave this one closed.
What that’s guttural moaning and scratching? I have no idea what you’re talking about, I can’t hear a thing. Please don’t check - ah, now you’ve done it. Yep, it’s Frictional’s splendid horror simAmnesia: The Bunker, biting your arms and legs off.
Image credit:Frictional Games
“Seemingly” is one of the key words in The Bunker’s lexicon. As you explore the bunker, setting out from the relative security of the metal-doored Adminstration Office near the collapsed entrance, you’re given few hard indications of your unkillable adversary’s behaviours and state of mind. There’s nothing in the way of aMetal Gear-style exclamation mark pop-up when you’ve been rumbled, though I think this would make for an amusing mod. Instead, you have to piece together how safe you are from an assortment of tiny cues: the flickering of the lights overhead, the muffled intake of breath which suggests the monster is becoming aware of your presence, the very specific kind of growl it makes when it slithers into the open, the horrible, woozy, wobbling background tone that plays when it’s actively looking for you.
Image credit:Frictional Games
And just to cap things off, it introduces a resourcing element tethered to safety which makes efficient planning and execution a question of life or death. The Admin Office houses a generator, which you can top up with sparingly discovered jerry cans to switch on lights throughout the bunker - around five minutes of illumination per can, during which the beast is less likely to emerge, and during which you must, amongst other things, scavenge more fuel for the next expedition.
The game’s semi-random distribution of resources and vital tools strikes a great line between punishing you for getting stranded after dark, and encouraging you to push your luck - you have no idea how much fuel there is in total, so it’s always tempting to do more than is advisable every time you switch the generator on. I played it too safe during my first run on normal difficulty, and ended up having to spend an hour in darkness before finally stumbling on another jerry can. The idea of tackling The Bunker on the recently introducedShellshocked difficultyis… not appealing, in the best of ways.
Alice Bee:I really enjoyed The Bunker for its reduced scope compared toAmnesia: Rebirth. That felt like it was trying to do alot, whereas The Bunker has a much more focused goal (i.e. scare the piss out of you) in a much more focused location. The titular bunker is large enough to earn the descriptor “warren-like”, and to be easy to get lost in even after you’ve tried to memorise your route on the map, but small enough that you can learn your way around - especially the areas you run through multiple times. It’s a claustrophic and panicked horror game as a result, and is a good entry point into Frictional’s work in general. As a part of the Amnesia series it’s almost entirely stand-alone, divorced from much of the lore that weighed Rebirth down a bit, and thus I have hope for more horrible little capsules of monstering in the future.
