Many have said that Amnesia: The Bunker is a ‘return to form’ for Frictional Interactive. Having now played it (fashionably late, as usual), they are half right.
The Bunker has a simple story. It happens in a small location. It is heavy with atmosphere. The gameplay centres around evading a monster you cannot kill.
It doesn’t attempt any of the heavy storytelling or themes of SOMA. And it doesn’t feature an annoying protagonist or pull any cheap tricks (such as fear flashes) like Rebirth did.
In summary, The Bunker is a simple, focused, and well-made horror game, reminiscent of The Dark Descent.
A few key differences between these games are interesting to note.
The monster rarely appeared in The Dark Descent. Throughout most of the game, there was no danger—the lighting and sound design just convinced us we were not. The Dark Descent was linear and heavily scripted; the journey was planned from beginning to end to be mostly the same for everyone.
In The Bunker, by contrast, the monster can appear at any time after we lift the emergency lockdown. The game is open-ended and largely unscripted. The scares and gameplay sequences are mostly a result of the player’s spontaneous interactions with the environment and mechanics, rather than scripted sequences prepared by the devs to occur at particular times and places.
The devs prepared the environment and the mechanics, but beyond this, they give the player a large degree of control over the experience.
Broadly speaking, The Dark Descent can be broken into three zones: safe zones, suspense zones, and monster zones.
Safe zones are places where the player is both safe and assured of their safety. The Dark Descent has several of these. Music is played to signal to the player that it is okay to relax. The player is never attacked in these areas.
Suspense zones are places where the player is safe but is convinced through sound, visual, and level design that they are not safe. These areas comprise the majority of The Dark Descent.
Monster zones are places where the player is not safe and bloody well knows it. These sections serve as culmination points for the tension built in the suspense zones.
The Bunker differs from The Dark Descent in that dedicated suspense zones are practically non-existent—featuring only in the introduction and part of one late-game area, the first part of the Roman Tunnels. There is only 1 safe room—the rest of the game is one big monster zone.
In other words, The Bunker takes the monster zones from The Dark Descent and focuses most of the experience on that concept, all but cutting the suspense zones that did most of the original Amnesia’s atmospheric work.
This strong focus on monster evasion would have gotten old fast if the monster’s behaviour and level design were as basic as they were in The Dark Descent.
The Dark Descent’s monster, if you remember, would walk around, pursue noises, and chase the player on sight.
The Bunker adds depth to the monster in several ways. The monster travels primarily through tunnels so players hear it constantly yet are never sure where it will appear. The monster can grab players from the holes if players fail to notice its presence. Players can block the holes it emerges from with heavy objects, though it can still destroy them when sufficiently riled. Players can control the aggressiveness of the monster to some degree by switching the lights on and off. Noises attract the monster, like in the Dark Descent, but unlike The Dark Descent, it is possible to make noises so loud that the monster will emerge to investigate no matter how far away it is. Lastly, the monster can be wounded or warded off with various weapons: pistols, petrol bombs, gas, and explosive barrels.
Player mechanics and environmental interactivity also get some added depth. The Bunker should be considered an immersive sim for how much of its map is interactive, obstacles having multiple solutions, and the many creative and unexpected ways different mechanics interact with one another.
Firstly, The Bunker’s level design is less linear and more open-ended. The Dark Descent was comprised of central safe locations with several locations branching off from the centre—but each of these locations was mostly linear.
The Bunker commits to this centralised style of level design, having 1 (well, technically 2) safe zones in the entire game. Each area branching off from the centre, however, is just as open-ended as the central portion. Unlike The Dark Descent, which separates each branching area from the centre with a loading screen door, The Bunker makes an effort (albeit a stuttery one) to blend the different areas together. The rats and monster can follow you between areas, and objects can be transitioned between areas too, making each area of the map feel like one cohesive whole.
This centralised design gives the player more control over how the game progresses. The player gets to decide where to go first and in what order to complete their objectives. Events in one section can have an impact on another section—the fuel generator in the centre could go off while they are in the arsenal, an army of rats from maintenance could invade the central area (as they did in mine–I genuinely thought it was scripted, there were so many of them).
The Dark Descent is more limited in the ways players can progress. Players are often forced to visit branching areas in a particular order and treat each area as its own separate world.
In terms of interactivity, The Dark Descent had tables to crouch under, wardrobes to hide in, physics objects, open containers, and torches to light. The Bunker keeps the first four of these features and replaces torches with electric lights which require a generator to turn on. This generator requires fuel, which burns for a limited time. Even with an active generator, lights must be switched on manually. Several other objects in the game require an active generator too. There are traps everywhere which can be cut or deliberately set off or avoided. There are rats which are attracted to meat, the player’s blood, and dead bodies (which can be burnt to keep them away). Doors can sometimes be locked, and wooden doors can be broken by both the player and the monster. The player must save their progress at a lamp, and if they die they lose their progress, meaning they must rush to the safe room to experience the relief of safety. There are three types of special lock: chains, padlocks, and bolts, each requiring a different tool to bypass. Each area has unique objects to interact with: a prison cell control panel, a fuel refuel dispenser, and a daisy-chained electricity circuit. There are gas barrels and explosive barrels. There are codes to find and lockers to open. And then of course there are several types of consumable and reusable items.
I’m bound to be forgetting things and I probably missed a few possible interactions. The point is that there is a lot more going on mechanics-wise in The Bunker than The Dark Descent. The player has a lot more freedom in how they overcome obstacles, traverse the map, and deal with the monster.
Despite The Bunker’s immersive sim elements, the game is simple enough that its mechanics and likely interactions will be familiar to the average player between 4 and 6 hours. That is why The Bunker is the perfect length; it’s just long enough for players to become familiar with how it works, and it ends just as players’ mastery of the game begins to erode their sense of fear.
Part of me is sad that Frictional backed away from creating ambitious and original narrative-driven games like SOMA and has resorted to churning out Amnesia sequels of varying quality. I must admit, though, that The Bunker is an excellent horror game. The Bunker focuses on quality over quantity—providing a small map and relatively short playtime, and using an immersive sim philosophy to give players the ability to create their own unique experiences.
After playing the game I watched two other playthroughs. All three playthroughs (both of theirs and mine) were significantly different. I can say with confidence that I enjoyed my playthrough the most—it was the perfect pace for me, since I was in control. I was very attentive the whole way through, I completed objectives how I wanted and in the order I wanted, I uncovered the story in a unique order, and had many memorable moments that both other players did not have which made my playthrough truly special to me (like the aforementioned rat invasion, which became a persistent problem in my playthrough, and a particularly funny attempt to block the hole in the safe room with a chair, which caused the chair to explode and frighten me so bad I actually screamed).
Amnesia: The Bunker proves something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Games are at their best when they focus on a small but deep set of mechanics that can be combined in creative ways to solve problems in unique ways. Game worlds are best when they provide players with many useful ways to interact with them. Games that do this do not need massive maps or long, cutscene-heavy stories. A small map will do; a short runtime will do.
Replayability compensates for short runtimes, and The Bunker is certainly a replayable game. Immersive sims do not need to be expensive or grand in scale. They can be as small and as relatively cheap to make as the Bunker (relative to the usual gazillion-dollar AAA game, that is).
The Bunker confirms my desire to see more small immersive sims, whether in the horror genre, action genre, roleplay genre, or whatever. Games like Prey failed to make enough money to keep its studio, but Prey didn’t have to be as big or as expensive to make as it was, did it?
I think not, and I think the Bunker proves my point. A simple premise, a small map, and deep interconnected mechanics make for a solid game. Easier said than done, of course, but it’s better than thinking every immersive sim needs to be so big that it’s practically doomed to fail.