The influence of Frictional Games on the direction horror themed games took over the past 16 years is undeniable. Their initial Penumbra tech demo from 2006 was a surprisingly fresh take on an adventure genre, with stealth and action aspects, physically-based puzzles and interactions and surprisingly solid horror atmosphere. All of which was developed further into Penumbra: Overture, the only game from the studio until now that was adhering to the pillars of the classic survival horror, focusing not only on exploration, adventure elements and stealth, but also allowing you to deal with enemies directly via combat and traps. But beginning with Penumbra: Black Plague, the team set a mission for themselves to make great narrative-driven titles and to achieve that, the survival horror mechanics had to go.
After achieving great and unexpected success with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, team followed it up with no less great SOMA. Two fantastic story-driven horror themed stealth adventure games that always prioritized good atmospheric experience over the mechanical aspects of the gameplay. Then, just over two years ago, they’ve decided to revisit the Amnesia “brand” with the incredibly mediocre Amnesia: Rebirth – a game that went really far into the narrative, but without making it particularly engaging or interesting to experience. Amnesia: The Bunker seems like a direct reaction to that as it is the return to beginning and a curious attempt to reimagine what classic survival horror gameplay could be, while staying easily recognizable.
The game has a very simple premise – you’re a French soldier in an underground bunker, World War 1 is raging outside, but inside everyone seems to be dead and a lone persistent and seemingly unkillable monster lurks in the darkness, so you have to find the way to escape the bunker. There’s more to the story, of course, as you will be finding notes and photographs of your fallen brothers in arms that explain what happened. But even the original Penumbra had far more story directly told to you, whereas in this game after you go through the intro section, you can easily skip every bit of story and escape without ever understanding what happened and why.
This hands off approach is in everything this game tries to do. Sure, it does have resources and ammo for you to find, weapons, doors and keys, main pursuing enemy and also occasional swarms of rats as a simpler type of enemy to deal with and with elements like these you could easily imagine a typical Resident Evil game. But Amnesia: The Bunker attempts to mix in systems and emergent gameplay to these conventions, essentially adding a bit of an “immersive sim” aspect to it all. And now you can open doors in different ways – why search for a key when you can blow the door up? Why defuse the trap, if the trap can help you instead? What if the horrible monster that you don’t usually want to attract helps you if you play things right? It’s not as smart and as deep as the game wants you to believe and the amount of possible solutions is, in reality, quite limited. But what’s there is genuinely fun to experience and it does feel fresh.
Oh and there’s a random element to it all as well. Most (or maybe even all) key items, notes and hints are always in the same spots, but resources, traps, codes and many little things are different each playthrough. Which makes the game feel more similar to the Granny games or Monstrum, and only a little bit Alien: Isolation. I’m not a fan of random/rogue elements in games in general, but here it’s just enough to keep every playthrough fresh, while remaining handcrafted and thought through. That said, the big bad monster behavior in the game is relatively primitive and it does cheat, sometimes leading to rather frustrating sequences. Still – dealing with him can be fun as you have to think on your feet and he’s not necessarily 100% deadly, as sometimes these types of enemies are.
Still, the fact that the game really isn’t as smart as it advertises itself can lead to frustrations as well. Game doesn’t feel entirely consistent with itself and sometimes things happen that make no sense or some solutions that sound logical do not work. Items and notes can sometimes be placed in a spot that’s next to impossible to notice. You have to click on maps to “copy” them to your main safe room map, which sounds ridiculous given the size of those things – this extra step of “telling the game” that you know it is extremely awkward. The limitation for the storage box is really stupid, as you can just dump items on the floor right next to it with no penalty. You are best off doing quick expeditions out of the safe room then returning to save and check on fuel and even though the game clearly wants you to take more risks, there’s really no reason to do so. And there is no reason to ever carry around the stopwatch so it takes up valuable inventory space – it’s super easy to plan your exploration and then turn the generator on and off when not in use. Plus while the monster roams around less with light, he’s still coming out to investigate loud noises and having light on or off makes no difference at that point. Oh and I’d suggest binding the flashlight button to something easy to reach for as you will need to hold the button to charge it. And since it’s silly weak and holds for just a couple of seconds, you will be doing this a lot.
While I cannot say that Amnesia: The Bunker truly nailed what it attempted to do and it is less easily recommendable than The Dark Descent, but it is a much needed fresh look at the genre that Frictional Games seemingly abandoned before and a really cool and inspiring game. If you love classic survival horror, are okay stealth focus and using weapons as problem solving tools rather than fun action tools, you should definitely check this game out. If you were the fan of adventure and narrative focused titles from the team – maybe this won’t click with you as much. But you still might as well give it a try, it’s a good game.