Amnesia: The Bunker PC Review

Frictional Games, some of you might know them and some of you might not. So, to give a little information on the twisted team. Frictional Games is a studio based in Sweden, founded in 2007 and their main specialty is to create games that focus on horror survival with little to no combat. They hit the ground running with their first release, Penumbra, this game throws you into the deep end with a mix of horror and puzzles. Soon after that, they began their rise to the top with the release of Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010 and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs in 2013.

 

Fast forward a little bit and it looks like they tried branching out with a different type of game when they released SOMA in 2015, while it was well received, the fandom still called for more Amnesia games. Oh boy, they delivered on it with Amnesia: Rebirth in 2020. Now, that’s all good and well, and we can see they’ve been improving their skills to create unnerving horror games, but the developers at Frictional Games went above and beyond when they released their latest beast into the world, Amnesia: The Bunker on 6 June 2023.

Just like all the other games, as the name suggests, you as the main protagonist have Amnesia. In Amnesia: The Bunker, it looks like you’re caught in the middle of WW1 with you on the French side of it, between the gunfire and bombs, you don’t have much time to find your feet because it’s war. However, between the panic, your comrade comes to save you and it looks like there’s some hope until you both get bombed to hell and back. After some more chaos, you wake up in a French Bunker with nothing on you, forcing you to explore.

After leaving the infirmary, you’ll eventually meet a soldier who looks badly wounded and he asks you to take his gun and end him because he doesn’t want the beast to get him. Sadly, the gun has no ammo and he tells you there’s ammo in the pantry down the hall. So, you get the ammo and walk back to him only to get an extremely quick introduction to the beast that seems to lurk in the walls as he gets somewhat devoured but also dragged into a hole in the wall. It’s at this point where you’re alone but also not, and the bunker is no longer silent either.

You’ll start hearing moans and growls from the same beast that snacked on your comrade, this is one of the things you’ll need to pay close attention to because it’s also the only indication you’ll have of where it is. From there, you’ll get to the only room in the bunker that’s safe, Administration.

 

Administration is going to quite literally be your safe haven but it does so much more than that. It’s also the only place where you can save, which interestingly enough is done by turning on the lantern in the center of the room. It also houses a storage chest where you can leave items for later use, a map that will update depending on the notes you find and lastly, the generator.

So, in Amnesia: The Bunker, light is your best friend and noise is bad. Imagine how bad it would be if you’re stuck in the dark with an overly loud flashlight that needs to be wound up quite often. Luckily, the generator has you covered on electricity for lights around the bunker as it also wards off the beast that wants to name your dinner. Powering up the generator is a nightmare on its own though, you’ll need to find fuel that’s scattered all over the bunker and it really doesn’t last long.

As for your objective in Amnesia: The Bunker, you just need to escape. Simple, right? Nope… The only exit out of the bunker is caved in with explosives when the lucky few who could, get out. According to one of the many notes you’ll find, you’ll need explosives to blow the exit open again. Now this is easier said than done as there are tons of obstacles in your way, which in turn, will naturally force you to take a near endless number of detours that will take you deeper into the bunker just to open a passage to your objective.

 

As mentioned before, having the lights on and minimal noise are your keys to survival. Luckily, you’re not completely stranded as you’ll have your handy wind-up flashlight on hand, though it makes a lot of noise which will attract the beast to you. This is where stealth and carefully planning your trips throughout the bunker are key to surviving, but also only having the lights that you need to be switched on for the sake of giving you as much time as possible with the generator before it needs to be refueled.

Further exploration through the bunker isn’t all panic and hiding, there is a story of sorts to Amnesia: The Bunker, but it comes in the forms of notes and letters scattered all over the bunker. Most of these notes can give you some really helpful insight as to what happened and how to progress, while others change your objective in the Administration room.

Just like with many of Frictional Games’ other titles, there is almost no combat in Amnesia: The Bunker, or at least nothing too major anyway. The only threats you’ll be fighting are the beast and bizarre mutated rats that also see you as a tasty snack. However, ammo is nearly nonexistent and you’ll sometimes need the ammo for your pistol to shoot locks off doors. Conserving your resources is extremely important and it drives the fact that you need to survive while being stealthy.

Aside from the rats that can sometimes take a nice chunk out of you, you’ll discover sooner rather than later that the bunker has traps littered around it. Flares and grenade traps, most of these traps can be avoided or at least jumped over to avoid taking unnecessary damage. Though if you do end up taking a nasty hit, aside from leaving a lovely blood trail everywhere that will definitely attract everything you don’t want to deal, you can at least take care of it with one of the many types of consumable items in the game.

 

So, it’s already established that you need light and silence to survive, but consumables are just as important when you need them. From grenades to first-aid kits, there is a consumable for everything. However, knowing when to use them is what matters most, especially when supplies are extremely limited. Grenades, flares and glass bottles all work incredibly well to distract or scare off the beast, maybe even kill off huge groups of rats, but the noise they cause will also attract the beast to you faster than you can say ‘Ciest La Vie’. The same can be said for healing items, they don’t make noise but using them too soon could mean that you wasted a precious resource that isn’t easily found.

Amnesia: The Bunker might be a horror survival game but it does come with its own share of puzzles too. Luckily, the puzzles aren’t really complex and are more just meant to slow you down or cause you to linger a bit longer than you’d like in one spot. While it’s not a puzzle, combination locks are a very prominent thing you’ll find and, in most cases, you’ll need to hunt down dog tags that have the codes for those locks on them as well. Once again, this is easier said than done and will require some searching, even if it does mean galivanting in the dark.

Amnesia: The Bunker, just like its predecessors all rely heavily on an extremely dark aesthetic that really drives the horror atmosphere. However, with each new game in the series, the visual quality improves as well and each new game gets so much more detail to the very few people you see, the monsters or beasts you’re running from, and even the environments, all while matching the theme the story takes place in. The lack of a health bar system that was instead replaced with raising a hand to see how much blood is on it, which indicates your current health, is definitely an inspired mechanic and gives a sense of realism to the game.

 

Once again, the twisted minds at Frictional games use every resource they have to build an unnerving horror experience and the sound engineering front is not spared either. The introduction might seem relatively tame, even if it was well done for a war scenario, the real magic happens when you wake up the bunker. Everything from the very slight eerie sounds to the sound direction of the beast’s noises around you as it stalks you all played a valuable part in building this game, but also taking the immersion to whole new heights. For any audiophiles out there, this might be a game that will leave on anxious and worried about every tiny sound you’ll hear outside the game.

Overall, Amnesia: The Bunker is a nightmare wrapped in a WW1 aesthetic with a vicious sprinkle of otherworldly horror. The notes might be tedious to find but it’s a different form of storytelling that will have you wanting to find them all just to get all the details as what happened. You might not be afraid of the dark but you definitely will be after this game, even more so when it comes to the things that go bump or growl in the night.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Editor, NoobFeed