I didn’t think I’d close out this week being best friends with a generator, but here we are. It may be the delirium talking – I’m tired and scared and endlessly seeing things that aren’t really there in the gloom of the corridors (at least, I hope they’re not really there?) – but as long as I’m in here, standing next to my warm, chattering chum, I think I’ll be okay.
Amnesia: The Bunker reviewDeveloper: Frictional GamesPublisher: Frictional GamesPlatform: Played on Steam Deck and PCAvailability: Out 6 June on PC (Steam, Epic Games), coming soon to PS4, Xbox One, Series X/S.
How distressing it is, then, to know that standing beside the generator for the next few hours would be little more than a death sentence. How awful it is to know that no matter how safe you feel here, listening to the rumble of the furnace, your very survival depends on getting out and exploring the warren of tunnels and rooms that spread out from your safe space like blood from a wound. For starters, you need more fuel to keep it running. There are passcodes to find and tools to recover. Bandages, too, are required to stop the blood gushing from your dirt-encrusted fingers. Because there will be blood at some point, comrade – it’s perhaps the only certainty you have down here.
Amnesia: The Bunker does an admirable job of making the titular location feel like both your cell and your sanctuary and, like the generator, it too will soon begin to feel like an old friend. Though small and tight, its claustrophobic corridors devoid of light and hope, you’ll find yourself boomeranging back to the places you recognise with a rush of adrenaline and hopeless gratitude. But its confined little world will unfurl, slowly, as you creep about the place, grabbing the right keys to unlock its secrets. So creep about you must.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, you have just one goal, and that’s to GTFO. It’s easy to be distracted by the dismembered bodies, the endless stream of vermin munching down on the free buffet, and though you’d like to know what happened to those soldiers, there’s something else out there in the darkness, something huge and hulking with razor-sharp claws and a terrifyingly good ear, and that’s all that matters. Hang around too long trying to work it out and you’ll be lying there amongst them.