Amnesia: The Bunker Review – Forget Me Not

Amnesia: The Bunker on PC

As I immersed myself in the realistic horrors of World War I while playing Amnesia: The Bunker for review. The dread, the fear of the unknown, and curiosity made me finish the game, making me want to try the most challenging difficulty even more.

As an avid fan of horror games, especially one who’s also a longtime Amnesia fan, the game takes a unique approach as you embody a French soldier who found his way into a bunker filled with mysteries of the unknown. After getting my hands on the game, My caffeine-induced anxiety made me stay on guard while I uncovered the secrets of the mysterious Bunker.

The Amnesia franchise made its comeback after three years, and this may be the one of the best single-player horror games to date.

The game takes place during World War 1. You play as a French soldier who finds himself in an abandoned bunker’s infirmary. Like the previous games, your character yet again suffers from amnesia with little memory of what happened in the earlier events of the conflict. As your character gathers resources within the bunker, he gradually uncovers the secrets hidden within. These include unsettling and inhumane experiments, corpses, and a lurking monster that becomes drawn to any noise. You’ll learn more about the games lore from the diary entries scattered across the map.

The gameplay feels similar to the previous games, but this time the game gives you a gun at the beginning of your gameplay. Yes, a weapon. At first blush, this might lull you into thinking, “Great, I feel safer now.” Wrong! From the moment the monster that lurks within that bunker appears throughout the game, you’ll never be able to shake off that sense of dread.

The game will make you feel at ease, giving you the proper exploration tools, as –I kid you not– it also gives you a rechargeable light source, but it makes a lot of noise when you charge it and attracts the monster.

If you’re new to the Amnesia franchise, don’t worry because the story isn’t connected to the previous games. The Bunker presents players with a linear story giving you clues on how to progress further within the game. Amnesia: The Bunker does not have an auto-save feature. Instead, players have access to a save room where they can manually save their progress by interacting with the save lamp. Just ensure you save often, as you will otherwise lose your progress if you die.

In the game, players will encounter puzzles that incorporate an element of randomness. Multiple game elements, such as 4-digit codes, resources, and traps, are randomized with every playthrough. This feature adds an exciting and unpredictable aspect to the gameplay. The game map includes two “key items,” the lighter and the gas mask. While these items are unnecessary to complete the game, they offer players new approaches to overcoming obstacles. The codes to unlock the lockers containing these items remain fixed in the same location during the first playthrough. However, these codes will be found near a random corpse for subsequent playthroughs.

Finally, let’s talk about the graphics. The game’s overall visuals and the map’s design, including its unnerving atmosphere, gives the creeps and chills. The added eerie background sound while navigating into the possible dangers of jumpscares gives you unsettling encounters during the game.

Amnesia: The Bunker felt like it was somehow different from its predecessors. The puzzle-heavy horror game and a hint of resource management give the anxiety of suddenly plunging into danger. I felt like the franchise made a different approach but at the end of the day it’s worth the adventure.