Frictional's key strength, for me, has always been their sound design. The prior Amnesia games and Soma aren't particularly scary, but their excellent sound design takes them over the edge and makes them wonderfully nerve-wracking experiences. Unfortunately these games weren't much more than trial and error haunted house sims beyond that, and while Soma had a compelling narrative to keep the player invested the Amnesias often wore thin long before the credits rolled. Rebirth in particular I wouldn't hesitate to call downright bad, a miserable experience that grows more tedious than frightening by the halfway point and only continues to sour from then on.

The Bunker, then, is a revelation. Frictional have decided to combine their strong sound and tense point-to-point gameplay with a classic survival horror focus on resource management and non-linearity and it has paid off in spades. Easily their best game so far, perhaps the most exciting thing about The Bunker is the knowledge that this game only serves as a testbed, a first pillar in some great structure Frictional could build down the line. If their first foray into true survival horror is this good, just imagine what they could do next? The possibilities are enough to make a horror fan salivate.

But The Bunker itself is no small feat. After a quick tone setting tutorial, the player is dropped into the titular bunker and given a task that seems simple on paper. You're locked in this bunker with one very angry ghoul. The exit is blocked by debris. Find two items to remove the debris and exit the bunker. Seems simple enough, but the way to those items are locked behind barred doors and broken generators. The game offers you one safe room, in the middle of the bunker, and it's here that you'll manage your inventory, activate or deactivate the power, and save your game. There are no checkpoints in The Bunker. A death will send you back to the last time you saved in the safe room, and deaths come quick to those who aren't careful. The monster reacts to sound, and you're guaranteed to make quite a bit of noise as you deal with the obstacles that stand in between you and escape.

The Bunker's monster is brilliant, and it's here that Frictional's sound design prowess really comes into play. The sounds this thing makes are awful, but even worse are the sounds of it crawling through the walls, honing in on you as explore. One moment you're exploring a room with only one entrance, locked to keep yourself safe. But then you notice a small hole in a wall behind a crate. And then you hear the wheezing breathing coming from it. Moments like this happen all throughout the 4-8 hours it will take you to finish The Bunker (my results screen said 2 hours, but there's no way that's right.) and they are thrilling and terrifying each time. Sometimes artillery will strike the bunker, a randomly generated jump scare that was effective every single time it happened.

Amnesia: The Bunker is Frictional's best work yet, and one of the most stressful games in a famously stressful genre. It doesn't outstay its welcome and the pacing is great, with fun little diversions being thrown your way whenever the core loop threatens to get stale. Plus, the randomization of resources and the imsim elements make for a very replayable experience, a must for any survival horror game. All in all the game is a remarkable first effort by the team at Frictional to expand their style outward. Their great sound and world design combined with classic survival horror resource management and minimal but intense combat has made for something special, and the possibilities before them feel limitless and golden.