The Bunker might be this year's scariest horror game

I played complete horror games blood soaked this year-nasty games rendered with bombs and meat grinders in high fidelity detailsbut no one made me scream until it was clearer Amnesia: The Bunker.

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So far I’ve only ever watched friends over their shoulders as they played the other three parts from Swedish indie studio Frictional Games. legendary amnesia psychological horror series. Thowever The year 2020 is scary rebirth much lost from the original Dark DescentI was still looking forward to what I thought was the definitive horror game experience in elementary school. The bunker (coming out on June 6th) is a welcome U-turn and proves me right. It strips down the story and mechanics of the series, leaving only the tense muscle that creates this This year's best example of roaming, penetrating, and searingly searing horror, as long as its occasional clumsiness doesn't get in the way.

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Like others amnesia Games puts you in the first-person perspective of an amnesiac – this time Henri Clement, a French World War I soldier trapped in a nearly empty, suffocating bunker – who must flee and hide from a grunting monster. in contrast to others amnesia games, The bunker has a simple story, and many elements of its world, including item locations and item codes, are randomized each playthrough. As I tiptoe through the pitch-black world, often with just a moaning hand-cranked flashlight in my left hand and an unloaded gun in my right, I share Henri's vague idea of ​​what's happening, aside from the trembling sense that I’m walking die, and probably soon.

It's ok, I’m more focused on keeping the game's jitter generator alive. A stopwatch tells me when the fuel I’ve been pumping through the spout is about to run out, but my poor time management means I’m always in a bit of a bind until the time runs out and I’m back into unforgiving gloom sink. So I try to quickly run to the destinations circled in red on my map, searching for cloths to craft healing items, dog tags with secret codes, and heavy rocks to hide at locked wooden doors and through along the way I can escape lo-fi hell.

Play The bunker reminds me how much I hate going down to the basement to get something by myself. I’ve always had a fear of the dark, and while I’m technically an adult, I still can't stop myself from imagining white-eyed demons breathing somewhere in the shadows behind me. In this manner, The bunker is my worst nightmare.

When, utterly my fault for playing blindfolded games like a cavewoman, I’m forced to be pushed back into the dark because the generator went out, the glowing notes and photos I find next to overturned chairs and soldiers’ tables only add to my anxiety. They hiss warnings about a "strange glowing liquid oozing out of the walls" and show me contextless photos of a disemboweled soldier on an operating table, his eyes gouged out and his skin torn like an unloved rag doll.

Awkwardly and noisily, I sprint through hollow corridors until I come back to the save point, a hanging lantern in the bunker's central area that glows even after a power outage. While I often see an autosave icon blinking sleepily in the corner of my PS5 screen, it doesn't seem to do anything at all. If I want to make sure I don't lose a rare ammo load or a new unlocked location in any of the twisted bunker's four unknown areas – the prison, the Soldiers’ Quarters, the Arsenal, or Maintenance – I saunter over to the Lantern to salvage them.

That tedious aspect bugs me, but it at least forces me to memorize the twisting layout, though at many moments I feel like locking the doors and ducking behind a barrel is a more sensible gameplay choice. There's, you know, a monster around.

I venture back out, and through my headphones on, I hear the slimy growl behind me, just as I feared. I open my limited inventory and am confronted with even more blood – Henri's ruffled hand that gets a slick bloodstain every time he takes damage. The games panting hordes of rats are drawn to the blood, but they will nibble on a piece of raw meat if I have any to sacrifice. I’m not doing that at the moment. A pack trudges towards me.

My field of vision pulses red as they bite my feet, and though they dissipate as the monster pokes its clawed, scrawny hands out of a bloody hole in the bunker's concrete walls, I don't get the same chance. His arms wrap around me, my DualSense controller trembles, and then I’m limp on the floor.

Playing mouse for this hideous cat can be exciting. When I walk to an unactivated light switch and see the monster already waiting for me down the hall, lit by the switch I just turned on and waiting for me, I hold my breath and crawl back to where I came here I later spend a precious bullet breaking open a locked closet, and though my muffled ears are ringing, I can still hear the monster's desperate pounding through the walls. I try to light a torch in front of a nearby hole to punish it.

I like to push back, in the limited but flexible ways the game allows me, and experiment with my defenses, smashing empty bottles to create a distraction, intentionally triggering explosive tripwires, or me with the good , try old-fashioned hiding in a closet until it's safe. I await the monster's reaction with excited trepidation, either screaming or exhaling, and run back to the save point, whichever it is.

But even though I was done for almost five hours bunker In my four and a half hour gameplay, I spend the last half hour figuring out what the heck to do about the monster after it's dark. A handwritten sign near the generator tells me that "the bastard hates light," but when I shine my flashlight right in his face for lack of resources and options, he seems sneering and continuing his plan to kill me .

The torch I tried didn't really work either. I shot it squarely once and it seemed to startle it, but it ended up coming back and shoveling me into its mouth in the next room. I try to barricade myself in a pantry I want to search by closing all the doors and stuffing chairs into the monster's tunnel system, but the creature is far too preternaturally strong for 20th-century carpentry to keep it in check could become.

I try to sit still, which is a difficult task for me, but to no avail. Being a good girl will cause the monster to disappear for a while, but then it will appear out of nowhere and pound on me until I’m dead again. This makes it feel uncomfortably impossible to progress in the dark, as everything from winding up my flashlight once to pushing away a misplaced crate seems loud enough to summon the monster instantly. Fuel supplies are limited and the generator is designed to fail, so I wish I had at least one less to worry about. Maybe we don't need the rats. Or maybe the monster might actually react to light or back out after I sneak away.

But despite an overly eager monster and chaotic save mechanic, I’m impressed that it's due to the open story and no-frills gameplay The bunker uses the imagination of its players to create an unparalleled psychological horror experience. Terror doesn't have to be extreme or extravagant. It can be like an ant crawling up a leg, simple and true, yet evoking the unmistakable sense that something exists incorrect.

I could invent it, I think to myself. But as I stare at the empty prison cells and bunk beds in the darkness of the bunker, I feel injustice circling me. It's waiting somewhere, preparing to jump, and since we’re playing a game here, I’ll let it.