AMNESIA: THE BUNKER

How a gun, a generator and a pocket watch cranked up Frictional's horror

- RICK LANE

Amid the countless horror stories you hear about difficult productions in game development, occasionally you also learn about games where everything went right. Take Amnesia: The Bunker, which ironically happens to be one of the most frightening games ever made.

The latest entry in Frictional Games’ acclaimed horror series, Amnesia: The Bunker puts players in the role of French World War One soldier Henri Clemént. Trapped in a warren of concrete tunnels beneath the trenches of the Western front, Clemént is hunted by a monster as he searches for a way out.

Developed in little over two years, The Bunker is notorious for its ability to conjure an atmosphere of dread, and it's arguably Frictional’s most accomplished game to date.

“Afterwards, when we did the post mortem, a lot of it was people saying, ‘This went so well’,” creative lead Fredrik Olsson recalls.

“It was so organic, evolving constantly, and without any friction whatsoever." What's remarkable about this smoothness is that The Bunker diverges from many of Frictional’s prior design tenets, with largely contrary creative priorities, and even reneges on perhaps the studio's most genre-defining decision.

The Bunker was made in the wake of a far less straightforward project, Amnesia: Rebirth, which Olsson took over midway through its five-year development cycle. “It was much more difficult designing a game like Rebirth,” he says. “The story is the driver for that game, so there were no things we could really cut from it, because if we cut a level, for example, then we'd lose plot points that were super-important to the story."