2023's most slept-on horror game is getting an absolutely sadistic new mode where nearly everything's randomized and you have to spend precious fuel just to save

I absolutely love Amnesia: The Bunker⁠—it's gotten lost in the tangle of one of the best years for gaming in a long time, but The Bunker is quietly one of the best horror games I've ever played. Now Frictional Games is augmenting that already mondo-stressful experience with a surprise Halloween update and harder-than-hard "Shell Shock" mode.

Shell Shock strikes out every bit of refuge players have in The Bunker. You now have to collect fuses to restore electricity and turn on the lights in each of the bunker's sub-levels, with only a lone, random area powered on to start the game. That means any preconceived "optimal" routes you might have come up with go out the window⁠—you're only safe when the lights are on (and the monster can still find you even then!) .

Other aspects of the game are randomized in Shell Shock as well, with lockers containing precious survival tools (and their corresponding lock combinations) scattered to the sublevels. Mutant rat-attracting corpses are scattered about willy nilly, the already hard-to-reach fuel storage room gets locked with a random combination, and just saving the game costs fuel now. You don't even start out with The Bunker's pea shooter revolver anymore⁠—you gotta find it in yet another randomized locker.

You can't rely on The Bunker's Admin Room for safety, either. It's normally a Resident Evil save room-style haven from the Stalker, but its sturdy metal doors get replaced with flimsy wooden ones in Shell Shock mode, meaning the Stalker is free to tear them down and give you a wedgie if it knows you're in there.

If all that sounds as intense to you as it does to me, Frictional's also introduced modular difficulty options to tweak each of these modifiers individually. I might dabble in increased randomization for a replay, while taking a pass on some of the harder-core additions. The Bunker's Halloween update is now available for all players.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.