Amnesia: The Bunker 10-minute gameplay video features dark halls, giant rats, and the worst gun ever

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I'm very much not looking forward to Amnesia: The Bunker, the upcoming horror game from Frictional. I will play it, to be clear, but I won't enjoy it: The Amnesia games are pretty much the most "I don't need this shit" things I've ever played. But they're also kind of irresistible. It's weird.

The Bunker's big twist is that unlike previous games in the series, which are very linear, handcrafted experiences, it takes place in a "semi-open world" with sandbox-style survival-horror gameplay. That's a real departure, even though the basics are essentially unchanged, as you can see in the video: It's dark, your flashlight sucks, and some hideous supernatural horror is hunting you down.

I had doubts that it could work, but staff writer Morgan Park, who also has a sensible attitude about the Amnesia games ("wondering why I'd signed up to be unhappy" is perhaps the perfect summation of the Amnesia experience) took it for a test run in March and came away largely optimistic.

"This is not Amnesia trying to be Resident Evil; this is Amnesia inching toward the player agency and emergent gameplay of a full-blown immersive sim," he wrote. "My demo was a lot of fun, even if it ended in disaster."

This new video features 10 minutes of uncut gameplay, and showcases a lot of little details: The way your hand serves as an indicator of your overall health, for instance, and how the pocketwatch can be used to track the running time of the generator that keeps the lights on and the monster at bay. The survival horror vibe really lands too, even though it's just a trailer: You're trapped in the bunker with the monster, so flight isn't an option—all you can do is try to stay alive.

We'll find out soon whether that holds up over the course of the full game: Amnesia: The Bunker comes to Steam on May 23.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.