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With the tough-as-nails Shell Shocked mode.
Frictional Games fans could be forgiven for thinking the horror-focused studio has been getting a little soft in recent years, having introduced death-free and monster-free modes in post-launch updates for its acclaimed SOMA and Amnesia: Rebirth. This year, though, it’s going in completely the opposite direction, and its recently launched WW1 horror Amnesia: The Bunker will be getting even more nerve-frayingly horrifying, just in time for Halloween.
As spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, Frictional’s creative lead Fredrik Olsson has recently been using social media to detail some of the delightfully sadistic new features coming to Amnesia: The Bunker soon in what will known as Shell Shocked mode.
For starters, players who’ve been relying on the comparative tranquility of The Bunker’s Admin Office safe room to emotionally, physically, and mentally regroup will, in Shell Shocked mode, be a little bit screwed. Now, its reassuringly sturdy steel doors will be replaced wood, which, you know, isn’t all that resistant to scrambling, pounding, shredding monster claws.
And if that’s still not enough to get masochistic heart a-quivering, how about this: time will no longer stop when you dive into your inventory, meaning you’ll want to be pretty damned sure you’ve found a relatively safe spot before diving in there to craft those life-saving items.
Want more? Shellshocked also goes wild with the randomisation; corpses, dog tags, and bunker rats will all spawn in new and randomised locations, while some mission-critical lockers will no longer appear in Mission Storage, instead being randomly distributed somewhere out in the bunker’s sub-levels. On the plus side, Shell Shocked makes it possible to randomly find life-saving resources in crates dotted around the bunker. But because this isn’t an update particularly concerned with plus sides, finding them will require you to smash open crates – risking drawing the monster’s attention with your noisy bonking.
And lastly for now! Players won’t start the game with their (admittedly dubiously useful) pistol in Shell Shocked, instead needing to find it in a randomly spawned location.
Shell Shocked mode will be available as part of a free update arriving for Amnesia: The Bunker sometime this October. Olsson has referenced a “custom” mode arriving at the same time, which sounds like it’ll give players the opportunity to create a horror experience better suited to their particular tastes – including by individually turning Shell Shocked’s new features off and on.
Eurogamer contributor Vikki Blake called Amnesia: The Bunker “scary in that special kind of way that sees you gasp for breath because, until that very moment, you didn’t realise you’d been holding it” when she reviewed it earlier this year, slapping it with four out of five stars.
