I remember every encounter I had with Amnesia: The Bunker's antagonist, an ape-like thing that lives in the walls of the World War I hellhole protagonist Henri Clément finds himself trapped in. Whether I was peeking out at it through the slats of a confessional in the company of a mutilated chaplain or using the last of my precious bullets to drive it back into the walls knowing it'll just come back angrier, every escape from it felt harrowing and earned.
Amnesia: The Bunker is like a new beginning for this series, preserving a distinctive sense of powerlessness and foreboding while slotting that fragility into a full-on immersive sim. You don't just run and hide in The Bunker: you plan expeditions out of your Resident Evil-style safe room, exploring a labyrinthine, nonlinear world that stands shoulder to shoulder with the best horror games I've played.
The Bunker is genuinely one of the scariest and most stressful videogames I've ever played-it was so intimidating and oppressive, I found it hard to make myself stay seated for the first few sessions. Frictional's sound design is superb in how it builds a sense of dread and how it signals the monster's alert level. There's this ambient, cavernous hum to the bunker, punctuated by the squeals of rats, occasional cries from the Beast, and the earthshaking thumps of German artillery.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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