The Bunker

A lot of people seem to hate this because its interactivity is low and I do think that's a valid criticism. The only time you really have to engage with it is the numberpad at the end and the solution to that is extremely tedious. I'm not above appreciating "story games" like this but I also think this game is overly limited in what you can actually interact with or discover through exploration. It's extremely railroaded in a way that makes the point of interests obvious and the merits of this land on it being something of an indie film.

But if we're evaluating this as a film, I think it has merits. The conceit here is a horror fixated around loneliness and isolation, there's never any external threat you have to deal with as much as it is a horror of living with past trauma and having your entire life be defined by that. John can't comprehend a world where he exists outside of his routine and the routine he exists in is so mind numbing and rigid that it lends itself effectively to the horror that comes when this process is broken. It's why just opening a door outside of your routine is made out to be this horrific occurrence, especially given the traumatic experiences John remembers outside of that door. I also like the fact that the sense of isolated responsibility adds its own horror, that if something is to happen to John no one else is there to salvage his mistake, which ultimately is what drives the narrative forward. The scene where John is in the medical room trying to bandage himself is easily the best scene in this game, the editing sells how painful and scary it is to deal with something like that by yourself with no one around to help you. That the isolation is not just scary for social reasons but for pragmatic reasons as well, that there's no collective to cover for individual mistakes. The body acting John has to convey this is superb, which adds so much tension to scenes where it's clear the injury is affecting him.

Personally, I think the music got way overbearing sometimes. The lighting is fantastic and the editing is mostly good, but god I think it gets really goofy when it lands on the "this is the part you're supposed to be horrified!" Bit and the music becomes excessively bombastic. It's executed in a way that just comes across as more amusingly campy than horrifying when I think morbid silence would have made these scenes land harder.

I also kinda wish the narrative never overtly reveals the cause of the bunker's tragedy. I think there's a lot more merit in trying to piece things together through left behind notes than the story just flat out telling you who the culprit is. I think it's a solid twist to imply that the culprit did this out of desperation in favor of John and herself due to the mounting pressure of food shortage, but why couldn't the player figure this out themselves? This is where I think the "game" would have benefitted more if the devs actually tried to make it more interactive because having the downfall be handed to you like that feels unrewarding. If put outside the context of a game, I'd also say that the film part of this could have also been less overt on saying this too. The way I come at this game is thinking of things through someone totally isolated of understanding the tragedy around him but being affected by it nonetheless, so I think the person watching also not really getting the full picture and is only able to comprehend the aftermath would have been a lot more engaging.

I also think there should have been more incentive to actually stay in the bunker. The dilemma makes sense but it doesn't really match up that the image of his mother would try to convince him to stay given that she clearly was not fond of the circumstances or living conditions of being there, especially given the long term of her actions. I get that his mother is the only person who lived in the bunker that he actually connected to emotionally, but nothing implies that she ever pushed John to want to stay in it. The bunker is literally all that John knows but he's also very operative in his mindset that escaping is the proper procedure in case things go to shit, which it does. The radiation threat is designed to push John out of his routine but it also kinda defeats this dilemma because why would John even consider staying in the bunker when his procedural mind dictates that escaping is the best course of action? There's deep anxiety about living outside that bunker, but given that his entire routine is about keeping himself alive I feel that the dilemma gets undermined by the fact that it would be going against the purpose of his routine. I feel staying needed to be justified by how much leaving defies his mental coding, and I feel that the status quo of his life is shaken too much for him to be able to properly justify that.

Regardless, I think this is decent as a cinematic experience moreso than a narrative one. There's decent narrative chops that I think could have been handled better but I think the narrative does serve to make its visual storytelling compelling. It's also something you can blast through in about 2 hours so it's not too bad of an investment if you grab this on sale. If the devs were willing to make better use of a conventional adventure game style structure to do more interpretative storytelling I think I'd have like this more, but I still recommend this despite that.