The Bunker is a live-action game about a man who has spent his whole life underground, and the strange part is that it works. Splendy Games built its first major independent title as a full motion video adventure, shot on location in a decommissioned government nuclear bunker, and released it for Windows, OS X and PlayStation 4 on 20 September 2016. Xbox One followed on 23 September 2016, and Nintendo Switch on 9 April 2018.
You play John, played by Adam Brown. He grew up in a British fallout shelter after a nuclear war, and when an alarm goes off, his routine breaks and his mind starts to come apart.
A Shelter Built for a War That Came
The setup is simple and it is the best thing The Bunker has. On 3 July 1986, England falls under nuclear attack, and the government and its populace evacuate into underground fallout bunkers. In one military bunker, a staff member named Margaret is pregnant. She gives birth to her son John right when the bombs fall.
Thirty years later, John is apparently the sole survivor. Margaret has died of old age. He follows the rigid daily routine she taught him: checking the bunker’s systems, taking proper food and medication, and never leaving the isolated section where he lives. Several days after her death, the bunker’s server fails. John has to leave level 1 and go down to level 2 to reset it.
That is the whole engine of the game. A man who was told to stay put has to go where he was told not to.
Adam Brown and Sarah Greene Carry It
The Bunker leans on its cast, and the cast holds. Brown, known for The Hobbit, plays John as a man running on instructions rather than hope. Sarah Greene, whose credits include Penny Dreadful and Assassin’s Creed 3, is in the mix as well.
The development team carries its own pedigree. The writers and designer behind the game came from The Witcher, Broken Sword and SOMA. That is a real roster, and it shows in the plot’s patience. The Bunker does not rush to its revelations. It lets John walk.
It also helps that the footage was shot in an actual decommissioned government nuclear bunker. The place looks like what it is. Concrete, narrow passages, machines that were built to outlast the people who installed them.
The Clicking Does Less Than the Camera
Every frame of The Bunker is live action. You watch real footage and click your way through it, point-and-click style, the way adventure games have always worked. The camera switches between first person and third person, and the game uses both flashback sequences and present-day footage of the underground shelter.
This is the part that will split people. Full motion video games have a bad name for a reason, and the format asks a lot of a small studio. The Bunker mostly answers the ask. The interactivity is thin by design. You are not solving puzzles so much as choosing where John looks and what he touches, and the game is honest about that.
The trade is atmosphere for agency. What you get back is a bunker that feels occupied, because it was.
Down to Level 3, and the Ladder
The middle of The Bunker is where the plot turns. After John resets the server on level 2, he learns the air filtration system is failing. He heads down to level 3 to replace the filters. While trying to reactivate the system, he falls off a ladder, breaks his arm, and inadvertently activates the contaminated backup air filter system.
He returns to level 1 to perform first aid on his arm. Then he learns the backup system is slowly spreading radiation through the entire bunker. That forces him to the emergency exit, down to level 4 and then level 5, where he starts to recall repressed memories from his childhood.
The descent is the game’s best stretch. Each level strips away a little more of John’s routine, and the flashbacks start doing the work the present day cannot. You are watching a man find out what was kept from him.
What Commander Hurley Kept Quiet
Twenty years before the present, conditions in the bunker were grim. Radiation levels outside were far higher than expected, meaning it would not be safe to leave for another twenty to thirty years instead of the originally planned ten. Margaret learned that the bunker’s commander, Hurley, was keeping a secret about how little time the bunker had left.
That gap is worth naming. The Bunker builds its back half on a conspiracy inside a sealed room, and the conspiracy is the reason the ending lands. Margaret is not just John’s mother. She is the person who decided what he was allowed to know.
The horror here is not monsters. It is a mother teaching her son a schedule because the schedule is the only thing she can still control.
Where the Format Sets the Ceiling
The Bunker is a good game with a narrow ceiling, and the score should say so. It is a completely live action experience with point-and-click interactivity, and that combination has limits. The clicking rarely surprises you. The camera does more work than your hands do.
What The Bunker gets right is harder to fake. The location is real. The premise is clean. The cast, including Brown and Greene, sells material that could have gone silly. And the writing team’s background in The Witcher, Broken Sword and SOMA shows in how carefully the backstory is rationed.
What holds it at 7.0 is the format itself. Live-action adventure games ask you to trade control for presence, and The Bunker never quite escapes that bargain. The moments that stay with you are the ones you watched, not the ones you played.
The Bunker is worth your time if you want a horror story that trusts a room and a routine. It is not worth your time if you want to do much inside it.
The Numbers
- Title: The Bunker
- Developer: Splendy Games (Splendy Interactive)
- Publishers: Wales Interactive, Green Man Gaming Publishing, All 4 Games
- Release dates: Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4 — 20 September 2016; Xbox One — 23 September 2016; Nintendo Switch — 9 April 2018
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), iOS, PlayStation 5, Mac, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Genres: Simulator, Adventure, Indie
- Themes: Action, Horror
- Modes: Single player
- Perspective: First person, Third person
- Cast: Adam Brown (John), Sarah Greene
- Critical score: 7.0/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 11 outlets)
The Bunker Against The Hunting
| The Bunker | The Hunting | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Splendy Games | Splendy Games |
| Format | Full motion video adventure | Full motion video zombie horror |
| Platforms | PlayStation 4, PC, iOS, PlayStation 5, Mac, Xbox One, Switch | iOS, Android |
| Perspective | First person, third person | Not stated in source |
| Setting | Decommissioned government nuclear bunker | Not stated in source |
| Status | First major title as an independent studio | Earlier release |
The comparison matters because The Bunker is not a first attempt. Splendy Games had already shipped The Hunting, a live-action zombie horror title for iOS and Android, before going independent with this one. The Bunker is the studio applying what it learned on a smaller screen to a much larger one.
That context makes the 7.0 easier to read. This is a team that knows the format’s traps and avoids most of them. It is not a team that has solved the format.
What the Score Is For
A 7.0 is not a hedge. It is a verdict about a game that does one thing very well and refuses to do anything else. The Bunker is a live-action horror adventure with a real location, a real cast and a plot that earns its descent. It is also a game where your input is mostly pointing.
The detail that matters most is the bunker itself. Filming in a decommissioned government nuclear bunker gives The Bunker a texture that no set could buy, and it is the reason the routine scenes land. The detail that matters least is the platform list. This is the same game on PlayStation 5 as it was on PlayStation 4, and the Switch version arrived a year and a half later without changing what it is.
What sits against it is the format. Live-action adventure games have been trying to solve the same problem for decades: how to make watching feel like playing. The Bunker gets closer than most. It does not get all the way there.
Play it for the bunker. Play it for Brown and Greene. Play it for a story about a man who follows instructions until the instructions run out. Just do not expect your hands to be busy.
7.0 of 10
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