Going Underground with The Bunker, the Full Motion Video Horror Game

“We’re limited by our budget and our location,” confesses Plenderleith. “You have to construct the story so it works and is as interactive as possible, but it’s not going to bankrupt you. We really had to have a fine balance between this movie storytelling, a real emotional engagement with the character and also the amount of interactivity we could put in there. But we’ve definitely pushed it to the max of what we could possibly have done in terms of point and click. There’s also a lot of stuff that we added on set, because we’d realize there’s a giant filing cabinet by a door, and just as a gamer I would say, ‘I want to click on the filing cabinet. I want to know what’s in the filing cabinet.’”

Shooting on a real location and with authentic objects, as opposed to soundstages and props, was a difficult task for the team and one that required careful setups and an incredible eye for detail to avoid any continuity errors or glitches in gameplay. Simple shots like opening a cabinet or moving an object across a room became projects to be considered and studied, with immersion riding on the director’s ability to map out the environment correctly each time. Considering some of the actions had multiple outcomes, this would prove to be a headache for Plenderleith and his team. Nevertheless, they embraced the challenge, overcoming these barriers both on set, through camera trickery and ingenuity, and in the editing suite with the use of after effects.

Close attention was also paid towards the performances in the game. Hoping to add some much needed credibility to the genre, the team went to great lengths to bring on board professional actors like Adam Brown (The Hobbit) and Sarah Greene (Penny Dreadful) to help realize the story. It was hoped that this would result in a more emotionally engaging experience, unlike the corny productions of the past.

“I played a lot of FMV titles and I look back on them fondly, but when you see them now they’re a bit rough around the edges,” Plenderleith says. “Certainly, from my point of view as a director, the standard of acting was less than perfect. I love B-movie horrors and they were very much of that ilk. But what we wanted to do was a much more serious thing where you really believe the performances of the actors so you can really get lost in story the way you can in a movie.”

Given the initial responses to the game, they’ve arguably succeeded in this feat. Fan reaction has been highly complementary, with many singling the acting out as a highlight.

“It’s really lovely to see when people just get it; when people just get that John’s a really vulnerable human,” Sparks says. “We’ve tried to give the audience credit and assume that everybody has a level of intelligence. So far, it’s not like people have gone, ‘I don’t get it.’ They’ve all just played it and realize he’s been down there for a long time and he’s a fragile person. They buy the world and they understand it, and just immerse themselves in it. It’s wonderful to see.”

The Bunker isn’t your typical FMV game. Its tone is more serious and there’s an increased focus on high production values all around. Rather than simply trading in on nostalgia for this neglected type of presentation, the project represents an earnest attempt to modernize and iterate on what has come before, freely experimenting with a genre that’s still reasonably unexplored by videogame developers.