Amnesia: The Bunker—the latest in Frictional’s string of psychological horror games—is excellent. Set during the First World War, the immersive sim-esque entry in the series wedded gameplay and theme perfectly: The sheer pointless horror of one of the greatest inter-imperial wars in history laid bare as you navigated an ink-black charnel house pursued by creatures dread and unknowable. It was a real bummer, basically. It did not shred at all.
Well fie to that, I say. Let’s get some electric guitars in here and zhuzh things up a bit. Thankfully, the hard work’s already been done. The game’s been out for a little over a month now, so someone’s naturally gone and built Doom in it. It’s the game’s first custom story, in fact, at least on the Steam Workshop, proving that players still have their priorities in order in 2023.
It’s called Doom (E1M1), it was made by a creator called Can’t Afford a Name, and it’s a mod for Amnesia: The Bunker that turns protagonist Henri Clément from poilu to predator, transplanting him from No Man’s Land to Mars and drenching him in enemies and ammo. “Play as Henri ‘Doom Guy’ Clément in this Custom Story for Amnesia: The Bunker!” reads the description, which I suppose is pretty much everything you need to know.
Henri isn’t quite as adept at mass slaughter as the original Doom Guy, mind you. He only has his revolver and shotgun to deal with enemies, all of whom are slightly derezzed versions of the Beast from the default, less rippin’ version of Amnesia. Even on Mars, the best Henri can manage is temporarily stunning his many, many foes as he beats a hasty retreat. But at least it’s bright and spacious up there.
I’m a particular fan of the end-of-level stats screen, which tots up figures ranging from “Corpses Corralled” to “Rats Recruited” and “Petrol Ingested”. I have absolutely no idea if it’s actually possible to do any of that stuff in the mod, but I choose to believe that it is.
If you own Amnesia: The Bunker on Steam, the mod couldn’t be easier to install. All you have to do is head over to the Steam Workshop and hit subscribe. If you don’t own it on Steam, there’s a few more steps: You’ll need to grab the mod off of ModDB, extract it to Amnesia’s main game directory, then stick the contents of “AmnesiaDOOME1M1” into the game’s Mods folder (which you might have to make yourself). After that, allez rip et tear.