The Bunker Notes Review – Gonna Need A Longer Bunker (Notes)

There are many factors of an apocalypse that aren’t usually covered in popular media, with it so often focusing on the day-to-day survival aspects of scavenging for food and, wait, what if humans were the monsters all along? Some of the most interesting apocalypse stories cover events that are happening as a result of the long-term effect of societal collapse; the lack of modern medicine and a pause on scientific evolution, the fact that nothing will be mass-produced again for hundreds of years, and what happens when all the towns and cities have been scavenged to dust? One of the most interesting themes stemming from apocalypse stories is loneliness. Humans are a social species, so what happens when the majority of the population is killed off and those that are alive are unfamiliar and untrustworthy? If given the opportunity to risk everything in return for socialisation, will they take it?

This is the core theme of The Bunker Notes, a visual novel developed by Synthetic Domain, based on a short story of the same name written by one of the members of the team. At just over an hour and a half long, The Bunker Notes covers two stories focusing on two different characters facing loneliness in an apocalypse that has happened after a mysterious virus has ravaged the population. The first of which focuses on a man hiding in a bunker, suffering from an inability to create new memories as a result of the virus’ symptoms. To track his days and memories, he keeps a diary. But one day, he finds that some of the pages have been torn out.

The Bunker Notes has a really interesting premise and some chilling story moments. In fact, for the most part I did really enjoy the plot, but when looking closer than face value, a lot of the character decisions weren’t delved into very well, seemingly coming from nowhere. Not to mention the story ends very abruptly, despite definitely having room for further elaboration given the short run length.

But my biggest problem with The Bunker Notes is with its functionality as a graphic novel. Despite its short play length and simplicity, it was absolutely wrought with bugs to the point where I cannot recommend this game at all until it’s fixed. While the first half of the game worked fairly well, the latter half was a complete mess. Character names showed with the wrong text boxes, making conversations confusing and incredibly difficult to distinguish who was talking. Similarly, audio cues would happen at the wrong times, often spoiling major story moments that were about to happen in the next few minutes. But worst of all were the story decisions, which are the only bit of actual gameplay in this visual novel, that would appear at completely wrong moments in the second story, with major story decisions having text that was supposed to be for another story decision several scenes back. I ended up having to trial and error them to see what each option did, as they still retained their original action despite the wording being completely wrong.

Even if these bugs were to be fixed, The Bunker Notes also very much lacks in story decisions, with each part only having around two to choose from, meaning that the game very much consists of just the story itself without much interaction from the player. And while these story “options” are technically in place, there is a clear wrong one and a clear right one, with the wrong one often resulting in the game abruptly ending. There’s also a lack of punctuation in the text boxes to properly show when people are speaking and when the wording is the main character’s narration. Rather than speech marks, dashes are used to indicate when dialogue starts but not when it ends.

In terms of audio and visuals, The Bunker Notes uses a black-and-white illustrated art style which suffices, but there’s not enough variety in illustrations to keep up with the plot, with a lot of images being reused multiple times. Not to mention the imagery in my playthrough was showing up at the wrong times in relation to the text. Audio consists of some quiet, ambient music with the occasional sound effects. While these did a good job at setting the scene without being overly intrusive (besides playing at the wrong times and spoiling the story that is), there was a large section of the second story where the music completely cut out for a while. I’m not sure if this is because I’d reached the end of the track and needed to read on to start the next one or if this was part of the multitude of bugs that I was facing.

Had The Bunker Notes actually functioned properly as a visual novel, I would happily recommend it to visual novel fans looking for a darker story; while not perfect, The Bunker Notes‘ plot was interesting enough to keep me entertained for an hour and a half and had some good moments. However, since it fails to meet the very basic functional expectations of a visual novel, I cannot recommend this game at all in its current state.

Jess reviewed The Bunker Notes on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.