I feel a sense of mystique and curiosity whenever I step into a new video game for the first time without any prior knowledge and I adore the way some titles let me get immersed in the world and lore. Titles like Outer Wilds, for instance, are best enjoyed when you know nothing about before it because any spoiler to the story can ruin the sense of discovery you get when you finally figure out a piece of the greater picture.
As such, talking about Scorn feels difficult. It is a game that is incredibly cinematic in its approach. In a way, it reminded me of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, in that it felt like you were watching a movie and getting fully immersed by the gameplay… and piecing together what the story symbolises and means was fully up to me. Reviewing this game without giving away anything of what I thought it was about is a real challenge.
Developer: Ebb Software
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Genre: Atmospheric First-Person Horror Puzzle Adventure
Release Date: October 14th, 2022
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC, PS5, XBS
Copy was purchased through Humble Choice, Februrary '24.
Yet, I want to try to share why I enjoyed this game so much so that more people can enjoy it as well. This game isn’t for everyone, let’s lead with that, but it definitely is one of the most unique experiences I’ve had in recent years, alongside titles like In Other Waters. And what’s more, is that it is a game that you can beat in about 7-8 hours which is a plus in my book as it doesn’t necessarily overstay its welcome. It’s an incredibly special title.
Originally announced in 2014, the Geiger-esque world filled people’s hearts with interest. Scorn takes a very novel approach to gameplay in that it really focuses on throwing the player into a world with little to no handholding. This can feel overwhelming at first. You experience a humanoid creature crawling towards an alien tower amidst a desolate and vast desert in the very first cutscene, and yet you wake up in an unfamiliar place.
Once you wake up from your slumber, breaking free from the overgrowth that covers your body, you venture through an extraneous structure, looking for a path to move onwards.
There is no text, no cutscenes, and no real prompts that give your journey meaning, and yet the fact that a lot of paths are deteriorated or obstructed gives you a sense of direction and hope. The alien structures are dreadful and disgusting; as you move on, you find strange contraptions and puzzles. In the very first act, there is a puzzle that I spent a lot of time with.
I didn’t spend a lot of time with it because it was difficult or anything. Rather, it was quite easy once I understood what I was supposed to do. Getting there, however, was what puzzled me. Where am I supposed to go? What can I interact with? The game really doesn’t hold your hand, and hence I spent about half an hour in the very act, trying to figure out what ways lead me to any place that I can do something with.
Once I made it past that, though, everything seemed so sensible. Everything made sense to me even though it was all so bizarre and macabre.
Scorn has the player experience five unique acts that encompass travelling through different interconnected areas. Each area features a distinct theme with lots of environmental storytelling. What is this place? What is it used for? Questions upon questions are amassed as the player stumbles through a human harvesting facility and a mix of technology and flesh.
What I really loved was the way that the lighting changes with the ambience giving a completely different vibe depending on what area you went through. I’m not great with horror and I’d imagine that horror game fans won’t be scared or anything in this title.
Rather, Scorn is an extraordinarily atmospheric title that has you experiencing a sense of anxiety and eeriness with each step that you take. There are no jump scares, to my knowledge, and I am glad about that. When I got scared, it was because of distant and nearby sounds or because I realised what outlandish place I had stumbled into.
Frankly, Scorn is really well made. You eventually meet a companion of sorts who clings tightly to you and doesn’t let you go. I found it intimate even though your symbiotic relationship harms you in a lot of ways, it also helps you out. As you collect weapons and items, everything is held by your arms and the arms of your companion – who I titled “Armin” for punny reasons.
The way the inventory works and the way it is embedded into the gameplay without taking you to a different screen or anything is incredibly unique and novel. I loved that.
However, I found myself struggling at times. There is combat in the game and I wouldn’t say it’s difficult or clunky, it often was rather enjoyable and I do think that it’s not overwhelming or anything, so even people who do not play shooters too often should be able to enjoy it.
I just believe that there may have been too many enemies in Act 3, for instance, and as such managing my ammunition, making difficult choices in combat and trying to get through with as much health as possible made me lose focus. Said focus was needed to really take in the environment, the unspoken story and the underlying truths of the game. I would have loved to continue doing so, and hence this is a gripe I’ve had.
I didn’t get to embrace Act 3 all that much because there are just a few too many foes in that area. Just reducing the number by one or two of the tougher ones likely could have helped with this issue. It’s not all that much but it did reduce my enjoyment a tad.
Perhaps, though, the game needed that excitement and the extra action before its climax. A typical five-actor features the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action and a resolution, after all, so it may have just needed something that keeps the player on edge at first and then eventually gets rid of all that tension.
So, with that in mind, this action-heavy area with numerous enemies does do a good job of relieving the action fairly well but maybe I’m reading too much into this, as well.
Overall, the sound design and the general atmosphere really make for a great – rather cinematic – experience and Scorn had me at the edge of my seat for a long time.
The lack of direction is fitting. It works quite well. I did feel thrown into this world, and near the end, I wasn’t entirely sure what I had just played. There were hints towards a meaning that the game has but I’m sure that, similar to GRIS, every player can have a different understanding of what they thought the story was about.
With all that said, Scorn is definitely not for everyone. At all.
It’s an incredibly gross and macabre game. The art H.R. Giger inspired art is grotesque and terrifying. The combination of man and machine, the themes of rebirth, death and fertility, the amount of gore and splatter… The game definitely isn’t for people with weak stomachs… but while I personally often cannot handle that kind of stuff, I still found a real gem in this game that effectively had me enamoured overall.
I had to look away at times when bloody and gore-heavy things happened but aside from that, I had a wonderful time and felt truly immersed in the world of a game for the first time since In Other Waters.
Don’t get me wrong. I felt sick at times while playing Scorn… and despite being ultimately quite grossed out, I also felt engrossed in Scorn. I felt this fear of the unknown and yet this enigmatic pull had me keep going, further and further, deeper into the belly of said strange and horrible temple to experience what is beyond the next door, across this next crevice and outside of this outlandish temple and desert. And what I found had me terrified and intrigued at the same time.
This one is concept art. I just figured it works well here at the end.
All in all, I love Scorn. It’s a great game in my experience. It is definitely not for everyone but it also really doesn’t need to be. It is in a way what I’d expect of Indie games: Games made for their artistic value. Scorn is a piece of art, and it’s one where you get to experience multiple layers of the same painting but brought to a new light as you head into area after area.
Thus, I recommend this to those of you that are wondering what the fuck I’m talking about because I tried as much as possible to not spoil any of the story and to not give away too much but inevitably it is difficult to do so. So, I hope that my mostly spoiler-free review helped you get a better picture of why Scorn is so great, at least to me.
Note: Stalk from Cubic Creativity, a friend of the blog, didn’t like the game at all and had a vastly different experience from me, so go check out their review over here! Stalk encountered issues and problems I didn’t have. I ended up playing through the game in two sessions, after all, so it explains why I didn’t run into some of those issues.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!
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