Scorn has been met with a mixed reception thanks to a solid handful of faults. The hyper-grim tone stays static throughout, missing out on the dynamics of tension and peace that make the best horror experiences shine. The story, such as it is, coasts largely on vibes and might not amount to a satisfying punch for some players. And of course… there's that unfortunate combat.
However, I want to let those problems lie where they may and spend a little time talking about what I liked about Scorn. I want to speak briefly about something Scorn did that interested me as a designer, and hopefully you'll find that thing at least a bit interesting too. First, though, I've got to mention the most obvious aspect of the game that impressed me: The way it looks!
Without a doubt, the visuals are gorgeous. Dense fog and dust blanket the bulbous alien architecture with eye-popping beauty. The quality of texture and material, and of the light passing through the cracked ceilings and obscured skies of Scorn come together to create a genuinely credible nightmare world that's a morbid pleasure to inhabit. It could definitely be said that Ebb Software gets no points for originality, lifting Giger and Beksiński wholesale and dropping them into a videogame landscape, though I want to give them their due for realizing those artists' aesthetics so confidently. It takes more than just having big tube-shaped things push themselves into holes to properly nail that vibe, and Scorn goes all out to really give it the detail it deserves. Besides, I've always wanted more games with precisely this aesthetic anyway so why get too hung up on originality?
The gameplay itself is, at least at first blush, nearly bog-standard. You walk around and solve various puzzles, pressing buttons and flipping switches.
Beneath that first layer of tissue though, I think Scorn is doing something at least interesting from a design perspective. It exploits the arbitrary nature of adventure game puzzle design to make the game world feel all the more alien. Playing the first level of Scorn, I was introduced to half a dozen technological devices whose purpose I truly couldn't even imagine. The odd glove-shaped holes and big mechanical arms with some sort of melon baller or ice cream scooper at the end, they didn't read as puzzle elements to me, they barely read as game elements at all. Am I being shown a lock, or a key? They were just pieces of this world with a function as unfathomable as the rest of my environment.
Usually when an adventure game has me climb up a rope of neckties and use a piece of corral to fashion a makeshift grappling hook so I can then use a balloon animal and some bread all to steal some pigeon eggs which are good for… something, it feels like an annoying, synthetic solution to an annoying, synthetic problem. But in Scorn these things feel all too natural, just of a sort of nature very, very far removed from me. Scorn uses its puzzle elements to heighten its sense of alienation through the gameplay, and in doing so it takes one of the largest traditional weaknesses of adventure games and makes it into its own greatest strength. Something resembling a real alien logic only unspools itself gradually as you interact with the game's various semi-organic mechanisms. It wasn't until later into my trip through that introductory level, when the game placed into my care a miserable looking man-creature nested inside some sort of half shell, that those melon baller machines began to make sense…
The level design is operating on the same wavelength, as the circular architecture of the environments seem bent on purposefully disorienting the player and denying them mastery of the space. Repeated trips through previous locales begin to grant some familiarity, but I never felt fully confident in my mental mapping of the levels, which I'd say is a success on the part of the game.
Scorn has its share of issues, but I find myself thinking more about the grisly delights of its art direction and the way it puts a little twist on traditional game design elements in order to better sell its vibes. Yes, the combat is bad. But when a game is such a mixed bag as Scorn, sometimes I just want to look at the positives I can take from the experience.
However, I want to let those problems lie where they may and spend a little time talking about what I liked about Scorn. I want to speak briefly about something Scorn did that interested me as a designer, and hopefully you'll find that thing at least a bit interesting too. First, though, I've got to mention the most obvious aspect of the game that impressed me: The way it looks!
Without a doubt, the visuals are gorgeous. Dense fog and dust blanket the bulbous alien architecture with eye-popping beauty. The quality of texture and material, and of the light passing through the cracked ceilings and obscured skies of Scorn come together to create a genuinely credible nightmare world that's a morbid pleasure to inhabit. It could definitely be said that Ebb Software gets no points for originality, lifting Giger and Beksiński wholesale and dropping them into a videogame landscape, though I want to give them their due for realizing those artists' aesthetics so confidently. It takes more than just having big tube-shaped things push themselves into holes to properly nail that vibe, and Scorn goes all out to really give it the detail it deserves. Besides, I've always wanted more games with precisely this aesthetic anyway so why get too hung up on originality?
The gameplay itself is, at least at first blush, nearly bog-standard. You walk around and solve various puzzles, pressing buttons and flipping switches.
Beneath that first layer of tissue though, I think Scorn is doing something at least interesting from a design perspective. It exploits the arbitrary nature of adventure game puzzle design to make the game world feel all the more alien. Playing the first level of Scorn, I was introduced to half a dozen technological devices whose purpose I truly couldn't even imagine. The odd glove-shaped holes and big mechanical arms with some sort of melon baller or ice cream scooper at the end, they didn't read as puzzle elements to me, they barely read as game elements at all. Am I being shown a lock, or a key? They were just pieces of this world with a function as unfathomable as the rest of my environment.
Usually when an adventure game has me climb up a rope of neckties and use a piece of corral to fashion a makeshift grappling hook so I can then use a balloon animal and some bread all to steal some pigeon eggs which are good for… something, it feels like an annoying, synthetic solution to an annoying, synthetic problem. But in Scorn these things feel all too natural, just of a sort of nature very, very far removed from me. Scorn uses its puzzle elements to heighten its sense of alienation through the gameplay, and in doing so it takes one of the largest traditional weaknesses of adventure games and makes it into its own greatest strength. Something resembling a real alien logic only unspools itself gradually as you interact with the game's various semi-organic mechanisms. It wasn't until later into my trip through that introductory level, when the game placed into my care a miserable looking man-creature nested inside some sort of half shell, that those melon baller machines began to make sense…
The level design is operating on the same wavelength, as the circular architecture of the environments seem bent on purposefully disorienting the player and denying them mastery of the space. Repeated trips through previous locales begin to grant some familiarity, but I never felt fully confident in my mental mapping of the levels, which I'd say is a success on the part of the game.
Scorn has its share of issues, but I find myself thinking more about the grisly delights of its art direction and the way it puts a little twist on traditional game design elements in order to better sell its vibes. Yes, the combat is bad. But when a game is such a mixed bag as Scorn, sometimes I just want to look at the positives I can take from the experience.
Neowyrm
1 year ago