auriga platform

Scorn has been in development for about 5 years, or so I'm told. that's a long time for a short indie title to be in development, and it almost certainly built up its fair share of hype over the years and trailers. unfortunately teasing and showing it that early seems to have played a part in its downfall as it launched with a less than pleasing “Mixed” review score on Steam. Let's find out why.

So what is Scorn, exactly? The trailers are really rather coy about it, mostly happy to show off its beautifully disgusting environments more than actually tell you anything. Well, first and foremost, it's a puzzle game. A nice, slow paced puzzle game, sort of like Myst but with a lot more viscera hanging about the place. Pick up this item, put it into this interface, turn it into a key, use it to unlock a different key and watch an almost dead bloke flop out of an egg before finally snuffing it. Good times, right? Well, it would be, if it weren't for the small wrinkle that is the combat.

See, for whatever reason, the lads over at Ebb Studios thought it'd be an absolutely grand idea if your progress was just occasionally blocked by some lads who would love nothing more than to spit some acid on you and call it a day. Now, in concept, I'm quite alright with that really. Keep me on my toes, remind me it's a hostile nasty flesh hell I'm wandering around and all that. It's just that they gave you the most useless weapons possible. For example, the first one you get is this odd combo of “thing you'll always have about to use certain objects” and “a jabber for jabbing things with”. Press the fire button, and a little piston on the front of the gun will shoot forward rather aggressively into the face of whatever you're close to. There's just a few problems with this though. One is the fact that it's giving you a weapon that's only really good in a pinch first and won't give you a properly decent weapon until about 2 hours later. Two is the fact that you really do have to get right up in the baddies faces to hit them. And Three is the fact that it does basically no damage vs. the acid spit of the enemies which will consistently take a good two chunks off your rather small health bar.

So what, I hear you cry. It's a puzzle game and it's given you a basically useless weapon to deal with the scant few enemies you'll face. Just stealth around them, right? Unfortunately, no. They tend to notice you from pretty far away and due to their rather hitscan-esque firing, pretty much your only options are either to go up and twat it or run away until it de-aggros and finds something else to do. Not to mention that if you're in a corridor, you positively have no other choices; running past them or around them isn't an option. What you can do however is sit from afar, watching the critters roam the area until they eventually get bored and climb into a nearby hole. If you're quick, you can usually run through the area before any more of them spawn back in.

And once you finally reach the wonderful, glorious, blissful moment of finally getting your first real weapon (a pistol), you get immediately smacked in the face by the fact that the amount of ammo you carry is tiny and the amount in the gun's clip is even comically smaller. And that's before you find out that ammo recharge stations are (a) one use only and (b) extremely bloody rare to come by. You better not waste that stuff or you're knackered. Oh, and by the way? If you don't perfectly hit the head of each enemy to kill it, you're gonna end up using more ammo than you need to. Have fun!!

So yeah, the combat blows absolute chunks. It's a real shame too because frankly, the game is otherwise fantastic. The sound is spooky and atmospheric and the visuals, my word, it's fucking beautiful. Never have I seen such a awe-inspiring and pretty nightmare realm. See look there, give that part a wipe down, clear out the guts laying about and it'd be a lovely spot for a kitchenette!

Outside of all of that though, there seems to be some semblance of a storyline but none of it is ever communicated to you. I'd love to know more about this world, how these devices are made, what the purpose is of a lot of the stuff laying about, but we don't really get much of that. The most story related things I've seen in my playtime was in Act 9 of the game, which I believe is close to the end of the game(?) The most you get story wise is “you wake up in a flesh based nightmare world and you might be a bad person question mark?” which isn't exactly enticing.

Additionally, there seems to be some kind of moral values thing going on too. Such as right at the start, where one of the first choices in the game has you opting to either free a dude trapped in an egg so you can roughhouse them into being a second person to open a big door, or scoop them out of the egg to kill them and claim their arm in the process to open a big door. Neither option is great there and I'm curious to know what exactly is going on with it but there's a small issue... I'm basically softlocked out of the game.

Remember when I told you that ammo stations are really rare? Yeah, it turns out that goes for health stations too. This issue never changes throughout the entire game and it's incredibly annoying, especially since it adds nothing to the game other than artificial difficulty. Worse than that, I'm stuck at a point where the game expects me to fight the same boss twice in a row, with no health or ammo replenishments in between said fights. Despite it take out most of my health and ammo the first time round. This. This isn't fun to me. This isn't a challenge. This is just unfair and feels like the game is punishing me for daring to play it. Throw in the fact that you don't replenish anything at checkpoints AND the fact that checkpoints are few and far between and you got yourself one heaping serving of “fuck off” pie there.

Frankly, I'm still rather baffled as to why the game even has combat to begin with. It would've been a far more enjoyable experience to just wander around and learn about this fucked up world. Oh and before I forget, the issue of it not really telling you anything carries over into a more important aspect of the game; what the buttons on your controller actually do. Not once does it tell you that you have to aim with LT first before you can fire your gun with RT, that X reloads, or that LB lets you sprint and RB heals you. Instead it decides “fuck it, just put a controller map in the pause screen, that'll do”.

Now look, right. I'm all for a bit of don't-hold-my-hand-ta-v-much type action in a video game. I love working out obtuse systems. I played through Mu Cartographer recently and absolutely adored my time with it. But I feel like failing to tell the players some of the most vital to survive actions is, maybe, possibly, not a good thing? There's a definite case to be made for even the most proudfully difficult games being more fair and player-friendly than this.

Overall then, at launch, this game is a barrel of fun ideas swimming in a delicious pool of blood and viscera...it's just a shame about the thick layer of janky mould growing on top of it.

Pros: + Gorgeous visuals + Lovely atmospheric audio + Puzzles are fun + F L E S H

Cons: – No tutorializing, to a fault – Combat is some of the worst I've ever experienced in a game – Brutally unfair damage values – One use ammo and health replenishment machines – Asking me to fight a boss twice without the above. Seriously. Piss off.

Scorn is available to buy now on PC (RRP £31.99) and Xbox (RRP £33.49) and can be played through Xbox's Game Pass service. Though if I were you, I'd give it a bit so they can patch in a no combat mode.