Deviant and disgusting: horror game “Scorn” needs strong nerves

Who am I? What am I doing here? And where the hell am I? Half buried under a biomechanical mass, I rise and make my way through an environment littered with flesh and steel. Am I in a spaceship? Was I kidnapped on an alien planet? Or have I just and simply ended up in hell? questions on questions.

The body becomes the door opener

After the first bout of disorientation, I realize that my battered body is not well and that thanks to alien technology it has become a kind of door opener.

So I insert strange snakes into myself on several rusty consoles and slide my fingers down into unfamiliar openings, which also make a mechanism work. Yes, even the first few minutes of the game are confusing and require a strong stomach.

Caught alone in a nightmare

At first glance, “Scorn” arouses somewhat false expectations. You’d think we’re in the survival horror genre and now the familiar traits are raining down on us. But far from it.

While the stark setting instinctively prepares us for a bunch of infernal creatures to attack us just around the corner, we’re just alone for a long time, getting used to the environment.

Strange, oversized buildings, abandoned torture machines and labyrinthine corridors where locked doors don’t open make our brains sweat.

From the first-person perspective, we’ll sneak through the areas covered in blood, flesh, and metal, solving one puzzle after another to not only get to the next area, but also answer a series of questions.

HR Giger would be proud

The room for interpretation of “Scorn” is huge. Even after the end of the game it rattles in my head. A mixture of fascination and frowning spreads and you think for a long time about what exactly happened here and how I would like to interpret it all for myself.

That is the great fascination of this game, which with its raw appearance seems to have come straight out of an HR Giger painting. The permanent tribute from the Serbian development team Ebb Software to the Swiss Alien maker cannot just be brushed aside. The late artist would have found his true joy in this digital nightmare.

The total confusion

Incidentally, the players are not taken by the hand at all. On the contrary: we are thrown into the deep end and have to come to terms with everything that is presented to us on the screen.

And when we finally get to grips with how this world works and how to interact with it, we are immediately struck by the following confusion.

Some slide and turn puzzles are simple, but they can also span multiple floors and require a lot of logic and spatial imagination to move forward. This can be frustrating, but afterwards it also gives you a portion of happiness.

Patch shooter passages

Yes, “Scorn” is always good for a surprise. It’s only later in the game that we learn that it’s not possible without a direct confrontation with sinister creatures. We must then use unusual weapons to defend ourselves against nightmares that have become flesh and that fascinate more than frighten.

These apparent shooting passages don’t want to fit into the picture at all and promptly take away the intensity that previously carefully built and dominated the game.

Lots of great WTF moments

Conclusion: The atmosphere of «Scorn» completely captivated me from the start. The abnormally ingenious design offers a digital HR Giger world in which I moved with great pleasure.

Although some puzzles got on my nerves, I was always curious what the designers would unleash on me next. Many great WTF moments followed, incredibly disgusting encounters and always new, eerily beautiful ideas that invited people to think.

If “Scorn” had focused solely on these atmospheric components and not built in technically half-baked shooting moments that resemble foreign bodies, it would have left its mark on the horror genre.

«Scorn» is available for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. Approved for 18+.