Scorn is an uncompromising horror game that makes frustrating decisions in service of atmosphere.
Scorn MSRP $39.99 Score Details “Scorn impresses as a visual tribute to H. R. Giger, but half-formed gameplay hurt its horror more than it helps.” Pros Cons Scorn has three things on its mind: birth, death, and H. R. Giger.
Birth trauma Rather than delivering a clear narrative, Scorn wants you to feel it in your bones. The “story” follows a skinless humanoid wandering some form of eerie alien world that looks like an H. R. Giger painting come to life. The horror game largely takes place in dark corridors that look like the inside of a body. Veins and flesh run through its narrow passageways, as if it’s all part of some giant being’s nervous system.
While it’s immediately impressive as a technical feat, Scorn can be thematically elusive early on. In its opening hours, I spent a lot of time questioning if there was much meat to its unsettling atmosphere. It’ll be easy to write it off as hollow gross-out horror, but that would be underselling what Ebb Software is aiming for here with its ambitious tone piece. Though to connect its disparate images, you may want to brush up on your H. R. Giger knowledge first.
Nailing a vibe is one thing; replicating the deepest reaches of someone else’s psyche is a much harder task that I’m not sure Scorn pulls off. This isn’t a power fantasy, so the shooting is meant as more of a last-ditch line of defense. Shooting is a slow process and the reload button may as well be relabeled a suicide button when trying to use it mid-fight, as it triggers a painfully slow animation. Ammo is extremely scarce throughout, as bullets can only be replenished from a handful of one-time use stations. Health functions the same way, as players carry a heart-like organ that has limited healing charges.
A good chunk of my playtime was spent walking around lost, afraid to close the game for fear I’d lose my mental map between sessions.
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