Scorn Review – A sticky maze that leads through hell

It’s disgusting, slimy, slippery and full of weird juices. But you still need to touch it, lean against the soft and shiny wall, which is bubbling softly. Lean back and move on. Holding the organs that burst from your stomach, ignoring the pain and groans of strange machines. We move on, trying to escape from this hell and not go crazy along the way.

• Platform: PC, Xbox Series X/S (verified version)
• Publication date: 10/14/2022
• Developer: Ebb software
• Publisher: Kepler Interactive
• Genre: Horror adventure game
• Czech localization: Yes
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 18 GB (Xbox)
• Game time: 5 to 9 hours
• Price: €39.99 (Steam), CZK 1149 (Xbox Store), available on Game Pass.

Perhaps no other game this year has been as intense for me as Scorn. But at the same time, the less you know, the better, so in the following lines I will try to carefully balance the details.

How to play with an ugly child

Don’t expect anything definite. No well-defined story, saving the world, defeating a formulaic enemy, and a map full of question marks. So don’t expect any card. Even HUD or God forbid tutorial. You wake up in a hall surrounded by pulsing walls, with an obscure path ahead of you. You are driven only by the natural desire for life. After freedom, escape from the terrifying prison around. So, although you know absolutely nothing about who you are or why you are in this particular place, you are standing on your wobbly legs and heading out.

But the path is not easy. Because you don’t understand how to operate the strange doors and levers around you, you start trying everything. Contempt plays with you like you’re a slightly disgusting newborn baby, but for some reason he’s the size of an adult and can walk and squish. You gradually learn by trial and error. Maybe that lever isn’t working yet, but what if I try to go to the back of the room, pick up a soft, embryonic thing, and do something completely inappropriate with it?

What if I die here and no one ever knows that I existed?

Scorn is a collection of just these puzzles, which often consist in the fact that you have to go through a maze of corridors, remember the path and then perform certain actions in a precisely given order. All this occasionally disrupts the usual puzzles and, as a result, fighting.

Your pink body is completely vulnerable at first, and you feel even more uncomfortable when you enter a new room. Why is there something like a circular saw hanging there? Why did I just hear a rumble upstairs? What if I die here and no one ever knows that I existed?

Storage like a real enemy

But around the time you get your first weapon in your hands, the feelings start to overflow, and for me personally, Contempt has lost its charm. When you’re just desperately sneaking through the corridors or wandering around the bleak world, you enjoy the beautiful surroundings and its unsettling elements. The game is inspired by the work of H. R. Giger, the creator of the Alien character, as well as other paintings, sculptures and unusual furniture. Like him, animals are mixed with technology in Scorn. You will encounter countless devices whose meaning will elude you, but you will suspect that some organic force is driving them.

Sexual motives are also innumerable, and they are hidden even in such simple actions as opening a door – i.e. inserting the end of the gun into her padlock. Not to mention the bloodthirsty parasite attached to your back and buttocks.

If the whole game went like this, I would be delighted. For a moment, the dark maze looks like an alien ship you’re trying to escape from. Other times it’s like an experimental prison whose invisible guards watch and analyze everything you’re willing to do. All this leads to an ending that offers various depressive interpretations. The mystery and visuals are the game’s strongest point and bring more than one moment you’ll remember forever.

On the other hand, the fights… are less exciting. Gradually, you will encounter several types of enemies that usually fight from a distance. On the other hand, you’re clumsy and can’t even jump, so every skirmish requires precise timing. There is little ammo and health, as well as places where they can be replenished.

The save system chosen by the developers does not help much either. You don’t manually save anything and the breakpoints are sometimes quite strict. Open the gate with a little puzzle, replenish your lives in a clanking car, replenish your ammo, go up the stairs and unfortunately – you suddenly stumble upon “something that looks like a slimy chicken” that spits acid. You can’t run away from the arena in turmoil, you’ll panic, you’ll die. And you can do it all over again. After more and more attempts to escape – the only (and more or less correct) solution.

Like a poor worm without a map, you are constantly wandering.

In addition, the corridors in Scorn are quite confusing, and you wander through them like a poor worm without a map. It’s great on its own, and the intricate running around creates a genuine sense of desperation, aided by the first-person view. But in many areas, a couple of monsters are waiting at the end of the corridor, which, combined with an unpleasant save, gave me several headaches.

One day, for example, after dying and respawning, I didn’t notice that my progress on one puzzle was “lost”. A quarter of an hour of frustrating running around followed before I realized why I couldn’t continue. Another time I cowardly tried to run away from acid chicken, ran out the door … And died. Finding out that the game would save after a playthrough and therefore I would have about two seconds of life after respawn before I got another mercy shot made me feel pretty aggressive. At such a moment, you can only completely reload the entire act, but you sacrifice, for example, three-quarters of an hour of gameplay.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just technical issues, and due to a faulty platform, the reboot occurred even in the very last two minutes when the game was supposed to level up.

cross border game

So Scorn is more of a piece of art with beautiful graphics considering it’s not a very budget game from a major studio. The mysterious sounds and the creation of a disturbing atmosphere would be the envy of even the big and expensive games from Ebb Software, although it took the Serbian studio about nine years to do this.

On the other hand, from the point of view of the game itself, the situation is worse. If I spent eight hours wandering through corridors full of corpses of unknown creatures, solving complex puzzles and sneaking around moaning slugs, I would be extremely pleased. If everything was based on a well-thought-out combat system that would bring more than, for example, a tedious (but not difficult) boss fight, I would also applaud. But the gameplay is something in between.

But Scorn is definitely good at offering different experiences to different people. Some are tormented by puzzles, others by exploring the maze, and still others by fighting. Someone can handle everything, go through the game and get the most out of it. These are the games that have their place in Game Pass. Although Scorn is not very long, judging by the percentage of achievements, the vast majority of players are not even halfway there. It’s not for everyone. But to try something so original and unusual, even if only for an hour, definitely makes sense.