fucking fantastic, from start to finish.

while other games have been having the conversation of how to turn traversal into a fun gameplay loop, Scanner Sombre flips the conversation on it's head, and breaks it's god damn neck; turning sight into a fun gameplay loop.
what would be a walking sim a good story, is turned into a tense puzzle of wondering where in the hell you're going, ended off with one of the most heart breaking, shocking endings i've ever seen in a game this size.

gameplay gets a 5.
story gets a 5.

A great execution that's failed by a bad idea.

I may be biased against horror games in general since I think the concept is flawed, but this doesn't work as horror anyway.

The story is crap, there's no way to be nice about it, you get a dozen lines of dialogue awkwardly typed into the upper right-hand corner that do absolutely nothing of value for the gameplay loop.

It's a pity because that core loop really is excellent. The kind of game that almost deserves to be played in VR. The idea of scanning your environment like a low-fi flashlight is excellent, and the cave setting is a great fit for it.
There are some genuinely good puzzles here too, if it weren't for the cheap attempts to startle the player you'd have a great atmospheric puzzle-platformer with horror elements crafted solely through loneliness and the player's imagination.
Instead, the game is interrupted by a useless jumpscare that works once and then kills all the tension for the rest of the game. You died, respawned, and were fine. That's kinda why horror doesn't work in games, failure is the end of the tension, once it happens you're no longer tense about it.

If anything, I'd rather the glitches happen more organically, and be left in the water glitching out, thinking something's going to happen, only for it to never actually come. It almost feels like the dev didn't want to have to deal with figuring out the backtracking and so killed the player upon going somewhere they shouldn't have.

I'm only annoyed with this game because it had a lot of potential in it's core mechanic, and I feel that ALOT more could have been done here.

Still play it, it's worth seeing the idea.

En muchos aspectos, Scanner Sombre es el encuentro final entre el juego de terror de los 2010 basado en Amnesia y el first person walker. Tras un intento muy banal de asustarte que se siente burdo y basado más en ruidos fuertes que en una auténtica evocación de oscuridad, el juego se te revela como un viaje personal que no se aleja mucho de Dear Esther. Bajo este prisma, el viaje inverso que realizamos de la cueva se nos revela menos como un recorrido de exploración y descubrimiento personal y más como una tortura infinita, sin secretos que descubrir o placeres que experimentar. La narración seca y aséptica se encarga de contártelo todo sin tapujo alguno.

Si en todos estos aspectos Scanner Sombre se me antoja poco trabajo e incluso contrario a los sentimientos que trata de evocar, la tecnología de exploración y descubrimiento del mundo me parece demasiado bella como para no destacarla. Sin las incomodidades mecánicas de Unifinished Swan, el simple hecho de colorear la cueva ofrece una alegría innegable, y el juego es consciente de ello en todo momento. Una obra que se hubiera centrado más en esto me hubiera parecido mejor.

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In many ways, Scanner Sombre is the long-awaited meeting between the 2010s Amensia-based horror game and the first person walker. After very trivial attempts to scare you that are based more on loud noises than a real sense of dread, the game reveals itself as a personal journey that doesn't stray too far from Dear Esther. Through this, the reverse journey we take from the bottom upwards is less a journey of personal discovery and more endless torture, with no secrets to uncover or pleasures to experience. The dry and aseptic narration makes sure to tell you everything without any mystery whatsoever.

If all these aspects Scanner Sombre do little to convey the feeling that the game wants to evoke, the mechanics of exploration and discovery are by far the most beautiful aspect of it. Without the awkwardness of Unfinished Swan, the simple act of coloring the cave offers an undeniable joy, and the game is aware of this throughout. A title that focused more on this would have seemed better to me.

A beautiful idea paired with the perfect setting to explore that idea. This game however sadly feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Part typical indie walking sim, part horror, part adventure, part puzzle solver. Scanner Sombre dips it's toe into a number of genres never really committing to any of them so even with it's genius scanner mechanic it ends up feeling half baked. The plot is rather generic and uninspired and honestly does the game a disservice in my opinion. Sometimes less is more, and in this game I don't think we needed backstory, clearly we are deep down in a cave somewhere and are trying to get out - that's all the motivation I need.

This game does have one of those "oh wow" moments that will stay with me for a while. See after you escape the cave the camera slowly travels back through the path of your journey showing you not only how far you've come but also revealing this human snail trail of scanner data that creates this massive anthill-esque work of art that I found strangely beautiful. I'm going to choose to ignore that very last sequence which totally undermined the greatness that occurred right before it. Ultimately Scanner Sombre is worth a playthrough just for the fact that it tried something new and pulled it off relatively well, so give it a go if you are into trying out games with unique ideas.