Scorn is a 5-7 hour HR Giger-inspired puzzle game with some really bad shooting and some pretty bad bugs. It's a one-and-done kind of game that gets slightly frustrating at the end due to odd design choices.
This is NOT DOOM. I don't know why anyone would expect that from what was shown.
It's a beautiful game. But I wish it let me look at its beauty more.
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EDIT: Raised the score because I kept thinking about this game for quite a while after beating it.
Scorn is a mesmerizing game, but ultimately let down by horrible gameplay decisions. The atmosphere, sound design, and the look of the world are all top notch. Where it falls apart is the gameplay. I'm not sure if this is a "shooter-turned-atmospheric" or a "walking-sim-turned-shooter", but I suspect whichever caused the change in development severely hurt the game.
The "combat" is atrocious, it's weak on purpose to make you feel desperate and helpless, but that only works if it's well-made. For this game, it sadly lands on "frustrating" instead. You can run past most things, but when you do need to fight, it's awful. But running past things also results in less of the artwork to look at, which hurts the game either way.
The puzzles are very good. They're rather simple but interesting to engage with, with pretty clear indicators of what to do, whether on the puzzle itself or spread across the environment the puzzle is in.
I'm baffled by the amount of people here that had trouble with them, especially since the "hardest" puzzle can be bruteforced easily if you're stuck.
I think this would've been much nicer as a "walking sim" type of puzzle game than what it ultimately ended up as. That would've been far more interesting and given players more time to carefully look over all the locations.
Overall, a decent attempt at HR Giger horror. Could've been better and used a bit more polish, but it's decent enough for what it is.
This is NOT DOOM. I don't know why anyone would expect that from what was shown.
It's a beautiful game. But I wish it let me look at its beauty more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: Raised the score because I kept thinking about this game for quite a while after beating it.
Scorn is a mesmerizing game, but ultimately let down by horrible gameplay decisions. The atmosphere, sound design, and the look of the world are all top notch. Where it falls apart is the gameplay. I'm not sure if this is a "shooter-turned-atmospheric" or a "walking-sim-turned-shooter", but I suspect whichever caused the change in development severely hurt the game.
The "combat" is atrocious, it's weak on purpose to make you feel desperate and helpless, but that only works if it's well-made. For this game, it sadly lands on "frustrating" instead. You can run past most things, but when you do need to fight, it's awful. But running past things also results in less of the artwork to look at, which hurts the game either way.
The puzzles are very good. They're rather simple but interesting to engage with, with pretty clear indicators of what to do, whether on the puzzle itself or spread across the environment the puzzle is in.
I'm baffled by the amount of people here that had trouble with them, especially since the "hardest" puzzle can be bruteforced easily if you're stuck.
I think this would've been much nicer as a "walking sim" type of puzzle game than what it ultimately ended up as. That would've been far more interesting and given players more time to carefully look over all the locations.
Overall, a decent attempt at HR Giger horror. Could've been better and used a bit more polish, but it's decent enough for what it is.