In 2021, a rebellious pilgrim called “bogleech” expressing himself in the ruined remains of Tumblr (opens in new tab) insightfully compared the cosmic horror to the notion of an ant exploring a circuit board. From the ant's perspective, this is some kind of terrifying alien city, and if an ant were able to understand, even for a moment, a piece of the terrible purpose and context of a human computer, how could it ever go back to being an ant?

I kept thinking about this post while playing Scorn, especially during my favorite moment towards the end of the game (some spoilers ahead, I'll try not to be too specific), when you transition from the industrial underworld of a forgotten civilization to its alien and terrifying, but also somehow sad, royal capital.

The entire game so far you've seen the hideous brown machines of these ancient people churning and straining to do something, tearing apart familiar human beings, sometimes while they were still alive, for some unknown purpose. Now you see a decaying cathedral adorned with colossal statues of these same beings, some striking heroic poses, others cradling glowing red wombs, and many of them copulating. How did this civilization digest the contradiction in how it represented itself versus how it treated its people?

This gray cathedral bathed in lilac light was the part of the game that most reminded me of the work of Zdzislaw Beksiński (opens in new tab)a Polish artist who “wanted to paint as if [he] were photographing dreams” and is cited alongside xenomorph creator HR Giger as one of Scorn’s main inspirations. The stunning visual feast of the alien capital, accompanied by mournful audio, practically brought me to tears. It was so strange and wonderful, and seemed to hint at some greater mystery at the heart of Scorn.

An hour into the next level, Scorn quit and I had to restart the chapter⁠. You can’t manually save, and the game’s more generous regular checkpoints are only accessible through player death⁠—from the main menu, you can only load at the beginning of a chapter or occasional markers midway through. I rushed through the parts of the chapter I’d already beaten, yada yada old people, yada yada unknown purpose, I beat the bare minimum of the game I had to play after that, and credits rolled. The technical hiccup and frustrating feedback at this crucial moment really killed my tinnitus.

I think Scorn is a genuinely great work of science fiction, but it does irritate me at times.

Eureka Moments

Scorn’s core gameplay loop reminds me more of Portal or the shrines in Breath of the Wild. You enter a new area and have to slowly pick your way through it, taking in the creepy environment and figuring out the function of the various grotesque biological contraptions left behind by this lost civilization. Scorn’s protagonist appears to be a member of this civilization, perhaps the last one left after everyone else went off to body horror raptures.

You follow lines of inquiry, going down dead ends, picking up keys or puzzle pieces, trying to figure out how everything fits together until it finally clicks. For example, Scorn’s first major setpiece sees you playing a sort of crane-stacking game to extract a surprising chunk of cargo, then rearranging a small railway, allowing you to deliver the cargo via handcart to its final destination. I found the crane section to be a demanding but enjoyable puzzle, and it was fascinating (and also slightly horrifying) to watch the machine move after having walked past it in an inert state.

There were points where my taunts and intrigues spelled out horrible consequences for the few non-hostile living things you encounter in the world of Scorn, and these scenes made me feel worse than any evil dialogue choice I've accidentally made in an RPG. Seriously, think about "denying Kim's Aces High (opens in new tab) in Disco Elysium” for a frame of reference for how bad this made me feel. If it’s not clear, I think it dictates that Scorn can deliver emotional punches like this without any dialogue.

Scorn's combat is reminiscent of classic survival horror. You move slowly, enemies hit hard, and having more than two facing you at once is overwhelming. To fight your enemies, which consist mostly of a mindless, fungus-like species of animal that has infested the ruins, you use an arsenal of living weapons.

The bread and butter is a phallic melee plunger thing that needs to cool down every couple of shots, though you'll later get a pistol, a shotgun, and eventually a grenade launcher. I like Scorn's combat, if like is the right word. It's Resident Evil-likely tense, and it always feels like I'm only doing it by the skin of my teeth as I rush to dodge attacks, weaving in close to these weird flesh monsters to whack them with my penis gun.

Unfortunately, the punishing combat definitely exacerbated the checkpoint issues I mentioned. Before the last level glitch put a damper on my deep, cosmic horror vibe, I also lost about an hour and a half of gameplay midway through. After a long session of despicableness ending with a real Wretch of a puzzle, I reached a new area and promptly died at the introduction of Scorn's more serious normal enemies⁠—think Lickers or Hunters in Resident Evil. It recharged for about a minute before I fought the guys, so I stopped to do something else, figuring I could just load up right then and there when I sat down to play.

I couldn't load it right there when I sat down to play. I had to redo the entire act from square one, bastard puzzle and all. Proportionately then, I lost about half of Scorn's advertised five-hour playtime to its checkpoint system. Different play habits or simple luck might help someone avoid this sore spot entirely, but I feel like a reasonable solution on the developer's side would be to have a single rolling checkpoint save slot accessible from the menu.

Still, checkpoint shenanigans, five-hour runtime and all, I think Scorn is worth $40. It's impressive, unique and represents something I desperately want to see more of from AAA and AAA-adjacent developers: good ideas allowed to run their course rather than being stretched to meet increasing playtime demands. Scorn could certainly have worked as a low-fi, PS1-style haunted house project, but its commitment to the grotesque really benefits from cutting-edge, modern rendering. And anyway, Scorn's cost can be avoided by accessing it via Xbox Game Pass for PC.

Scorn's condensed focus makes for an interesting counterpoint to another visually stunning first-person horror experience coming out in 2022: Ghostwire Tokyo (opens in new tab). Ghostwire was about five hours of new ideas stretched across 10-20 hours of open-world base gathering and clearing, and after an intense initial rush of enthusiasm, I trudged through its main quest and promptly uninstalled it. I'd say I value the smaller amount of time I spent with Scorn more than the chunk I gave to Ghostwire Tokyo.

Scorn, in a word, rocks. It makes meaningful use of its cutting-edge art and rendering capabilities. Instead of 200 gigabytes of battle royale maps or the most realistic simulation of Ronald Reagan’s cheekbones the world has ever seen, Scorn presents something more deliberately, artistically disturbing: a truly alien world that by turns surprised, disgusted, and genuinely moved me. I hope the pain of checkpointing can be alleviated with a patch, and it’s a type of game I’d like to see more of.