Video games are an interactive, audio-visual medium. As such, visuals matter. Before you catch even a minute of footage, the game will introduce itself through still images, screenshots or thumbnails. It's quite telling that developers will pour a lot of resources into making the visuals stand out from the competition. Presentation is important. But are visuals enough to carry a game?

Scorn has been infamous for several things, one of them being its troubled development history. Serbian developer Ebb Software was formed in 2013 and Scorn has been effectively in development ever since. The idea was to create a game with the aesthetics of two particular artists - one being H.R. Giger, most famous for his xenomorph creations, and the other being Zdzislaw Beksinski, a surrealist painter. Giger's biomechanical designs dominate the visuals. Interiors and machinery are made out of organic matter and fuse with the player character, blurrying the lines between one and the other. Traces of Beksinski's nightmarish, decaying visions can be found as well. The art style does a fantastic job of evoking both influences while maintaining its own personality. It's strange, it's disgusting and it looks unlike any other current release.

Praise for Scorn's interactive elements is much harder to come by. Playing Scorn, you can't shake the feeling it was designed with visuals in mind first. The actual game part seems like a mere afterthought. When you're not trying to find your way through the maze-like environments, you solve logic puzzles or engage in combat. While functional, you've seen it all before and most likely better executed elsewhere. Especially the combat stands out due to its exaggerated sluggishness. Simply dodging a slow-moving enemy projectile can become a nuisance, especially when there's more than one enemy present. Most of those encounters don't feel tense or exciting. They feel like annoying obstacles you want to get done with.

Scorn is strange by design. You get thrown into its bizarre world without any explanation. Everything about it feels alien and weird, and yet you are expected to function in it. Except for a few button mappings, there are no hints. No objective marker and no map will guide your way. No NPC will blabber in your ear and tell you what to do. There won't be any audio logs to collect providing any sort of backstory or context. You don't even get item descriptions. You are pretty much left to your own devices in a world you don't understand. In a way, this approach feels refreshing in how radical and uncompromising it is. It certainly helps conveying a bleak and strange atmosphere, something the developers were clearly after.

So Scorn is just an interactive art exhibition then? How much you value art is certainly a factor in how you will experience the game. It is glaring that Ebb Software failed to marry their artistic vision with the interactive elements of a video game. As a game, Scorn is rather mediocre. Regardless, I'm still giving Scorn a recommendation because there is nothing like it out there. So many games have the tendency to explain themselves away, so many writers can't help themselves oversharing insights they deem valuable. Meanwhile, Scorn simply exists in its nightmarish aesthetic - cryptic and alien, indifferent to the player or tired horror conventions. In an industry where so many releases are barely distinguishable from one another, that alone is a quality worth praising.

Video games are an interactive, audio-visual medium. As such, visuals matter. Before you catch even a minute of footage, the game will introduce itself through still images, screenshots or thumbnails. It's quite telling that developers will pour a lot of resources into making the visuals stand out from the competition. Presentation is important. But are visuals enough to carry a game? Scorn has been infamous for several things, one of them being its troubled development history. Serbian developer Ebb Software was formed in 2013 and Scorn has been effectively in development ever since. The idea was to create a game with the aesthetics of two particular artists - one being H.R. Giger, most famous for his xenomorph creations, and the other being Zdzislaw Beksinski, a surrealist painter. Giger's biomechanical designs dominate the visuals. Interiors and machinery are made out of organic matter and fuse with the player character, blurrying the lines between one and the other. Traces of Beksinski's nightmarish, decaying visions can be found as well. The art style does a fantastic job of evoking both influences while maintaining its own personality. It's strange, it's disgusting and it looks unlike any other current release. Praise for Scorn's interactive elements is much harder to come by. Playing Scorn, you can't shake the feeling it was designed with visuals in mind first. The actual game part seems like a mere afterthought. When you're not trying to find your way through the maze-like environments, you solve logic puzzles or engage in combat. While functional, you've seen it all before and most likely better executed elsewhere. Especially the combat stands out due to its exaggerated sluggishness. Simply dodging a slow-moving enemy projectile can become a nuisance, especially when there's more than one enemy present. Most of those encounters don't feel tense or exciting. They feel like annoying obstacles you want to get done with. Scorn is strange by design. You get thrown into its bizarre world without any explanation. Everything about it feels alien and weird, and yet you are expected to function in it. Except for a few button mappings, there are no hints. No objective marker and no map will guide your way. No NPC will blabber in your ear and tell you what to do. There won't be any audio logs to collect providing any sort of backstory or context. You don't even get item descriptions. You are pretty much left to your own devices in a world you don't understand. In a way, this approach feels refreshing in how radical and uncompromising it is. It certainly helps conveying a bleak and strange atmosphere, something the developers were clearly after. So Scorn is just an interactive art exhibition then? How much you value art is certainly a factor in how you will experience the game. It is glaring that Ebb Software failed to marry their artistic vision with the interactive elements of a video game. As a game, Scorn is rather mediocre. Regardless, I'm still giving Scorn a recommendation because there is nothing like it out there. So many games have the tendency to explain themselves away, so many writers can't help themselves oversharing insights they deem valuable. Meanwhile, Scorn simply exists in its nightmarish aesthetic - cryptic and alien, indifferent to the player or tired horror conventions. In an industry where so many releases are barely distinguishable from one another, that alone is a quality worth praising.