Scorn isn’t only a mix of intestines and guns that resembles human or animal organs; the game also brings intrigue to its gameplay. I’ll describe all the sensations I had when I played this on my PC.

Let’s begin with Terror

Talking about terror, I don’t think Scorn is classified as terror but as horror, the game doesn’t have jumpscares, and it didn’t give me any big fright, or panic or made me afraid of the unknown. At some points, the immersion even made me sleepy and I was not scared even for a moment, but this depends on the player. I’m already used to terror games and because I like this genre this can affect my opinion on this subject.

The terror was inside combat gameplay, you get your foot stuck easily in the scenario and the roots. Besides the first weapon that needs time to recharge and strength, you have to run off enemies that would easily be defeated if your weapon could shoot three consecutive shots. This makes a boring ambush of shooting-running for your weapon to have the necessary time to recharge.



Another important factor is that your enemies don’t have brutal or frightening combat, except the last one that gives us a true challenge, but most of them come in a clumsy way that made me start to call them Chorizos, don’t bewilder them with the beautiful FarCry 6 dog, because I’m talking about the famous one filled with blood.

Some of them spit acid farthest that you can run, and without a jump or dodging option that made me want to give up a lot of times. One good tip is to never let them make groups because this can be fatal, even for the ammunition recharge and the blood of your bar life that is not easy to find or recharge.

The game doesn’t give us direction; we can be lost several times because the corridors are similar, so we have to investigate the places and discover our next step.



The good news is that Scorn isn’t a first-person shooter as I thought before; it is an adventure puzzle since the enemies are just transitioning from one path to another. It’s a puzzle system, in which we can find pieces for a puzzle that will make sense gradually. But don’t fool yourself, something can stay behind and this is fascinating because everything has a reason inside the game. Every time you solve a puzzle you gain access to a new environment interconnected to the anterior, this way the clues of this strange fantastic world that Scorn gives us will be revealed.

Without big cut scenes, only showing the time to finish the puzzle, the game doesn’t have maps or tips for each direction to follow. The exploration gives the path to this adventure; it is by finishing one puzzle that another new exploration starts.



The suspense takes place after the first mistake; you may have to restart one chapter to recover that part that was literally crushed by your mistake, or waste one life recharge that in fact is really similar to a blood bubble if you put something wrong in a particular device.

You’ll never know what comes next; you are going to be surprised and amazement. Many times, the resolutions are so absurd that take us by surprise.

Scorn isn’t scary, it’s disgusting

The first impression that we have is disgust, a repulse for the things and scenarios filled with structures that remember us of spine bones, muscle fibers, digestive tubes, nerves, and veins. The repulse of seeing a thin bone being stuck in your flesh is more disgusting than seeing one needle. This also depends on the player, because some don’t bother with this, but others cannot even see a needle.



Having a weapon stuck in your own body that sometimes hurts you is disgusting. When you walk in a not steady flood, viscous and slippery is disgusting. In most of the game, I had a disgusting face instead of being afraid. The repulse for exposed flesh or viscera being ripped from your belly is the main focus of the terror in Scorn. If you don’t have the guts, or enough curiosity to spend 3 to 6 hours unraveling these puzzles and fighting for your life, just give up, because you’ll be on the side of the players that hated Scorn.

Saying what’s not told...

With a second focus on Scorn’s style, let’s evaluate the lack of a narrative, even the lack of sound sometimes, the game gives a secondary terror line: abandonment and desolation. These two feelings will make you question yourself.

What is this place? Where are we going? What are we doing? Why it has to be this way? These are the questions that we carry on the entire game. No explanation is given in the narrative and this gives us a feeling of abandonment even by the developers of the game.



I’m sure that Edd Software made this on purpose. This solitude of playing in unstable paths full of doubt and afraid of many destructions, even though the puzzles are intuitive, you have the feeling that you were abandoned there, left behind in that terrible world to be an eternal parasite.

There is beauty in the grotesque...

The biggest Scorn asset is obviously the graphic design, made from inspirations of works of H.R. Giger, the game makes references to the most famous work of this author: Alien, and the nomenclature “Biomechanoide”, derives from bio mechanism used in the weapons, mechanisms and game instruments, a mix of bones and flesh but with a mechanic functionality.



For the general scenario, other references were used. Works of the Polish surrealism artist Zdzisław Beksiński, which produced works of “fantastic realism”, are clear references in many external places, facades of constructions, corridors, and the great halls that we find in some point and even the face of our character that resembles a lot the work of the artist.

There is no doubt that the art of this game is a special chapter, that takes us out of the common, brings a disquieting discomfort, and at the same time makes us look and try to understand what is being portrayed in the scene.



With the same intensity, from the intriguing to the horrifying, the scenario enchants by the details. The brownish tone graduated to blood red the color palette of the game. Nothing can convince me otherwise that this shade of brown, which resembles half decomposed meat, and half feces is what immerses us more in this game, a game that even in the end leaves you intrigued by much uncomfortable information.



Sceneries are stunning with details that together with the soundtrack create the suspense of the scene that follows.

Deducting a narrative line

In my opinion, you are a survivor, on a planet where civilization aims to birth and grow, the final that has many sexual sculptures, leaving us with more questions about the game. Pregnant sculptures, with red bellies being highlighted in the scenarios, give us that feeling of rebirth, of life and fight to survive.



The biggest threat is in one being, one in a parasite form, like the roots that we get free at the beginning of the gameplay, that decimated the entire population of this place, transforming them into monstrosities or a tangle of roots that seems to suck the rest of life contained there.

This way, Scorn is a deep game, weird, disgusting and intuitive, with this surreal theme different from all terror games that I’ve played before. It’s disturbing and doesn’t give us answers about the story, not even one definitive answer for the questions made in this review. It’s up to us, the ones with a strong stomach, to imagine and to suppose the story. I’m certain that you have to look away while you’re playing, you may disagree with me, but the lack of a narrative line for me was disappointing.

I played Scorn on PC, but Scorn is also available for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass for Xbox Series X/S. The game is distributed by Kepler Interactive distributor.