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In today’s episode, JM8 dives the disgusting designs of Scorn and whether its slippery designs were intentionally skewed with to give off an alien effect.
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Actually Scorn encourages the player to avoid combat. All the enemies besides the boss will eventually move away and probably around 80% will eventually crawl into some hole and disappear. This is clearly signaled because the first enemy does this before you even get a weapon. Lots of the first enemies you meet will do this almost immediately. Later on you have to be more patient, but by the time you get to them you will already have encountered them you should be aware of this. I didn't fight most of the enemies in the game at all.
Combat was promise since the launch of the kickstarter, I suppose, as a way to attract backers, but without knowing exactly what kind of game they had in their hands ( horror survival but also atmospheric but also alienating?).
My version is that Ebb team tried to balance the alienating experience they search for with standard video game combat mechanics, and that drove them to a corner on the long run.
In the end, they created a great atmospheric game with shoe horned crowd pleasing combat mechanics (gun, shotguns instead of more alien tools).
They keep up their word and actually delivered. Heck, the story and design is so open ended that I'm making a whole story of why that civilization felt without proper defense and combat mechanisms!
I'd say that the visuals and ambiguous items and gameplay were definitely intentional, but the combat just screams of a fear of being a called a walking-simulator, and a lack of faith in their core design. For the other side of the coin, look at Portal. They had faith in their core idea and it carried the combatless game to an iconic status.
It feels like some aspects of the game captured most of dev teams' attention (most notably, visuals) while others were developed with minimal effort. It may have happened because of several reasons. Producers' inexperience, lack of an end product vision, lackluster ad-hoc testing. The team may have tested the game all by themselves or with some fans of Giegers art style, so they didn't really have a chance to see it from a perspective of a regular player. Selection bias, if you wish.
Loved seeing yatzhe off in the background . I had to look again just to make sure I saw what I think I saw .
The thing I see making so much discrepancies between different game genres, playability, and their design is basically how quickly the developers want their games to attract the audience, vs what the publishers want, which is to maximize the marketing as quickly as possible.
Take the story crafting, mechanics, exploration, story narrative and pacing, etc that other game discussion channels cover; what do they say makes a game feel clunky to the point of creating its own failure vs intuitively fitting each element into more complicated but satisfying formulas into their late games? How much its mechanisms tear down the satisfaction of playing the game over time.
A branching storyline will always cost more, be more engaging, drive exploration, involve players in hijinks, vs a stupidly linear, themepark-on-rails, button mashing, hollywood-esque gimmick fest because the publisher says it must be so. Yet simple copy-pasting of the same "tried and true" industrial formula will always be churned out like excessively produce milk. It goes bad just as quick.
The only thing Ingot from scorn was not to eat before I play it.
Feel combat was added to stretch the still short game. Should have been removed and if they wanted creatures to kill, switched to environment kills. Luring things into machine
What they did is promise a lot of things (i was a KS backer from day one) and delivery some half of it at best. There's some amazing ideas, and some stuff that is broken beyond logical possibility. I loved the game, and at the same time hated it for the same reasons you mentioned. The game itself, the atmoshere and design both visual and by sound, are stunning but you can feel they were either pushed to release an unfinished product or just gave up somewhere near the end.
I’m surprised so many reviewers miss this, don’t attack the enemy’s just wait and they just go down a hole or climb up the wall. 95% of the time if you leave them alone they will just walk off and leave the you alone.
I figured that out on my 2nd attempt against a enemy.
Different doesn't equal wrong. 🙂 I guess this is a situation of a generational gaming experience difference expectations. I enjoyed Scorn; but hey my favourite game of all time is still Colossal Cave Adventure. I like confusing fun stuff that makes me feel a little confused and then have to think. I love working out the solution. I'm not a fan of being guided in game like a child when I've long not been one and thinking about it also even back when i was i didn't like it! lol 🙂
A thought I had… the title "scorn" can be interpreted as a sort of cheeky reference to the reaction we might have while playing, that the designers might be "treating us with scorn". That could be them literally saying they are scorning us, or passive aggressive, or just a joke.
I just figured the design doc said "must gross people out" and "hr giger"
Based on my experience with other games in the horror genre, I agree that the combat and weapons are the only real design mistake the developers made. Combat is a very difficult thing to balance in horror games without making it trivial or overpowered (look at Callisto Protocol), and like you said I fear the devs chose the alternative of making the combat very weak and clumsy. The devs had to cut a ton of planned content from the final game, so I'm sure they prioritized salvaging what they could rather than completely polishing the combat system. Outside of that, the design of the puzzles and the world is completely spot-on and intentional.
I very much disagree with you hypothetically giving a student a failing grade for presenting this kind of inventory system. It was honestly one of my favorite parts of Scorn because it matches the theme perfectly while also being a legitimately useful UI element. There is of course a button to physically see everything held out in front of you, but you can also just look down at any time to see your resources dangling from your torso. It's horrifying seeing your body impaled with multiple arms leeching off you, but these arms are also holding all your items and actively helping you through your journey. It matches the parasitical relationship between your player character and the monster on your back perfectly, and this theme is major plot point throughout the game. All this is conveyed simply from how your inventory UI is presented! If a student put in this amount of thought and effort to justify an abnormal approach to an inventory screen, would you REALLY fail them? Really?! I think encouraging this outside-the-box thinking is exactly what the industry needs.
It feels like a game made by artists…
It's prety but shallow, beautifull but dull…
If you ask me it should have been a picture book not a game…
I never thought about, if we were to meet aliens, how their games, art, and entertainment could differ
You should do an anatomy of Hellblade.
I like this. Thank you.
I've played some games similar to Scorn, and I have to say, most of them are what I would call "stream of consciousness" video games where everything seemed to jump straight from the first draft to the final cut. It seems these sort of games believe that their story and world alone are enough to make the players play through to the end without considering the player's experience when playing it.
I feel intentional. It didn't really land with the combat which might be due to underdesigned integration into the rest of the games theme? If so and why would be something for the devs to answer. Would love to hear their take on this.
Everyone knows what a plumbus is.
Feels weird to see this guy talking about being a professor of game design when you seem to not realize that everything in the game is done intentionally in one way or the other. It's almost like he's asking the question if this game was just randomly assembled out of a dream or if developers put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into every aspect of it. Of course it's all intentional, what else could it be? Doesn't mean it's good, that doesn't mean it works, but it was definitely all put there on purpose
Would there be a point in attempting a straight forward shooter which is not AAA at this point? Every single mention of this game is about its otherness. Without it, it would just have disappeared silently like all the other 3d shooters, which are not backed by one of the major marketing machines. I am sure a second installment could allow itself to be a bit less stubborn. But if this ever happens, then only because this one managed to establish a new brand.
Thank you
I completely agree with the notion that this game was designed with all the intentionality that you imply. The entire atmosphere is not only crafted to be alien, but also cosmic: it is consistently driven home that you are nobody, wandering through a dead world (that I think you accidentally made worse in the opening? Unsure). The combat seems intentionally designed to make you run away, and then the enemies tend to meld back into the biomechanical world because they are just existing in it. They only attack because you are visible and might present a threat, otherwise they go on their way. I haven't completed the game yet, but with how the game's design ingeniously handles puzzle mechanics by giving just enough of a glimpse to apply your own understanding to solve them, the combat wants you to know that you don't belong. I spent 2 hours of playtime dying in the same few spots because I had 1 health and couldn't find healing, and while I got frustrated I never blamed the game. That intentional scarcity made it obvious that I wasn't supposed to engage in combat if I would be damaged, and forced me to play carefully and observantly, which in turn forced me to take in all the environmental details that I wanted to glaze over. Is it accessible or friendly? Absolutely not. But it is successful in creating a tone not dissimilar to dissecting Giger's artwork.
Triggers or bumpers for sprinting is honestly way more natural to me than clicking a joystick (which I seriously hate), probably for monster hunter reasons
No
How cool would it be if the other weapons were also keys…or maybe it would be too confusing?
It's okay, sometimes a game is just ass.
I wonder why you are so interested in whether the mechanical unease of Scorn is indeed "unintentional". Why does it enhance your experience if it is, and why does it seem to make your experience worse if it's not? It's the same experience either way, so why care about artistic intention?
I'm glad this game is getting so much discussion, it's so interesting from a design perspective
"If someone had presented me this UI in game design school, I'd fail them"
And this is why we don't have a hair width of innovative thought in modern mainstream games.
From what I've seen of the game, I don't like how little physics and how much animations are used. I'd like to see something more like Human Fall Flat, but with horror visuals. That's a game that really handles organic mechanics and UI well, and it really draws you in to the experience. A cheap combat and puzzle game on rails with a Giger coat of paint doesn't seem as interesting to me.
The way I see it the combat and enemies are part of the puzzle. You have limited ammo, poor weaponry and aim so often it's best to just wait for enemies to pass or make a run past them. The amount of people going into this game expecting Doom Eternal combat are completely missing the point. 🤦♂
depends on your definition of bad
The problem with Scorn is that it tries to do many things at the same time but doesnt do or utilise any of the things very well. It has guns despite not beeing a shooter so it must be a stealth game right? Nope because there arent any stealth mechanics, you can't even crouch behind cover. It has two different keys, one for doors and one for machinery, both of them are underused in my opinion. You can level up the doorkey to unlock unlock a very small amount of doors that you need to pass through. The problem with that is, every level is used for like 3 doors max so why even add it in the first place. The devs say it isnt a shooter but halfway through the game give you a very powerful shotgun that twoshots heavy enemies and oneshots lighter enemies. They say you have to be careful about ammo management but I never managed to run out of ammo and if I did it wouldn't be a problem since I can just run for like two meters and the enemies forget that I exist. For that matter, none of the enemies feel like a threat since they have the shortterm memory of a mosquito. Also there is a shitton of content thats missing.
It was supposed to be a two part game at first when it was still on kickstarter. In 2018 they raised enough money to do both parts at the same time and started development from scratch. However what we recieved in the end is only Part 1 and a rushed together sneek peek at part 2. Part 1 would've included everything upto the crater queen meaning that the last area we go to (Polis, the wierd cult temple) is the only thing from part 2 that made it into the final game. There is also a lot of storytelling and worldbuilding thats missing and only available through the Artbook for wich you have to pay extra. The art is exceptional yes but with two entire areas cut from part 1 and almost nothing from part 2 it isn't even that exiting for someone like me who is interested in the art.
I wish they could just take some time and add the missing stuff back into the game via dlc or some other way but if communication is anything to go by the devs dont seem to keen to add the missing stuff back into the game…
I feel like the developers had intended for combat and game design to serve a purpose of alienation, but overdid it. Probably, because they didn't playtest enough and relied on their own feelings that were in to deep.
I remember Hellblade doing game design that serves a purpose instead of chasing "fun". It has trustee puzzles and tedious combat, but it's easy to buy that it reflects the hero's experience.
never hesrdof it
Too much details and bad lighting, so contrast is bad. Enemies are boring. Fog everywhere where you are not. I love textures, lighting and atmosphere from alpha demo more tbh.