Bodies are just machines. This idea, at the centre of Alien artist HR Giger’s work, becomes the thesis of Scorn, a firstperson survival-horror puzzler that borrows liberally from Giger’s distinctive biomechanical surrealist designs. Here, you interface with machines via orifices, devices made of bone are grafted onto flesh, and weapons are fuelled by blood. Serbian developer Ebb Software brings this unsettling world to life with real aplomb, rendering everything organic as a resource for a nightmarish factory. It’s just a shame that what lies beneath that strikingly grisly exterior feels so worn-out and familiar.
Scorn does at least put its best foot forward. A smooth transition from the main menu takes you immediately into this strange world, casting you in the role of a mute humanoid awoken in a decrepit facility full of biomechanical devices built for an unknown purpose. There is no dialogue and no hints nor waypoints. You are alone and left to figure out how this world works without any assistance. The first room, in fact, is perhaps the hardest puzzle of all. It’s certainly one of the largest, involving multiple chambers, emphasising the scale that is ultimately one of Scorn’s strongest assets. More than its size, this first challenge overwhelms with the sheer number of inscrutable machines, almost none of which seems to work. There’s something immediately captivating in that opening – apromise of entering something truly unknown that is seldom found in games.