Scorn review: Xbox’s horror exclusive fails to elevate its Giger visuals

All throughout Scorn’s long development period, Serbian developer Ebb Software has been vocal about the inspirations for its horror game debut. In crafting its alien terrors, the studio has looked to artists famous for their capacity to unsettle, whether in the desolate surrealism of Zdzisław Beksiński or the biomechanical grotesquerie of H.R. Giger.

Giger’s particular work has been interwoven in narratives before but never with the main focus. Scorn. Film 1979, before a single face can be hugged AlienOur grounding in humans is taken care of. The two Dark Seed games, both ’90s point-and-click adventures, situate us in a “normal” world before throwing us headlong into all the Giger designs that wallpaper its parallel universe.

Scorn, however, doesn’t afford us the luxury of a familiar space. Even the player character is only vaguely humanoid, as a single glance down at its body in the game’s first-person point of view raises questions. Is it possible that the tendrils of bone and rigidity that had entrapped this creature have been torn away, exposing the skin’s musculature. Do all of the species’ bodies look this way? Does its grunt mean there’s a mouth beneath the layer of smooth flesh where we’d expect one to be?

The player character in Scorn inserts a glowing red tube into its wrist, with blood staining both hands

It is not possible to clarify internal monologues. There is no lore codex or journal that clarifies. It is important to forgo maps, objective marker, collectibles and useful NPCs. ScornIt is determined to impose its will on you in an alien world. The game’s initial hours are easily its most inventive and atmospheric, forgoing jump scares and overt horror in order to build dread. The game forces you to walk amongst the dispassionate metalwork. Each environment is built for strange and violent looking machinery, controlled by control panels using finger-sized holes.

While none of the machines are terribly complex once you discern their function, there are no tutorials or text beyond basic menu prompts, so you’re left with nothing more to go on than your own observations and experimentation. When you rotate the segments of a pipe-like contraption, you’ll have to pay attention to the differences in how the little parts shift. You don’t find the puzzles overlapping because you can repeat them to learn more about the world. Instead, you move on to different devices that have distinct operations.

You might be wondering how combat is integrated into the game’s eight hours of playtime. Although you eventually get a health bar, and some sort of mashing blade as a weapon for your efforts, the initial flesh-shapes that you meet seem much more hostile than benevolent. Scorn Your role as an instigator is crucial. You’re responsible for bringing the abandoned machinery to life again to show its brutal purpose. This includes the destruction, squishing and overall crushing of some livestock creature that has been bred just to die.

A strange podium device rests as the end of a gothic hallway in Scorn

A few Scorn’s machines seem a little too consciously calculated for shock value (one involves pressing a fetal creature into paste), but they all serve to make gory and explicit text out of an implicit truth: The wheels of industry demand a toll in blood. Even your weapon periodically collects a tax, since it’s attached to a back-mounted parasite that’s fond of viciously plunging its limbs into your guts.

There’s certainly a risk of Scorn’s very specific, violent sensibilities growing stale. As you advance, the environment changes. The alien metalwork from an old civilization is gradually replaced by pulse-pounding flesh. It’s almost like nature taking back an abandoned structure. Only this time your path will be blocked by the strung together carcasses of many penile abominations.

The game reaches a point where the predatory phallic beasts that are determined to harm you don’t seem to be as numerous as the more docile, but still quite disgusting, creatures that just adorn the surroundings. But as the creature encounters continue to escalate, the game’s design grows more conventional. To peel back the layers of this bizarre and horrible society is also to strip away the game’s early sense of invention and discovery. The items and mechanics underneath are distressingly ordinary, like a spread weapon that’s just a shotgun except wet and gross.

The player character aims the gothic-looking shotgun at a monster approaching them in Scorn

It is to its credit that ScornThe game never switches to an action-heavy shooter mode; even when there are dozens of enemies around, it maintains a steady pace and leaves you worrying about health replenishments and ammunition. It soon loses the fear of strange and unorthodox things it has so meticulously cultivated up to this point. Where before you were hesitant to interact with certain control panels, you soon find yourself reloading the Gross Shotgun with the smooth familiarity of pressing the same “reload” button as every other game with less disgusting yet functionally similar weaponry.

The decline in Scorn’s tension feels disappointingly typical. The game simply doesn’t know where to go in order to retain the mystique of its powerful early hours, to the point where even the gun-parasite that’s supposed to be killing you devolves into hackneyed convention. On paper, it’s a fascinating concept: The thing that empowers you is also slowly killing you. It’s actually just the screen turning red and the controller vibrating, with the interrupting sound of the music.

The damage has already been done by the time that the parasite finally blocks your ability to change weapons or use machines. It is now over. There are very few other enemies and it’s almost over. ScornIt is an entrancing experience, and at times it can be a true masterwork in visual craft. Its unfulfilled potentials are a reminder of its limitations and that it is far from being a masterpiece in mechanical design.

Scorn The game was launched on October 14th on Windows PCs and Xbox Series X through Game Pass. Kepler Interactive gave us a pre-release downloading code. We reviewed the game on PC. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions from products sold via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.