Scorn gameplay trailer – I’m really interested

I am extremely intrigued by Scorn from what I saw in its gameplay trailer.

Scorn is a Kickstarted game by Ebb Software GmbH, a Serbian indie studio. Aside from an official trailer released to the public, backers received an alpha demo version of the game.

When I first saw a snippet of the gameplay trailer above in a compilation, I was drawn in by the environment. It is, for no better world, alive. It is moist, warm and veiny. However, parts of it resemble a somewhat futuristic industrial complex, making the place look like a weird hybrid of a machine and the insides of a beast.

It was almost like I am looking at the insides of a living, bio-mechanical being. A tortured being that is as repulsed at my presence in it as me looking at the wet, pulsating flesh I was walking on and surrounded by. It seems alien and alive in a way that should never be. Everything just feels wrong. I do not feel like I should be here and my surroundings agree with me.

And later, the first other living thing in the game appear. It was a malformed, tiny being that seemed almost humanoid. And I immediately felt like it’s about to attack the player, but no. It just shambled past the camera, dragging a mass of flesh behind it that is covered in the same pasty-white skin as the humanoid being. It took me a moment to realize that the mass is part of it.

When the player first took out his gun, I was both mildly disgusted and intrigued. It looks like a ripped-out skeleton with bits of flesh still clinging on it. Later, the player did an ammo check and broke the gun apart with a sound somewhere between a crack and a splash, revealing a pink, fleshy inside with three metallic spheres embedded in it. The player then reattached the handle back onto the barrel. The part that overlapped onto the barrel, which resembles the upper jaw of a rotting roadkill alligator, stretched open like a python dislocating its jaw to swallow a deer. The barrel got reattached, the upper jaw portion locked into the barrel, and the gun was reassembled with the same horrible wet noise.

After that, I was interested and went to look for the full game trailer. The snippet had most of the key details presented in the trailer, but there are some new parts that piqued my interest even more. The trailer started with a sweeping shot of the outside of the environment, and the outside world looks equally alive and decaying at the same time. It was simultaneously disturbing and fascinating.

And the other part that got my attention was when the player detached the handle and attached a larger, prism-shaped barrel to it. Mechanically, it is the same as swapping out a weapon for another. But aesthetically speaking, this is extremely interesting. The gun design and this particular mechanism again echoes the weird mix of organic and man-made aesthetic of the place you are in, with a organic-looking gun having detachable modules like a power tool.

After looking at another gameplay video of the alpha version, it seems that Scorn is less of a run-and-gun game and more of an exploration game. I am perfectly happy to explore this unusual world. Throughout these videos,my reactions can be summed up in three words: disturbed and intrigued. Everything in the game seems so gross, but it is also extremely weird, to the point that my curiosity overcame my disgust.

The game will be available on Steam. And I can’t wait.

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