Review - Scanner Sombre
Deep under the earth is a spiraling cavern of cultic ruins and ancient mines. At the bottom of the cave lies a small tent. That’s where you come in. Scanner Sombre is a mix of a horror game and a walking simulator where the player must find their way through a dark and dangerous cave. It is highly experimental in its design even if there are some faults to it.
The gameplay is pretty much a standard walking simulator. You traverse an environment, occasionally getting pieces of narrative or an upgrade to your scanner. Now, the scanner is really the meat of the game. The player does not have full sight of the environment. After all, it is pitch black in a cave. To see the environment, the player must use their scanner to scan the environment, painting it with dots. The outline of the environment will come into view with a few different shades to assist the player in depth perception.
I was quite impressed by the scanner system. It was a novel way of changing how the player interacted with the environment. In conjunction with the horror elements, it often created a Lovecraftian feel of some formless horror that might suddenly materialize out of the darkness. It also helped that the game consistently added meaningful upgrades to the scanner. Just painting walls with the starting scanner would have become tedious, but sweeper upgrades (allowing the player to quickly scan a large area) and aperture upgrades (allowing different radiuses of scanning) actually helped to alleviate the tedium of painting every object.
The downside to the gameplay is that the scanner is all that there is. There are a few jumping puzzles to partake in, although none of them are particularly difficult. Scanner Sombre completely focuses on the novelty of the scanner.
So now for the elephant in the room, the aesthetics. The scanning was actually a brilliantly interesting aesthetic for the game. When just traversing the terrain it makes identifying objects a work of its own where the player’s imagination wanders. Few game visuals can really give a player the chills, but pulling away visuals can achieve that quite beautifully. In the words of H.P. Lovecraft, “the oldest and strongest type of fear is fear of the unknown.” Now, the horror of uncovering strange objects does fade throughout play, especially once the player gains abilities that allow for faster scanning. I believe this occurs for a combination of reasons. The first is that the player simply becomes used to the act of discovery. A single action can only remain novel for so long. At the same time, the player traverses through three distinct zones and, quite frankly, they move from the most horror-filled to the least.
While the aesthetics near the player are nice, the real views come when the player steps away from an area they have scanned. The environment shifts from red down to a deep blue that brings out all of the detail, allowing for visuals that look almost like a drawn piece of art. A few of those moments were truly breathtaking. Admittedly, the truly gorgeous views occurred mostly in the beginning of the game. It seems as though a far greater amount of care was put into the first area than the other two, as that is where the best views and strangest actions occur.
The story is interesting, but not terribly revolutionary. It amounts to a modern ghost story. There is a twist at the end (I won’t spoil it of course), but it was foreshadowed strongly enough to not be terribly surprising. Where the narrative becomes a bit more intriguing is the interplay between the occult ghost story and technology. Along a similar line to games like SOMA, the ghosts appear linked to the technology that is most vital to the player, playing off of the modern fear of our greatest achievements turning on us.
So how do I feel about the game? I’m a bit mixed about it. The narrative is okay, but nothing to write home about. The horror aspects are underplayed. The fear of discovery that should be the backbone of the game is only occasionally used well and it becomes clear to the player fairly quickly that there is no real threat to them. There are a few instances of danger beyond the player’s own mistakes and they do create good horror moments. However, they are only a very short snippet of the game. As a horror piece, the game seriously falls flat. The big draw is the scanner mechanic. For people who are really interested in looking at unique methods of play, this can be enough to warrant the game. It certainly was for me. For the common player, that’s probably not that big of a draw.
The biggest barrier to purchase would be the length of the game. It is only around two hours of gameplay for a twelve dollar price tag. While the game is interesting, it certainly does not warrant such a steep price for the common player. I will note that I am satisfied with having paid that price, mostly because I was interested in the scanner mechanic, but that is unlikely to be the common opinion. At half price, the game is certainly worth it and I would consider it to be a serious mistake to not give it a try.
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