Scorn

Scorn, a survival horror adventure game with biopunk influences, was created by the Serbian studio Ebb Software and released on October 14, 2022, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S, with a PlayStation 5 version following on October 3, 2023. Its visual style draws directly from the unsettling works of artists H. R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński.

Players take control of a silent humanoid entity navigating a nightmarish realm filled with grotesque creatures and living structures that blend machinery, flesh, and bone. The experience revolves around exploring interconnected regions, solving puzzles, and fighting for survival, with only vague clues about the world’s nature. Puzzles require experimentation with the environment’s biomechanical systems—like repairing a transit network—while combat relies on four weapons that attach to a modular base. Switching weapons means removing one and replacing it with another. The arsenal includes a melee tool gun (also used to interact with machinery), a low-powered pistol, a close-range shotgun with limited ammo, and an implosive grenade launcher mainly for environmental puzzles. Health and ammunition come from limited-use storage stations; health does not restore upon death but can be replenished using a handheld device that itself needs refilling.

The story unfolds in an unnamed location after a devastating war. The protagonist awakens in a wasteland called The Field and heads toward a distant citadel known as The Crater. After falling into a crevasse, they enter a recycling factory called the Assembly, which repurposes living things. There, they gather weapons and tools to manipulate the facility’s technology. Reaching the heart of the Assembly causes its arteries to burst, knocking the protagonist unconscious and covering them in fluid. At that moment, a similar being awakens from an egg-like shell elsewhere. This new protagonist travels to The Crater, now infested with hostile entities. Inside, a parasite attacks and infests them, granting access to weapons and machines but regularly wounding them and sprouting tendrils that slowly cover their body. The infested protagonist reaches a central elevator enveloped by a massive creature called the Crater Queen. Reactivating the elevator kills the Queen and opens a monorail to a temple called Polis.