This is an attempt to examine the gameplay of the horror game "Scorn" and see if it can be re-imagined into a more cohesive experience
The Problem
The developers of Scorn stated that they wanted the player to be “thrown into the world” rather than have expositional and contextual information presented to them. As such, there is very little to indicate the setting or premise of the game overall in the way of exposition or its user interface.
Pain Points include:
- The combat is unbalanced
- The save system is limited and can work against the player
- The game breaks its immersion by not clearly defining its identity
Competitive Analysis
The comparison came between four games: Resident Evil 4, Half-Life: Alyx, Crimson Snow, and The Witness. Each game shares common themes and game mechanics but differs in several ways. When it comes to horror, Scorn had more in line with Crimson Snow and Resident Evil. However, in terms of its puzzles and exploration, it shares more in common with the Witness and Half-Life Alyx.
Community Poll
To get the purest perspective of determining what Scorn’s identity is, I posted a simple poll on the Scorn subreddit. Appearing as another player, I posed the question of what kind of game everyone thought Scorn was: A Horror Game, a Puzzle Game, or a FPS Game. I kept the number of choices small to better define its themes and genre.
My conclusion from this lines up with a lot of the reviews and criticisms from critics and gamers: the combat mechanic is an unnecessary aspect of the game that harms the experience, and would likely be better served if it was polished more or axed from the game altogether.
Ideations
The community polls show that many different people have different perceptions of Scorn's game experience, and it's to its detriment. So focusing on that, finding the right combinations of aspects to its gameplay to enhance that experience will be key. In doing so, we'll choose between:
- Free Roam Vs. Puzzles only
- Location-based Save Points vs. Autosave on Each Puzzle
- eliminate combat vs. Tweak Combat
REDESIGN
Puzzle-Focused Horror
Puzzles- Only
The puzzles are the means of interacting with the environment to the point that the progression hinges on completing them. They’re the key mechanic of the overall game and introducing any other sort of elements alongside of it does more to harm the experience.
AUTO-SAVING ON PUZZLES
If the puzzles are the central focus and the key to progression, then it’d make logical sense to have to complete them and be the trigger to autosave.
EXPLORATION, NOT FIGHTING
combat feels unneeded. It comes off as an added feature to change the pacing of the experience, but because of its unbalanced nature, it instead distracts from the atmosphere the game is conveying.
Conclusion
My main takeaway was that Game UX doesn’t always involve the visual. If anything, that was the least concerning aspect of this redesign. It taught me a lot about motion design within this context and how experiences can peak and fall due to how you plan progression. Motion played a large part in this game’s experience, and it was obvious why at many junctions it became disrupted. I’ve worked on progression before for games and knowing how to proceed through a story is a large part of my design process, but seeing it in this light makes me re-evaluate that not all game experiences need to be explicit in their context to the player. Sometimes it's something you have to find on your own or be presented with something to form your ideas from. It’s something to take to heart moving forward.
