Scorn’s entire intent seems to be to disgust, disturb, and unnerve the player with its terrifying imagery of fleshy hallways and unsettling biomechanical monstrosities. And to that benchmark, the game seems to very much succeed–this is a game that I and my normally fairly strong gag reflex have struggled to look at from the earliest trailer. It’s a gross-looking game that delights in its grossness.
Developer Ebb Software says that it pulled from the works of Swiss artist H. R. Giger and Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor Zdzisław Beksiński when constructing its part flesh, part machine world–injecting Giger’s biomechanical art style into Beksiński’s dystopian surrealism. Composers Billain Aethek and Brian Williams created Scorn’s soundtrack, which is really the only thing you’ll be hearing throughout your runtime as Scorn has no dialogue to (not) speak of. Instead, the entire narrative is told through the game’s environment.