But this was the only part of the game that played with this idea, and it came a stone's throw away from the credits. It wasn't difficult, but it was an nice way to let me engage with my surroundings and gave me a reason to scan beyond just painting the landscape. To find the buttons that would provide power, I had to scan and reveal the cables and then follow where they led. I found an elevator that needed to be powered up, with two cables running out from it in opposite directions. Nothing overstays its welcome in Scanner Sombre, but equally, its best ideas disappointingly flit away never to be seen again.Ī little puzzle-ish detective work arrives toward the end, as another example, but just the once.
It's the only time you aren't walking in the whole game, and it only lasts a few minutes. Its naturally light-specked ceilings and soothing music are beautiful, but never iterated on later. Even thinking back now, I can see fully textured and lit up versions of Scanner Sombre's most memorable rooms in my head despite them not actually existing.Īn enchanting sequence where I piloted a small rowboat soothed the tension after my terror at the lake. Sound paints a picture so vivid I practically forgot all I was looking at was invisible geometry mapped by colored dots. Hard stone turns to crunchy gravel before I slosh through a puddle, and I knew the puddle was coming because I could hear the drips from a stalactite above it. I could tell what type of surface I was walking on or how big a room was based just on the audio of my footsteps. I can not praise the sound in this game enough. One of the reasons that tone is set so perfectly is Scanner Sombre's immaculate audio design. I wasn't looking for it to ramp up to jump scares, but Scanner Sombre's opening hour plays the discordant tones of a suspense game, and then never actually becomes one. But after I passed the aforementioned lake (which at one moment had me running through blackness in fear) those suspense elements disappeared like the walls around me. Being alone in the dark naturally put me on edge, and when Scanner Sombre wanted to make my skin crawl it succeeded handily. Scanner Sombre isn't a horror game, but it drifts toward that genre in its first half.
Water meant I couldn't just paint an entire room rainbow by using the powerful burst scan upgrade, breaking up the static tunnels with sparser, shimmering new caves.īut other interesting ideas aren't given a similar level of attention. Segments like the large underground lake level were welcome-if tense-breaks between otherwise twisting tunnels and dome-roofed caves. Wading through shallow pools messed with my vision and stopped me from scanning, leaving me helpless and deepening my unease. An idea I'm glad was explored thoroughly was water LIDAR dots rest briefly on the surface of subterranean lakes and puddles before fading away, and the water also reflects hazy versions of the dots you've painted on the walls nearby.
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