Shadows and suspense go hand in hand, after all, so it's somewhat inevitable that it makes a play for horror. Hand in hand with all that is the escalating sense of dread that underpins much of Scanner Sombre. From the analogue burbling of your LIDAR scanner to hollow subterranean drips and creeks, it's the perfect soundtrack to your solitude. There are singularly outstanding vistas, too a dead lake that sits immune to your own scans, or the echoes of humanity in an otherwise abandoned cave.Īs visually stirring as Scanner Sombre is - and it is capable of unparalleled beauty in its short run-time, made all the more powerful by the fact you've often painted its scenes yourself - it sounds spectacular too. The map that charts your adventure - a journey you can see in relief at all points in your journey - is achingly ethereal, a leaf skeleton of light points that pulls together into a wisp of blue smoke. The scanner is responsible for some startlingly artful moments. You control its aperture and simply spray in order to put Scanner Sombre's neon pointilism into effect, the results of your efforts etched permanently onto blind rock. It's a tactile mechanic that's slowly built upon through the game, the scanner itself a characterful machine that whirs, beeps and buzzes like some strange device you'd find amongst the rubble of a junk market or nestled alongside other arcane contraptions in the depths of an abandoned nuclear bunker. To find your way in the dark you must paint each wall and crevice, filling in the void and creating your own abstract of the world around you. Your only tool is a LIDAR scanner, a device which covers the otherwise invisible scenery in a field of bright dots. Knowingly riffing off the likes of Dear Esther and Gone Home, Scanner Sombre is a 'walking simulator', if you must, but one that cleverly sidesteps much of the dreary debate about the genre by making a virtue of its own exploration.
#Scanner sombre lake creature series
You're an unnamed, mute spelunker, navigating a series of caves that are rendered in total darkness as you work your way up to the surface.
It's got the same cold, detached beauty of older games like Uplink and DEFCON, and in its blunt minimalism it feels like a throwback to those earlier titles after the cartoon excesses of Prison Architect (a game whose coldness and commentary lay somewhat subversively beneath its surface). Scanner Sombre feels every inch the Introversion game, though.
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