Using the scanner produces rainbow-coloured light particles that form different areas of the cave, which eventually turns out to be an underground mine. Scanner Sombre is a relatively short experience, lasting 4-5 hours, and it’s reminiscent of story-driven games like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture or Firewatch, where much of the time you. The player wakes up in a dark cave, armed only with a scanner. While Scanner Sombre has not met the designer’s expectations for sales I’ve found it a really enjoyable and atmospheric experience, particularly with the heightened sense of immersion provided by VR. Scanner Sombre is an exploration video game developed and published by Introversion Software. I love the VR version of the game but I could see others might feel it is more of an extended demo. The unusual visual style and game mechanic have a niche feel which some players will love and some will hate. At the same time they are uncertain that a more developed narrative would have added anything. The difficulty they discuss is providing the player sufficient motivation to play, and the pressure they felt to fit a narrative to the experience part way through development. One area that Mark and Chris discuss at length is narrative. They also provide a very frank discussion of the factors contributing to the game’s poor sales relative to the runaway success of their earlier runaway success with Prison Architect. Producer Mark Morris and designer Chris Delay touch on this in the following video which discusses the the process of transferring the desktop game to VR and the differences between the two. Or, it’s the kind of game that’s nearly impossible to write about without feeling guilty. Having played the two I’d argue that players really have to try Scanner Sombre in VR to get the most out of the experience. Scanner Sombre is the exact kind of game that’s nearly impossible to write about. To explore these depths you'll need to use a LIDAR scanner and a helmet that uses augmented reality to visually map out your surroundings in order to traverse the terrifying dark abyss.
#A scanner sombre software#
The visual style links cleverly to the central game mechanic by which the points representing the contours of the cave walls only appear through the player’s use of the scanning device, providing an eerily partial view of the environment.įollowing the initial release for desktop PC in April the game’s makers Introversion Software have just released a new VR version, now available on Steam for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Scanner Sombre pits you in an undiscerned cave with darkness enveloping everywhere except the lit fire and the stone walls nearby.
I immediately fell in love with the beautiful visual style which renders the environment as a point cloud. I first saw Scanner Sombre back in April at the EGZ Rezzed computer game trade fair. Scanner Sombre is an exploration game which places the player in the depths of a pitch black cave system with nothing to guide them except an experimental headset and LiDAR like sensor enabling them to see in the dark.
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