
The longer that trail, the more scanning you know you've done. There are various moments in your climb when you can stop, look back, and see your rainbow sculpture trailing behind you. Painting with the LIDAR creates a measuring stick for your progress. Then, after you've spent a while drawing in all the rocks and gates and stalagmites, you can look out on them knowing that their very visibility is a graphical representation of your work. It's all pure cane eye candy, not just because of the rainbow pointillism of the light gun, but also because you get to see solid shapes form miraculously out of the void. The device is like a torch but with less volatile illumination. You must meticulously pore over the walkways, ledges, streams, and crevices of the cave, charting them with the scanner. In this initial foray into 3D first-person games, Introversion is not only devising a way to make a 3D environment without all the texturing that usually requires but also inviting you to indulge in that quality 3D graphics have where it feels like you could reach out and touch them. Having you chased around by demons or axe murderers would drown out its more understated discomfort and would also sully the majesty of the setting. On your first playthrough, you may be on your guard, waiting until you hit the trigger which morphs the experience into a full-blown horror, but Scanner only adopts horror techniques up to the point of setting the foreboding, uncomfortable atmosphere of a cave. It's a cross between The Unfinished Swan and Radiohead's House of Cards video, and true to the experience of hiking through a cavern, Scanner Sombre is a half-and-half blend of creepy and beautiful. Scanner Sombre beckons you on through a pitch-black cave, one that you can only see the walls and floors of by shooting coloured dots onto them. There is no one to dehumanise as it's a mostly solitary affair, and it doesn't have you mastering complex systems it has you exploring. Your window into its world involves no bird's eye views or computer interfaces only a digital spray can. They're laser-focused, open-ended strategy sims which have you dehumanising other people by taking control of them, their possessions, or their fate through synthetic systems.
#SCANNER SOMBRE SPOOKY SOFTWARE#
Introversion Software are known for their highly formal simulators like DEFCON, Uplink, and Prison Architect. Soon I was drifting down a tranquil river to some prog rock, and I barely saw another one of those monsters again. It was going to be one of those disempowerment horrors where I'd grip my controller, sweaty-palmed, dodging and dashing my way around ghouls. At that moment, I thought I knew what kind of game Scanner Sombre was going to be. Once I got within seeing-distance of it, it came hurtling towards me and killed me in seconds.

I found the source of the noise in the corner of the chamber: it was some coloured mist in the shape of a human. Note: This article contains major spoilers for Scanner Sombre.Ī little way into Scanner Sombre, I swam out into a chest-high pool, and my splashing caused something in the cave to respond with a banshee-like wail.
