Scanner sombre big reveal
Perhaps what’s most impressive to me is how effectively lean Scanner Sombre is. To go into how they move or interact with you would dive too deep into spoiler territory, but I will say that I found these encounters to be incredibly tense and frightening. There are enemies capable of killing you. While these puzzles are never challenging, they help sell the fantasy that you are someone spelunking into mysterious caves filled with dangers – and not all of the dangers are environmental, either. Painting them with the LIDAR letd you see which bridge has gaps that you can jump over, while the others are broken or unnavigable. For example, early on you come across four bridges. Using the LIDAR to forge the path ahead is genuinely exciting, as the colorful dotted environments you create not only look lovely but are also essential in helping you solve puzzles. Something bad happened in this place people died, and you’ll join them if you’re not careful. However, later on you come across structures like temples and prisons. Early on, you spend your time navigating while reading single-sentence thoughts from the narrator as they come across the screen and graphing your surroundings with the LIDAR scanner as a technological paintbrush to map out everything around you in colorful dots. Instead, this first-person adventure game mostly relies on its tense atmosphere and setting to sell its unnerving tone. You’re not conserving supplies to use against monsters or hiding in shadowy corners to avoid them. Scanner Sombre is a different kind of horror game. You put on the headset, flip on the scanner, and then venture out into the dark, woefully unprepared to meet what’s ahead. Before you is a LIDAR mapping scanner and a headset. You don’t know how long you’ve been unconscious or why you’re here, but you just know you’ve got to get out.