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.
#Scanner sombre game plot skin
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.