Scorn: The Art of the Game

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Peklar: The biggest problem comes from the fact that not all the ideas on paper work in a fully realized 3D world so you have to change them, balance them out or completely cut them and come up with something new. All that has to be done in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes the most basic thing can create the biggest problems. As for other influences it's quite a big list. If we are talking movies it's directors like Cronenberg, Argento, Lynch, Carpenter and Jodorowsky just to name a few. Writers of different genres from Horror and SF to philosophy like Lovecraft, Barker, Thomas Ligotti, J.G. Ballard, Stanislaw Lem, Kafka, Albert Camus, Heidegger and so on. Games like Silent Hill, Resident Evil or Metroid Prime. Human beings are conditioned to like the external beauty of their bodies and see the internal organs, bones and tissue as something repulsive. It's a reflex. It's something most people want to forget. Most of the time you are not aware of your body but when you get ill or old your body turns against you.

Sometimes you have to try out crazy and even ridiculous ideas to realize what works and what doesn't (image below). To get a better sense of Scorn’s delightfully disgusting aesthetic and its troubled history, I spoke with project lead Ljubomir Peklar, who tells me he had a hard time finding artists who understood his vision. Available in EPUB& MOBI format. The EPUB version of the e-book is best viewed on Thorium; for the MOBI version we recommend the Kindle app. Horror master Junji Ito explores a new frontier with a grand cosmic horror tale in which a mysterious woman has her way with the world! While Beksiński is a lesser-known Polish painter, many people know Giger through the film Alien, whose titular monster was of Giger’s design. Some have suggested Scorn cribs directly from the serpentine alien’s design and Giger’s idea of pursuing beauty through horror, but Peklar says he has his own story to tell.LjubomirPeklar: A person is influenced by many things and different artists throughout his life. Sometimes their art defines your taste and sometimes you naturally gravitate towards concepts you have an affinity for. Your view on life, your thoughts and ideas will push you towards similar minded artists. Peklar: The hardest part is not creating noise or clutter. If something is oversaturated with detail it becomes noise, or if it has none it becomes flat. It's really strange how much a simple line or form can mutate one concept into another and go stylistically in the wrong direction creating a standard SF or gothic aesthetic. Balance is everything. About This Game Scorn is an atmospheric first-person horror adventure game set in a nightmarish universe of odd forms and somber tapestry.

My interest comes from the relation between a man and an object, how one changes the other. For that you need familiarity. I noticed that with our new trailer, people just want it to be weird for the sake of weird, and that is not what we are doing.”

I get it. I get it. Scorn is a work of obscurantist fiction, it's themes evident but its meaning deliberately obtuse. We're meant to have "interpretations", not clarity, or easy explanations, or "lore" Official lavish in-depth coffee table art book for the first-person horror adventure game Scorn, inspired by H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, to be released on Xbox series X/S, Microsoft Windows, Steam, and Windows Store.

The biggest similarity is in the environmental storytelling,” Peklar says. “The biggest difference is that we are not trying to push traditional plot-driven narrative. That is where these games fail for me. Writing an interesting story requires a good writer, and game developers or writers that specialize in games writing are not very good. If they were, they would write a book or a screenplay. That’s the right medium for the job. Games for me are about interactivity and telling you a story through it.” Scorn showcased the idea of collective consciousness in the game's last act. The artbook reveals that the team played around with the concept of transferring consciousness, both for the players and inhabitants of the world. Concept artist Filip Acovic wrote that he thought about how people playing the game can experience the world in different physical entities.Peklar: Our existence as a living organism is at the core of the game and human anatomy is the primary subject. Therefore we referenced many different parts of it as a starting point, then we morph, combine and exaggerate them, change the shapes until we get something visually appealing. It's not always about functionality but interesting forms that make sense for what we are trying to express. Scorn takes place in an open-ended world with different interconnected regions. Each region is a maze-like structure with various rooms and paths to discover. All the storytelling happens in-game, with no cut-scenes to distract you from the grisly reality of the living, breathing world you’re in. But keep your eyes open - the game won’t show you any sympathy if you miss something important on your uneasy travels. Peklar: We designed the main character first, as he is the centerpiece of the game, so we concentrated on the ideas that we wanted to express through him. There is a feature, that we haven't shown yet, that was really important to get exactly right, both in the concept art and later in the game.

Due to Scorn’s ambitious scope, the team had to cut down some of its more unique ideas and levels. The first cut location is The Blasted Labyrinth, which was supposed to be a transitional area between The Crater and The Tower (another cut location). The Scorn - The Art of the Game e-book is published by Titan Books, a division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd. Pip: I assume you used medical imagery for some of the reference points - can you tell me a bit more about that? Scorn's influences are based on ideas and concepts I wanted to explore. When it comes to visual influences just looking at any comment section for Scorn you will notice two names are constantly mentioned: H.R. Giger (who appears to be a household name now) and the much less well known polish painter Zdzislaw Beksinski. They are certainly the two main visual influences but their work was not chosen because it looks cool but because different aspects of their work relate to various themes and ideas in Scorn. We also tried to create our own style. The reloading of the gun and some other features had to be changed because it didn't work in the game. Sometimes you come up with better ideas when things don't work as intended.Pip: How has the game changed over time? Have you had to accommodate that with the artwork in any particular ways? Peklar: Since we still have a way to go our proudest moment is yet to come, but right now we are proud of the monumental structures that you see in the trailer. They convey the sense of big desolate spaces very well. The inhabitants need much more improvement. It is designed around the idea of "being thrown into the world". Isolated and lost inside this dream-like world, you will explore different interconnected regions in a non-linear fashion. The unsettling environment is a character itself. The Tower is the second cut location from the game; it was supposed to be a towering reddish skyscraper right after venturing through the Blasted Labyrinth. Most notably, in the artbook the Tower is in almost pristine condition compared to its barren and harsh environment. The Homunculi are largely responsible for creating the cyborgs in Scorn. In-game, these cyborgs have a carved-out hole in their torsos for the intelligent creatures to use to control the organic machine. Most cyborgs were intended to be self-operating machines, functioning independently without their creator's intervention.