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Yup, Scorn still looks like a lot of Giger-y gristle and spunk

Just imagine the noises of the place

The Giger-esque gristle and oozing orifices of Scorn have reemerged after a protracted silence, with a new trailer shown on Microsoft's Xbox stream too. It's been a few years but yeah, I'm still up for traipsing around a meaty hellplace, shooting meatbeasts and solving puzzles. If you like ribs, guts, holes, and bodily fluids, this is the trailer for you.

Yes, no doubt machinesex enthusiast H.R. Giger is a huge influence on its look, not to mention the paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński and David Cronenberg movies. Pip talked with two Scorn devs about their art style and influences back in 2016, if you'd like to know more.

So, fancy environments, but what is it? The devs say in a Kickstarter post that they had planned to actually showing bits of the game in a trailer, then the opportunity to get a two-minute trailer onto today's Inside Xbox stream came up at short notice so they refocused their effort. What we've some before is a moody mix of shooting, exploring, and puzzling. Here's a gameplay vid from 2017, though do bear in mind a lot could have changed:

Ebb Software are still not saying when it'll slop onto our screens, wary after missing a 2018 launch, but they do have some good news. Rather than come in two parts as once planned, it will be one complete game. They also note that it's coming to Steam, GOG, and the Windows Store.

Their Kickstarter post also addressed concerns about the drawn-out development and infrequent updates, aware that some fans feel disappointment. Ebb explain that they needed to how the game early to get funding from investors and crowdfunding.

"But having to show the game early in order to survive left us with the task of keeping it present in the public eye for a long time, and that is certainly not an easy task," they said. "In an ideal situation we wouldn't have to announce anything about the game 6 months or so before the release, and organically have enough material for that time period to present the game in a proper manner, but that is not a reality for an unknown indie team. It was either doing it this way or not doing the game at all. The issues that this approach created is that some people became impatient, constantly wanting to see more and also expecting to get a quality game as soon as possible. That is just not a valid option as developing a polished, well-made game requires a lot of time."

They say they've been able to double the development team over the past 18 months but are still planning to be relatively quiet about their progress, not devoting much time to dev blog posts and that. "We are a small team pushing quite a bit above our weight so some sacrifices have to be made or will never get to the finish line," they said.

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