Greetings everyone! I’m Jovan, Technical Artist at Ebb Software. The whole team here found joy in bringing you nightmarish experiences that will fully immerse you into somber tapestries. And today we’re excited to reveal that our first game, Scorn, will come to Playstation 5 later this year.
Many of you here may be new to Scorn, so for those less familiar with the game, you are about to experience a horrific adventure like no other. Trapped and stranded in a strange biomechanical world, you must make your way through a civilization in decay, now inhabited with twisted and grotesque creatures. While you will be able to wield various weapons in the game, Scorn is not a shooter, and each encounter can quickly turn deadly. Ammo and life are scarce, and your wits will often advise you to avoid direct confrontation. Instead, to progress through this mesmerizing labyrinth, you will have to revive and activate abandoned contraptions, part machine, part flesh, all horror.
We like to compare it to the experience of a nightmare. Most often, nightmares are described as strong subjective experiences that can be intensely distressing and frightening, eliciting emotional responses in dreamers, and causing feelings of fear, anxiety, and terror. Scorn tries to offer these emotions to its players in a very subtle manner through a somber atmosphere and its gloomy corridors.
Immersive power of PS5
As we were developing the game for PlayStation 5, we finally had the opportunity to tap into the potential of the DualSense wireless controller to immerse you even further in this twisted world, extending the synesthetic experience of Scorn. It allows us to deepen the player’s immersion and to let the whole world “breathe” in a new way. Since there is no spoken dialogue in the game, we have put a strong emphasis on environmental storytelling, hence haptics are a great addition to this peculiar audio-visual experience.
The main character in the game interacts with the world mostly by using his hands. Most of these interactions are also painful for the character. That’s where haptics comes into play. The imagery offered to the player’s eyes is painful by itself, but we wanted to increase this feeling by giving a sensation to the hands holding the controller. Players are also able to feel the directions of haptics (left or right hand), further adding to the experience.
From the smallest interaction, such as feeling the low ru