When you regain control again, walk with Alice forward to explore Jericho and look for a garbage can on fire in the back section on the left, close to where the television screen is located. When you regain control of Kara, walk forward more towards the ship and another cutscene will play that takes Kara inside Jericho. Continue walking forward and a short cutscene will play, briefly switching perspective over to Connor, before going back to Kara. You'll have to walk out to the Jericho ship, which is marked off when you scan with R2. When the car stops moving and you get out, walk up to Rose to have a short conversation before heading out into the street. You can look around and talk with Rose inside the car as it drives, as well as turn on the radio inside. By withholding information, Scanner Sombre let me fill in the gaps myself, making the experience feel larger than its short playtime would make it seem.When the chaper starts, you'll be controlling Kara inside a car with Rose, Alice, and Luthor. Even still, painting the darkness with dots is tense and captivating, pitting my curiosity against fear, rewarding me with beautiful scenes that half exist only in my head. I am glad Introversion showed the restraint not to milk the LIDAR effect throughout an overly-long romp filled with puzzles and cheap spooks-but it played with the idea so well in little variations that it left me wanting more.
#Scanner sombre walkthrough full
It's not scathing criticism to say "there were good sequences that I wanted more of," but it did leave me feeling like Scanner Sombre missed its full potential. But this was the only part of the game that played with this idea, and it came a stone's throw away from the credits. It wasn't difficult, but it was an nice way to let me engage with my surroundings and gave me a reason to scan beyond just painting the landscape. To find the buttons that would provide power, I had to scan and reveal the cables and then follow where they led. I found an elevator that needed to be powered up, with two cables running out from it in opposite directions. Nothing overstays its welcome in Scanner Sombre, but equally, its best ideas disappointingly flit away never to be seen again.Ī little puzzle-ish detective work arrives toward the end, as another example, but just the once. It's the only time you aren't walking in the whole game, and it only lasts a few minutes. Its naturally light-specked ceilings and soothing music are beautiful, but never iterated on later. Even thinking back now, I can see fully textured and lit up versions of Scanner Sombre's most memorable rooms in my head despite them not actually existing.Īn enchanting sequence where I piloted a small rowboat soothed the tension after my terror at the lake. Sound paints a picture so vivid I practically forgot all I was looking at was invisible geometry mapped by colored dots. Hard stone turns to crunchy gravel before I slosh through a puddle, and I knew the puddle was coming because I could hear the drips from a stalactite above it. I could tell what type of surface I was walking on or how big a room was based just on the audio of my footsteps. 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 walkthrough 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.