Wading through shallow pools messed with my vision and stopped me from scanning, leaving me helpless and deepening my unease. But on the other hand, interesting ideas and interactions were only briefly touched on and left me wanting more.Īn 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. On the one hand, the scanning mechanic never overstayed its welcome, and I enjoyed using it the whole way through-if this were a 10 hour game, I'd likely have been bored with the concept long before it was over. Completing the game only took me about two and a half hours, which left me conflicted. It's a good thing sending out those LIDAR dots is so utterly captivating, because it's the bulk of what Scanner Sombre has to offer. Long 'shadows' cast on the ground where an object blocked my LIDAR scanner could even reveal exactly where I was standing when I set about blanketing a room. I could look back and remember why I focused on a certain area or see empty holes that obviously didn't interest me. Paint by cavernsĬhoosing what to douse in dots and what to only leave partially revealed was entirely up to me, making Scanner Sombre's map feel strangely personal. And as I revealed more, I started to get bits and pieces of the history behind these caves-often coupled with some on screen text to explain what was in front of me, albeit in a somewhat hamfisted way. My new mission then became circling that object to map it entirely, which felt like carving a landscape out of air.
I enjoyed revealing what I thought would be an empty room, only to catch a few dots on a pillar or rock jutting into the middle of it. Slowly filling out the corners of a room is both exciting and slightly unnerving, as I never know quite what each new clearing will look like. The LIDAR scanner is unlike any mechanic I've seen in a game before, and it's absolutely marvelous. Add in a rainbow color scheme to indicate depth and distance, and the whole effect makes Scanner Sombre one of the prettiest games I've played in a long time despite having nearly no textures I could see. There's no cooldown or limit to using the scanner, and you can actually place an infinite number of LIDAR dots on the hidden geometry around you, all of which will stay exactly where they land, even when looking from above at the in-game map. The environment is entirely invisible, and the only way to find your way around is by shooting specks of light onto the walls with a LIDAR scanner. It's a short but sweet exploration game in which you make your way from deep within a pitch black cave up toward the surface. Scanner Sombre is the unexpected and rather sudden next game from Prison Architect developer Introversion Software.
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Exploring a deep cavern with an LED lantern would be one kind of tense, but with no light at all, the echoing thuds of my footsteps and reverberations of distant falling rocks filled my imagination with uncertain visions of the dangers in the dark-I could eventually see every crack and crevice of the caves around me, but never really knew what they looked like in the light. Scanner Sombre's trickier moments could easily be solved if my character had just remembered to bring a flashlight.
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Reviewed on: Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti What is it? A first-person spelunker where you paint invisible walls with dots of light.