tl;dr This game is a wordless and description-less piece of art depicting a desolate and deeply disturbing setting. It's up to you to find meaning either in the literal events of the world depicted or in the figurative meaning of the events. There are no firm answers and there are no wrong answers. It's a relatively short experience, you could finish it in a day, so I wouldn't pay full price (the $15 I paid seems fair). The puzzles are decently made, and while the combat can be annoying I find it necessary to the experience.

I bought Scorn on a whim after seeing it on sale for about $15 bucks. I was skeptic because a lot of the negative reviews seemed to dislike the gameplay of the game. I'm not going to dismiss these arguments, as they definitely have a point. Some of the puzzles are too easy and the combat seems a bit tedious. However I still very much enjoyed this game, despite its shortcomings.

First I wanna address the combat, it does feel tedious and I can see why some people disliked it. I got frustrated at it a few times because sometimes it feels like you're just at the game's mercy. It could definitely be improved, although if it makes you too angry the upside is a lot of the combat encounters can be skipped by just running past them. However I don't think the combat was unnecessary, it added to the sense of dread and unease of the already very creepy environment and without the fear of combat the game would have been much more boring.

Second, the puzzles, I got majorly stumped on the first big puzzle of the game, however once I figured it out I got the "language" of the game's puzzles and didn't have too much issue from then on. You have to be observant, watch out for false positives as there're a few times you'll think you've finished a puzzle only to find out you missed a part. The difficulty of most of the puzzles was pretty good, for myself, I might just be a smoothbrain but I thought they were just difficult enough to be fairly intuitive but not a complete walk in the park. There were only a few where I felt like it was childsplay.

Third, the length is short, it took me about 5 hours to complete. However it feels much longer, I could've swore I spent an easy 8-10 hours in the game. The environment does a very good job of creating an oppressive and somber mood that makes you feel very immersed.

Finally, the story, well there isn't really one, at least nothing explicit. There's a lot of environmental hints and clues about what this world is, what happened in this world, and what your purpose is. However there's not a single spoken or written word to clue you in to any details, and you never find out anything for certain so if that kind of "narrative" is unsatisfying to you then you might not enjoy this game. However, I don't think the story of the actual world is that important, I think the feelings and art of the world and events are the most important thing of this game because at the end of the day this game really is more of an interactive art piece.

Just to continue on that point, I don't mean to call this game art as a means of praise, I mean to use it as a means of description. It's like a painting, some might like Jackson Pollock and others might prefer Picasso, however neither explicitly states their meaning or their purpose and taking either literally removes some of their beauty or purpose and there's no telling which you'll prefer until you experience them.