Scathe (2022) [Steam]

“I don’t need luck, I have ammo!”

– Grunt, Mass Effect 2

Scathe is an intense Doom-inspired first-person shooter developed by Damage Slate Ltd that incorporates bullet hell mechanics into it’s template. Become the Scathe, a super soldier created by the Divine Entity, who is sent to pre-emptively strike against his brother in Hell. Shoot demons in the face with powerful weaponry and wipe the blood off your face. Stand strong against large grotesque bosses. Work your way through a labyrinth filled with traps and tricky platforming. All to reach the Sacrilegious Entity hiding behind his army of mechanized demons. Is the journey through Hell worth it or does Scathe burn in the lakes of lava?

The 8-bit Review

Gameplay: 6/10

The ‘boomer shooter’ genre has been taking flight recently. They’re new retro-style first-person shooters with a quick pace and ammo pickups. Since 2016’s Doom, the genre brought back its fast-paced arcade-style shooting and people were hooked. Scathe uses this genre and combines it with the chaotic bullet hell formula. During your time in Scathe’s hellish labyrinth, you’ll be subjected to hundreds of bullets and plenty of demons. The game offers an assortment of weapons to use but starts you with the assault rife called the hell hammer. It has unlimited ammo, a steady rate of fire, and a secondary attack that shoots rockets. The ripper is a double barrel shotgun that has high damage but fires slowly and the bow blade fires a powerful single shot that can ricochet off of walls. There are special rooms in the labyrinth where you’ll find a new weapon.

The scathe can hold and fire a main weapon with one hand, which frees up one for magic attacks. Hidden in some areas of the labyrinth are dead mages who hold rings of power. Some allow you to heal, freeze enemies, and slow down time. The magic meter needs to be refilled by red shards. These are dropped by enemies you defeat and are automatically collected. I spent the majority of Scathe using the assault rifle and healing ring.

The speed of your character combined with a dodge helps you get around the gauntlet, but when playing the game solo it can become overwhelming.  Scathe offers online and local co-op with up to four players at a time. Having these additional soldiers will help with the number of enemies thrown your way. I played the game solo and found some sections difficult to work my way through, specifically confined corridors packed with enemies. In open areas, I would often get stuck on the environment or something placed on the ground. These moments were a bit frustrating as I took extra damage that should have been avoided.

The main goal of Scathe is to work through different rooms while finding collectibles called relics. You will not have to collect all of them to finish the game, but they do unlock multiple endings. There are plenty of demons in the way with unique attributes. The basic demons, called The Mindless, stand around and wait to be killed. They are there to get in the way and drop red shards to charge your magic attacks.

Other demons such as the Fleshies, Industriballs, and Swampies are round and will bounce towards you. These are the more annoying of the enemy types because they are hard to track and explode on death. Razorbacks, Spitters, and Reapers will shoot projectiles at you while Seekers chase you down with melee attacks. The enemy variety is very good but their AI can be tricked easily. Have a pack of Seekers running behind you? Turn around and run past them. They’ll stop in their tracks for an easy kill. At other times, enemies will spawn on top of each other or get stuck in doorways. It’s unfortunate when these things happen because the gameplay is very smooth and generally feels great.

Scathe has very strong shooting mechanics but basic platforming becomes a challenge because of it’s speed. It is easy to overshoot a platform or fall off a narrow platform which usually results in losing a life. If your life counter reaches zero the game will put you back in the last room you found a weapon in. In harder difficulty modes this may also mean restarting the entire game. There are extra life pickups throughout the labyrinth but it’s easy to die to lava multiple times when trying to reach collectibles.

Narrative: 5/10

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Good versus evil. While the lines are blurred at times, as a scathe, your mission is to defeat Sacrilegious and his forces of Hell. The scathe is created by the Divine Entity to pre-emptively strike against his brother and will offer guidance while in the field. There is little story in Scathe because the main hook of the game is the combat and visuals. It doesn’t do anything special with its story and it doesn’t need to. Most of the story is said to you through voice lines from the brothers during gameplay which can be overshadowed by the action taking place.

Challenge: 8/10

Although there are some weaknesses in enemy AI that can be exploited a majority of Scathe is a brutal gauntlet. An overabundance of enemies, bullets, and traps all will get in your way. Falling off of a cliff or stepping into lava results in instant death. Scathe offers casual, normal, and hard difficulties. On the hardest difficulty, enemies will have more health, faster bullets, and output more damage. Unlike Doom, you cannot pick up ammo from killing enemies. This gives the player an extra challenge by having them conserve ammo in stronger weapons and making every shot count. As stated before, the game offers plenty of offensive capabilities to negate the increase in challenge. Some areas are filled to the brim with enemies though which can cause the difficulty to spike as a solo player is outnumbered.

Boss rooms also offer their own unique form of challenge. They pit you against a larger-than-life demon with limited cover. To defeat them you’ll have to aim at their weak point. As you go further into the labyrinth they’ll be harder to hit and be more aggressive. These rooms have a gold outline and require a specific amount of relics to enter. Some of the boss designs are pretty gross while others offer a visual spectacle. Each boss you face will be unique from regular enemies in the game offering the player a good challenge and a move set to learn.

Visuals: 8/10

Scathe offers intense and visceral visuals. Enemy designs mix flesh and machine for a very unique look. The glow of red on muted grey pathways and corridors brings out the hellish landscape perfectly. Weapons, pickups, and enemies also have vibrant colors to make them easier to see in the darkness. Each room of the labyrinth also has a unique feel and look, the developers did a great job defining each section. Where the game struggles, however, is in the gore and fire. When enemies die, they burst into a red explosion but it simply isn’t very satisfying. Fire effects seem placed in the environment but don’t blend in well. All in all, I enjoyed the look of the game and had a blast running through the different environments, but these instances did bother me.

Audio: 5/10

The core soundtrack of Scathe is pretty good…the first few times you hear it. Soundtrack variety is and even though the music of Scathe is good, I would have preferred more music in the mix. When in combat, the same song plays no matter what environment or room you are in. The music consists of metal rifts mixed with EDM drops. I personally enjoy metal but much of the soundtrack in Scathe sounded too similar. A few times when a song ended during a level, another one wouldn’t start until I went to the next area.

Replayability: 3/10

After finishing Scathe I was not enticed to go back through the experience. The game falls short on replayability for one main reason: enemy encounters are very similar. Even though there are different environments that offer unique enemy configurations, I found myself playing on auto-pilot throughout. There are a few main enemy types that are overused which causes the tactics of battle to stagnate. This combined with the fact that enemies spawn in the same place each time you go through a room made the replayability of the game go down.

I also didn’t want to go back through all of the rooms to grab the collectibles, but I did acquire enough to get 3 out of the 4 endings. When you play a game like Doom there is much more variety and thought put into the enemy encounters. This makes going through the game multiple times easier but with Scathe I felt the enemy placement was not as well thought out.

Uniqueness: 5/10

It is easy to compare Scathe to other games in the same genre. Gameplay and visuals can be compared closely to Doom, which obviously, Scathe takes a lot of inspiration from with its hellish setting, mechanized demon killing, and fast combat. Some aspects of the gameplay are unique, such as the use of magic rings and the ability to wipe blood off of your screen. Weapons are beefy and are bulkier than what you may see in other shooters. In general, there is not enough to separate Scathe from what inspired it.

Scathe has a nonlinear way to progress on the map with multiple rooms and pathways to take. The labyrinth setup as you traverse through the underworld is interesting and different from other games in the same genre. Not knowing exactly what you will be up against, which way the path will take you, or where the next upgrade will be adds a bit of randomness to the mix (at least for the first playthrough).

Personal: 5/10

The inspirations behind Scathe are obvious. The comparisons to other fast-paced first-person shooters are easy to make but also negatively affect the game. There were a fair amount of glitches I ran into, mostly with the enemy AI. The combat in the game felt good and the use of magic helped separate it from games in the same genre. I enjoyed the visual flare the game offers and found the soundtrack enjoyable but too generic. My first playthrough of Scathe felt good but I found myself not wanting to go back through again right away.

If you are looking for a fast and challenging solo experience, then Scathe can offer a couple of hours of enjoyment.

Special thanks to Kwalee and Damage State for offering a copy of this game for our critique!