Craft and Design

At first glance, Scratches is traditional in many ways. It is point & click, uses a familiar interface and many other common genre conventions. One nice feature is an in-game hint system that integrates clues and suggestions about the next logical step to take or help with puzzle solutions. When activated within the game, these hints will appear in notes, dialogues, and character comments.

The puzzles in the game are for the most part inventory-based. However, this is not a mere pixel hunt for items and scurrying to use them on some object or another. Instead they are more challenging, without being unfair or impossibly obscure. Perhaps the best way to describe them is that they require creative uses and combinations to succeed. Some demand observation and deduction, while others are more natural and integrated logically within the locations. As noted by Nucleosys, “they won't cry ‘solve me, I'm a puzzle.’ Instead, they make sense and have a natural feel to them.”

The use of first-person perspective and lack of visible NPC’s is another notable feature of the game design, because it comes with a twist. Rather than have no additional characters, which can give a very lonely feel to a game, there are several written into the game story. Interaction is all handled through conversations over an old telephone, although this does not make the gameplay at all passive. When asked, Agustin had this to say:

"The way you choose dialogues won't affect the game path as the gameplay is non-linear. But these choices can change the outcome of the game. We're trying to avoid dialogue repetition as much as we can, so it won't be a case where you can choose every possible single option. You have to decide what to say. We think there is a strong level of interaction with others, though the game world itself is visually unpopulated."

The effect of dialogue choices on the outcome of the game is a welcome touch, as it has been sadly lacking in many recent games. Asked about alternative endings, Agustin said:

"Well, I do not want to give away too much at this point. But Scratches has some similarity to the way in which you reach the endings in the Silent Hill games. There's an original ending which is the easier one to get to, and then a second one which is almost an easter egg, and it will be much harder to trigger."

Since the word was mentioned, of course it just had to be asked whether easter eggs in general would be hidden about the game. The response was hardly coy:

"Aha! There will be many! We haven't decided which ones, but we know we want to — there will be references to other adventures, horror movies, hidden stuff … and yes, the alternative ending."

Hint systems, easter eggs, alternate endings, innovative NPC interaction… this list of “luxury” features shows just how well these two Argentinians understand the genre and its gamers, and their ambitions surpass those of much larger and better funded development teams. What’s next — discovering they built their own game engine?

Why yes, as a matter of fact. Nucleosys, rather than licensing an existing engine for their development use, created their own engine called Scream (Simple Creation Engine for Adventure Makers). A combination of pre-rendered graphics and 3D, the Scream engine creates what the team refers to as “pseudo 3D”, which no existing (and affordable) adventure engines could create as effectively. And judging by the early results in Scratches, they made the right choice.



There appears to be much to look forward to with this debut game from a brand spanking new developer. With its dark, foreboding atmosphere, an intuitive interface, non-linear gameplay and lots of goodies sprinkled inside to find... Well, maybe you should see for yourself, as a playable demo is available from the Nucleosys website.

Although release is several months off, and no publishing details have been determined at this point, we’re definitely keeping a close eye on this game. That is, when we’re not nervously glancing around us, convinced that in the quietest moments we hear the faint sound of Scratches.