Scarred is a cautionary tale. It was rushed to release before it was ready, and as a result, it’s riddled with bugs and weird mechanical decisions. There’s nothing here that a few more rounds of playtesting couldn’t have sorted out, and the publisher has offered an apology and said that they’re working on fixes. For right now, it’s an ambitious mess.

Ordinarily, that would mean that I put it aside for now and focus on something else, but Scarred was already my emergency fallback pick for this week’s column. It’s been a weird few days, even before roughly a third of the remaining American games media got torched for the insurance money.

Anyway, it’s a shame that Scarred shipped in a broken state, as I wanted to like it more than I did. It’s a short, cheap horror game set in modern-day Singapore, with no real gore, lots of atmosphere, and the occasional big jump scare. It’s the sort of thing you’d pick up if you wanted to kill an evening or a weekend.

Alan Wong is a high school student and basketball player who’s trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Then his friend Olivia suddenly disappears.

Alan subsequently wakes up outside Olivia’s apartment building in the dead of night with no idea how he got there. When he enters, he discovers the building is now haunted by old memories and new ghosts, many of which involve the parts of Olivia’s life that he never saw.

For the first 20 minutes, Scarred comes off like it’s going to be one of those weakly interactive adventure games that people like to call “walking simulators.” All you really do is walk around and click on things.

Thankfully, that’s just the prologue. Once you hit the first chapter, Scarred opens up its map, adds several puzzles, and gets a little less linear. As you explore Olivia’s building, you collect coins that you can use to unlock access to other floors, which also steadily makes the building more dangerous. Your only means of defense is Alan’s basketball, which you can use to stun some enemies, throw switches, knock over distant objects, or dispel the occasional inconvenient ghost.

By Scarred’s halfway point, it’s evolved from a low-stakes adventure game into something more like PG-rated survival horror. However, that halfway point is also when its cracks start to show.

I was initially inclined to cut Scarred a lot of slack, as it was created by a solo developer, and the first couple of hours are genuinely interesting. Its core mysteries are revealed at a careful pace, it’s got a handful of decent puzzles, and the building itself slowly shifts from a generic apartment building to something creepier and more evocative. I particularly liked the chance to check out some Singaporean horror, since I don’t have much experience with that.

However, the further I got into it, the less sure I was that it had ever been playtested at all. I’ve never run into any of the progress-halting bugs that I’ve seen reported on Scarred’s Steam forum, but I’ve hit several different issues where its mechanics were either flawed or so bad I thought they’d glitched out.

The first boss is a particular low point, which removes your control of your character until a specific, unlabeled split-second window, then kills you if you don’t immediately run away. I’ve also had a consistent issue with enemies placed around blind corners, so it’s impossible to react to them before they kill you, and there’s a forced stealth sequence in the third chapter that’s truly a slog to get through. You can get to the end of Scarred in its current state, but I can’t imagine you’d enjoy the process.

Scarred is one of several indie games I’ve played in the last few years that feel like they got scooped up by a new publisher, then kicked out the door before they were ready for wide release. The only big difference here, as noted above, is that the publisher apologized this time.

There’s nothing wrong with Scarred that couldn’t have been addressed with more testing. The ideas are solid, and there are some genuine storytelling chops on display, but the implementation isn’t there. My plan for the moment is to give Scarred a couple more weeks, then revisit it and hope the developer can pull out a win.

[Scarred, developed by KOEX Studio and published by the Iterative Collective, is now available for PC via Steam for $7.99. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by an Iterative Collective PR representative.]

One of my favorite types of B-movies is when the creators clearly didn’t bother to do any research on filmmaking before they started. No books were read and no questions were asked; every time these people hit one of the thousand problems that crop up on a film set, they freestyled their solution. Sometimes that results in a flash of genius. More often, someone finds a way to either make new mistakes or unearth old ones.

In retrospect, this is a natural consequence whenever some new media technology becomes accessible to any geek off the street. Eventually it’ll fall into the hands of a driven amateur and the results can get a little weird, independently of the quality of the production.

Speaking of which—INAYAH: Life After Gods is a new 2D action-platformer from the (I assume to be) German developer Exogenesis Studios, which funded INAYAH’s development via a successful Kickstarter in 2024.

According to Exogenesis’ bio, the team includes several unidentified “international game and software development veterans” who previously worked on Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, as well as a team of artists with experience at Blizzard and Disney.

That’s a stacked lineup for a game that still turned out distinctly off-kilter. INAYAH looks great, has multiple useful quality-of-life features, and is set in a colorful, memorable post-apocalyptic world. However, it’s also plagued by a bunch of mechanical issues that drag down the whole.

Inayah is one of a handful of survivors who live in the ruins of an ancient civilization, which fell so long ago that its creators are viewed by modern humans as dead, unknowable gods. Inayah’s world is full of crumbling tunnels, half-functioning machines nicknamed “iron,” and hostile, mutated plant life.

While exploring the ruins one day, Inayah accidentally reactivates a subway car that carries her to a distant part of the ruins. She quickly discovers that she’s in hostile territory, as the ruins are home to the Ironskins, a band of marauders that orphaned her as a child. They also hold ancient weapons, as well as clues that could lead her to the family she never got the chance to know.

Like Awaken: Astral Blade, INAYAH is a 2D action/platformer that’s got a lot in common with both Metroid and Dark Souls. (I’ve started to feel slightly silly about using terms like “Soulslike” and “Metroidvania,” as they don’t make sense to anyone outside the hobby.) You’re dropped off at one point in a sprawling maze of tunnels and are largely left to explore. As you defeat mutants, you pick up currency that can be spent on upgrades, many of which improve your mobility so you can explore previously inaccessible parts of the map.

You initially get the chance to choose one of 3 weapons, each of which have their own upgrade tree and offer a couple of unique offensive and defensive options. The twin swords let you parry attacks and perform a Zelda II-style up- and downthrust; the fists give you a defensive shield, the ability to climb up certain walls, and an eight-way air dash; and the flail can knock down walls or latch onto magnetic points in the environment.

You’ll eventually unlock access to all 3 at once, which is an interesting overall approach to the formula. Instead of having a traditional double-jump, INAYAH sets you up with some freeform platforming challenges, where you can string your various abilities together to reach new locations. It’s flexible, and the upgrade trees give you a lot of options for customizing your overall approach to both exploration and combat.

However, that also ties into the single biggest problem with INAYAH: it doesn’t convey information to the player very well. It does have a short, basic tutorial that lasts up to the point where you get your first weapon, but you’re never informed about your later movement options or the existence of the upgrade tree. I spent the first hour of the game collecting currency, wondering when I’d get to spend it, then noticed the option to do so had quietly appeared in my pause menu.

The same issue extends to the environments. INAYAH has some incredible art, with an overall style that reminds me of post-apocalyptic stories from Heavy Metal. It’s beautiful, but it’s often difficult to tell at a glance whether something in the environment is meant to be interactive. Whenever I’ve gotten stuck in INAYAH, it’s been because I thought part of the background was a wall or a usable ledge, or because I was supposed to be using new movement options that the game didn’t tell me I had.

It’s the sort of problem that I’ve come to associate with animators or TV producers who pivot to game design. They often create some spectacular visuals or tell an interesting story, but they don’t pay anywhere near as much attention to the mechanics. The result is a game that looks great, but often has a few old mistakes in the mix.

That relegates INAYAH: Life After Gods to the “good effort” pile. It’s a significant achievement as a piece of media, but it’s a significantly flawed video game. I want to like it more than I do, as there’s some real love and effort on display. If its creators get the chance to patch out some of its issues (i.e. outlining or color-shifting interactive objects so they’re easier to see), it could be a decent pickup, but it’s hard to recommend in its current state.

[INAYAH: Life After Gods, developed by Exogenesis Studios and published by Headup, is now available for PC via Steam and Itch.io for $24.99. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a PR representative for Headup.]

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A brief follow-up:

This column marks the end of Game Night’s first year. I pitched this on a random whim, and am sort of surprised it was allowed to go on for this long. I’d be happy to do this for years to come, or until the nation burns down around me, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, and here’s to a second year of weekly indie games.