Scorn immediately throws you into the deep end. Waking up in a bizarre facility, you’ll have to work mechanisms, use devices, and solve puzzles that aren’t even remotely explained in-game. You’re trapped in an alien environment with only your wits, and the first act is one of the trickiest to wrap your head around. Just getting started on the sprawling puzzle environment can be tricky — and the crane? Don’t get us started.
If you’re lost in the opening hour of Scorn, we don’t blame you. To escape the early facility, you’ll enter a massive open-ended area with strange machines that have no easily discernable purpose. You’ll need to solve a crane puzzle — and have no idea why you’re solving it, or what you’re even supposed to be doing. We’ll help with that. Check out the full guide below for breakdowns of every section of the act. We’ll explain how to solve the crane puzzle, how to use the arm, and what to do with your first weapon.
More Scorn guides:
Act 2 Walkthrough | Act 3 Walkthrough | Act 4 Walkthrough | Act 5 Walkthrough | Moving Faster, Healing & Gun | How To Skip Enemy Encounters
Act 1 Walkthrough
Starting in an empty room, you’ll encounter a locked door. There’s nothing you can do here yet — exit through the other passage and follow the walkway. Walk through the creepy corridors until you find a partially open door.
- Interact with the partially open door (right passage from the large atrium) to squeeze through and reach a new interior room.
Inside this room, you’ll be able to gain a mechanism to interact with door locks and other machinery.
- How To Get The Wrist Spike Device: After squeezing through the open door, turn left and use the machine. Interact and your character will stick his hand in the slot, getting a gross-looking device stapled to his hand.
Now you can interact with machinery in this room. Find the control switch facing the large shutter. You can now use this device by inserting the wrist-spike.
NOTE: To move faster, press [LB / L1] to sprint.
- Opening The Shutter: Interact with the control panel facing the shutter after gaining the wrist-spike.
- Select the left option and interact to unlock it.
- Select the right option to open the door.
After exiting the machinery controls, quickly rush through the door before it shuts. You’ll reach the large spiral-ramp tower chamber you viewed earlier. Time to see what’s up there.
The Tower Chamber | Crane & Tracks Puzzle
There are three crane controls around the base of the tower and one terminal that controls the tracks located at the top of the tower itself. What do we do here?
Nothing we can do here. Even if you explore thoroughly. Instead, find the large door — this looks like an exit, but the two control panels do nothing.
What To Do First: To the right passage (from the large door in the tower chamber) and use the elevator lift. At the top of the elevator, you’ll find a strange, massive storage room with round objects stored on slots in the wall. This room has two control devices at the end of a catwalk.
- Egg Chamber Crane Puzzle: Use the crane (right panel) to grab and drag the different “eggs” around the grid. You need to move a specific egg to the collection spot — an area with a white light near the center.
- The “egg” we need is a vertical 1×2 piece. You’ll need to carefully move all other pieces out of the grid path to reach the white light position.
- Move all pieces until you can move th 1×2 vertical piece up and left — there’s one spot where you can move it down one space. Do it so you can slide all the 2×1 horizontal pieces out of the path.
- Place the vertical piece on the white light, then use the center terminal to lower the “egg” — or whatever it is.
Take the elevator back downstairs and return to the central tower room.
How To Collect The Man: In the central tower, you’ll now hear a strange moaning sound. Go to the crane controls near the “wheelchair”-like object.
Use the crane controls to lower the man stuck in the egg-like container. Grab him, then move the crane hand down to deposit him on the wheelchair cart.
- What To Do With The Cart Man: We now have a strange man on a cart. We can push him along the tracks.
- Push him forward to the first stop. You’ll automatically stop under a large device. Use the control panel and additional machinery will be bolted onto your cart-man.
- Next, use the control device at the top of the spiral tower. We need to change the tracks. Set the lower-left track to follow the curve of the circle (otherwise it leads to a dead-end) then set the lower-right track to veer off down the lower-right bridge.
- Return him to the elevator room. Use the crane controls to lift the egg-man and move him right. Interact again to deposit the egg-man into the machine.
- Exit and use the smaller switch to dispose of the buddy. Gross!
There’s something left in the refuse. Grab the [Arm]!
The Tower Chamber | Solving The Arm Puzzle & Unlocking The Huge Door
Now we have an extra arm and no clear direction.
- To use the arm, go to the large exit door. Go left and into the side-passage to find another device that attaches the spike-wrist device — its exactly like the one we used earlier.
- Use the arm on it to add the control spike. Now the arm can interact with machinery.
- Return to the large exit door. Stick the arm into the control device on the left. This will partially open the door. Now you can exit and left the severed arm.
- Use the switch on the right to unlock the door.
Use the elevator down the hallway from the massive door. Now we can finally return to the upper area we were locked out of. Ahead, you’ll reach a large room packed with grey bodies.
The Nursery | Getting The Jackhammer & Getting The Batteries
Enter the left / right doors in the atrium to enter a strange “garden” with pulsating bulbous stalks. Follow the path until you reach a large central tree — use the control panel here to activate a harvesting machine.
- Use the flying drone to collect the “battery” cylinder directly in front of you, then deposit it into the large central tree. There’s a glowing open port slot it fits right into. Use the terminal that appears in front of you, near the tree, to raise the shutters.
But we can’t leave yet. We need more batteries. To do that, we need our first weapon.
- How To Get The Weapon: Travel back to the central atrium and go to the viewing platform with the window facing the large bio-organic “tree” we were messing with earlier. Approach the cannister pod in the ground. It will rise up automatically as we approach.
- After it rises up, interact to pull a Jackhammer like device out of the cannister. This is a melee weapon that can attack twice before recharging.
Now that we have the Jackhammer, we can interact with more machines.
- How To Exit The Nursery: With the Jackhammer, travel to both ends of the Nursery / Garden area. There is a device on both ends near the left / right entrance doors. Interact with the Jackhammer to make another “Battery” appear.
- Interact with both sides. Small acid-spewing drones will also appear to block your path. Use your Jackhammer to smash any drones in your path.
Return to the central tree and use the Drone controls to install all three batteries into the lit-up areas of the veiny tree. After inserting a battery, use the switch that appears to lock it into place. Do this three times.
That completes the first act but leaves us in a pretty grim spot. A flow of sludge overwhelms us, taking us somewhere completely new.
