Adventure Gamers - Forums

Welcome!! Welcome everyone to the Scratches AGCP!!!

The place is great!! The old, Victorian Blackwood estate is huge, aristocratic and with many rumours about its past!! It seems the perfect choice for our little playthrough!!!

But first of all, let’s talk about the game’s history. Scratches was first produced and released in 2006 by Nucleosys, a small company founded some years before by Agustin Cordes and Alejandro Graziani. A little bird told me that Mr. Cordes will pay us a couple of visits in our mansion. Scratches: Director’s Cut was released one year later (2007), which is basically the same game but with visual and auditory enhancements, plus the addition of a subtle (I like it!) Hint System and a diary. It is the version I personally recommend, but it trully makes no difference in the course of this playthrough if you own the original version. There was also a small chapter (I can’t call it “expansion”, it is very small) called “The Last Visit” that takes place in the same areas some years later and actually sums up the results of what we have experienced in the original game. Ties up the story nice. It is a shame, but for reasons unknown to me (something about publishing and selling rights if I’m not mistaken), GOG and Steam no longer have the Scratches on sale. I am one of the lucky ones to had it bought before.

This game is a first-person point & click horror adventure with fully rendered 360-degree rotation. Menu also offers the slideshow option for the hardcore Myst fans. There is of course an inventory where you can have access with the usual right clicking. Very simple controls really and this is very important. The graphics stand nice, even for a game 8-9 years old. Attention to details is obvious from the creators, resulting in a really spooky scenery, almost in every place. It is known that sound plays an important role in horror games. You’ll be pleased to know that the effects are awsome and the soundtrack is a really good one!! The voice acting is ok but is used only in the cinematics and the telephone conversations. The rest is script only.
The riddles are all logical explained and many of them a part of the story themself. None of them is too hard but not too easy as well. A well-balanced approach. Finally, the story. While it is a very interesting one I won’t post any comments for not spoiling anything. I’ll just tell you that many parts of the story (as well as some riddle hints/solutions) are given through various papers/diaries/whatever that you’ll find around. The content is always very intriguing one.

Now let me introduce to some of the more important characters in the game. Some of them you’ll talk to, some you’ll get to know through diaries and the mansion’s secrets….

Michael: That’s you!! The main character!! Michael is an upcoming popular writer. In his search for inspiration, he bought the Blackwood Mansion, becoming its third owner. Hopes this will inspire him for a hundrend more books!! He has no idea how right he is going to be…..

Jerry: A friend of Michael, the real-estate agent that found this place. The character you’ll mainly phone to when a problem occurs. Meaning => the main person you phone to throughout the game.

James Blackwood: The first owner of the estate around the ‘60s. One of the richest people around who always helped the local community. Accused for murdering his wife. Died some days after from heart attack.

Catherine Blackwood: James’s wife, used to be a teacher.

Christopher Milton: The doctor of the Blackwood family and an old friend of James Blackwood. He became the second owner of the mansion after their death. Disappeared without a trace around the ‘70s.

Eva Mariani: Originally from Italy, served for many years as a maid for the Blackwood family. Also an aspiring photographer.

One feature of the game is time. No, there is no real-time time running, don’t get scared!! But the game itself is divided by periods of time that change due to some of the player’s actions that move the story forward. The current time can be seem in the main clock of the mansion (you can’t miss it, its ticking will get on your nerves). It can also be seen in your saves. Since however the game is not linear on the sequence of the moves one can make, the playthrough’s chapters will be divided on the days we stay in the mansion (you didn’t think we will leave from the first day now, did you? ) which IS somewhat linear. I propose 10-days per chapter (a.k.a. in-game day) for the first two days and 1 week for each half of the last day (this will be done because I want all of us to reach the ending around the same time). This makes it a somewhat medium-paced playthrough. Of course all these could change depending on the pace the majority of the members can follow.

These first days will be spent in solving any technical difficulties, or simply give you time to obtain the game (if you don’t have it already). If we are all ready, we will begin the game in the 9th of May.
Whoever has the game installed and ready to go, please confirm it below. Also, please inform if this is your first time of the game or not.

EDIT: Pin the thread please!!

EDIT 2: As always, the usual and necessary request to all participants to stay on-topic, use spoiler tags whenever needed and generally join in a good-heart spirit.

EDIT 3: I wholeheartedly recommend to play this game at night with headphones on.

Thank you Sefir for that wonderful introduction & please accept my apologies for encroaching on the voting thread with my problems with the game.

zane - 03 May 2015 05:38 PM

chrissie - 03 May 2015 04:02 PM

As said I don’t know whether I have time to join in but tried installing disc versions (both versions) on my Win 7 64 bit - they seem to install but on clicking on the launch icon they give me a blue screen & shut-down - I don’t know what’s going on as it seems to be specific to that game?

your computer shuts down or just the game?
First thing id try there is reinstalling.. And maybe its got drm that conflicts with your anti-virus… but probably not… or youd be getting notifications from your antivirus….

No! this is serious that on trying to launch the game that seems to have installed perfectly it completely shuts down my PC, I’ve now uninstalled it & there is no way I’m going to persist with it on my current system! I may after the end of May try to catch up with the play through by installing it on an old XP as I dearly would like to play this game again!

chrissie - 05 May 2015 04:44 AM

zane - 03 May 2015 05:38 PM

chrissie - 03 May 2015 04:02 PM

As said I don’t know whether I have time to join in but tried installing disc versions (both versions) on my Win 7 64 bit - they seem to install but on clicking on the launch icon they give me a blue screen & shut-down - I don’t know what’s going on as it seems to be specific to that game?

your computer shuts down or just the game?
First thing id try there is reinstalling.. And maybe its got drm that conflicts with your anti-virus… but probably not… or youd be getting notifications from your antivirus….

No! this is serious that on trying to launch the game that seems to have installed perfectly it completely shuts down my PC, I’ve now uninstalled it & there is no way I’m going to persist with it on my current system! I may after the end of May try to catch up with the play through by installing it on an old XP as I dearly would like to play this game again!

Hmmm….I also use Win-7 64bit in my laptop and the game runs fine. I use the GOG version btw. Have you tried to run it into an emulated environment like Virtual PC?

I’ve never tried running anything in Virtual PC Sefir! & am too concerned about what’s in the coding of the game to upset my PC so much to try anything more on my current system!

Have been wanting to get involved in one of the community playthroughs, but haven’t had the time, so this will be my first. I am currently downloading the game from GoG.com and will advise if it works on Windows 10 64bit, build 10074. Btw, first time playing Scratches.

I tried installing the disk version of the Director’s Cut on my Win 7 64-bit computer. Like chrissie, I couldn’t get it to play at all (it kept crashing). So I bought the game again via download on Amazon (US) and the downloaded version is playing fine—it must contain an update of some sort.

I played the original version of Scratches when it first came out, and the Director’s Cut when it first released as well.

I found this tip for fixing the BSOD on another website:

You must edit the Scream.CFG file. To accomplish this in Windows 7, go to C:/Program Files/Nucleosys/Scratches. Find the Scream.CFG file and right click. Select Properties and from within that window, change the Open With option to either Notepad or Word Pad. Change the Rate from 0 to 60. Save the file, exit and restart the game.

Sefir - 05 May 2015 04:26 AM

Scratches: Director’s Cut was released one year later (2007), which is basically the same game but with visual and auditory enhancements, plus the addition of a subtle (I like it!) Hint System and a diary. It is the version I personally recommend, but it trully makes no difference in the course of this playthrough if you own the original version. There was also a small chapter (I can’t call it “expansion”, it is very small) called “The Last Visit” that takes place in the same areas some years later and actually sums up the results of what we have experienced in the original game. Ties up the story nice. It is a shame, but for reasons unknown to me (something about publishing and selling rights if I’m not mistaken), GOG and Steam no longer have the Scratches on sale. I am one of the lucky ones to had it bought before.

There is another difference that may be important to some players…

The panning is much smoother and more controllable in the Director’s Cut.
The Director’s Cut also offers a choice of two panning modes—“soft edge panning” (where the screen starts to pan as you move your cursor closer to the edge of the screen) and “central cursor” style (similar to what was used in the Atlantis games and games made by Kheops Studios like Nostradamus).

The original Scratches offered a choice of “slideshow mode” (similar to what was used in Barrow Hill and Dark Fall: The Journal) and “edge panning,” but the “edge panning” was difficult to control, tending to go from not panning at all to zipping around like greased lightning.

Although Director’s Cut offers something it calls a “slideshow mode,” it’s more like incremental panning and is not the same as what was used in Barrow Hill, Dark Fall: The Journal, or the original Scratches at all.

Agustín Cordes - 05 May 2015 10:11 AM

I’ve got tons of notes and trivia that was never shared to the world—it was all meant to be part of a “director’s commentary” feature that sadly wasn’t finished. I’ll be glad to share these tidbits about the game every now and then as you play

Yayyy!!!
These are excellent news. Thanks again for joining. Also, thanks for all the technical info. Some (mostly disc version owners) might find it very useful for running the game.
(I could have posted that a bit earlier but you know, the more time people saw “Agustin Cordes” in the “Last post info author” of this thread, the more views it got. )

rtrooney - 05 May 2015 01:46 PM

Unfortunately, I have to throw my hat in the ring and join chrissie and Becky. I, too, am running Win7-64 bit. Unlike my past experience, the game installed without interference from my AV program. However, I instantly got the BSOD when starting the game. Not just the game crashed, but the whole system.

I attempted to modify the SCream.cfg file at noted in crabapple’s post, but, even though I am administrator for this machine, I was not allowed to save the change to the file.

I was unable to find it on gog.com. I was hoping that it would be inexpensive enough that would buy a second copy. If that’s where you got it, please post a link to the game’s page and not just to the gog.com site. Nor was I able to find it on BFG. I didn’t check Steam, but doubt I would buy from that site anyway.

Amazon has it, but that would just get me another box, which I doubt would serve me better than the box I already have.

Not sure what the next step is.

rtrooney, we already mentioned more than once that the game is not available on GOG or Steam. It USED to, but not anymore. However, as Becky already mentioned too, there are download copies on Amazon that work just fine.