Scratches

Scratches

Developers
	Nucleosys
Publishers
	Got Game Entertainment
	Meridian4
Release dates
Windows	March 8, 2006
macOS (OS X)	July 28, 2011
Reception
Metacritic	67
Taxonomy
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Relaxed
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Point and select
Genres	Adventure
Art styles	Realistic, Pre-rendered graphics
Themes	Contemporary, Horror

Scratches is a singleplayer first-person adventure game.

The digital version of the game was removed from GOG.com and Steam in January 2015.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Senscape Forum

Senscape Discord Community

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		Has 3 releases: the original, the Director's Cut, and a rerelease of the Director's Cut which came with an extra disc with patches to fix problems in the 1-disc version.
GOG.com (unavailable)		Director's Cut.
Steam (unavailable)		Director's Cut. Can be run without Steam running.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\Nucleosys\Scratches\ %APPDATA%\Nucleosys\Scratches Director's Cut\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/46460/pfx/

The scream.cfg location differs between releases.

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\Nucleosys\Scratches\ %APPDATA%\Nucleosys\Scratches Director's Cut\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/46460/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Options Menu

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		1024x768 only. Editing in custom resolutions into scream.cfg causes major issues.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		Achievable through editing scream.cfg. Windowed mode is only playable by turning off "alternate control" from the settings.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Can be manually toggled by editing scream.cfg
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Game uses software rendering, resulting in absurdly high frame rates. Affects camera speed. See Run the game at screen refresh rate.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.
Color blind mode		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Editing scream.cfg to custom resolutions is not recommended as it can cause major issues.

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity		Camera speed (low, medium. high)
Mouse input in menus
Keyboard and mouse prompts
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Function keys are reserved by the game. It is necessary to re-bind F12 to F3, F6 or F11 to take a screenshot via Steam.

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Spanish				Retail version, download.
Russian				Official translate (audio + text). Included patches. Download.
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation by GameVicio; download.

Issues fixed

BSoD on modern Windows (Retail)

Attempting to run the original Scratches or Scratches: Director's Cut on Windows Vista or above will cause Windows to crash to a blue screen.

This issue is caused by how modern Windows handles an outdated call for the monitor refresh rate.

Manually the edit configuration refresh rate
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open scream.cfg. Change RATE 0 to RATE 60. Save the file. Notes The explanation for the problem and how it can be fixed was provided by the original developer of the game.

Crashing in-game (Retail)

The original version of Scratches is prone to crashing on modern computers.

This issue was initially due to features that were added to Intel CPUs at the time, features that have since become standard in all Intel CPUs.

Download and install an official patch
Download and install this patch for Scratches. A mirror of this patch is available here. Notes This patch was provided by the original developers during this game's original run. This patch will break compatibility with existing save files.

Crashing during The Last Visit (Retail)

The initial release of Scratches Director's Cut came with only one disc, which contained a game breaking bug that would cause the game to crash during the additional content chapter of the game.

Future releases had two discs, with the second disc containing copies of the patches below, as such this issue should not be present on those copies, so long as the patches on Disc 2 are installed.

Download and install a patch and an update
Download and install this patch for Scratches Director's Cut. A mirror of this patch is available here. Download and install this update for Scratches Director's Cut. Notes Only a mirror is available for the update because of Wayback Machine's file size limit. The update dramatically improves the visuals of the game overall, and fixes some minor visual bugs.

Run the game at screen refresh rate

Fullscreen mode defaults to 60 Hz, even if the screen refresh rate is set higher than that.

Set screen refresh rate[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open scream.cfg. Change RATE 60 to the screen refresh rate (e.g. RATE 120).

Camera speed is too fast / Movement problems (Windows 10)

Cap the frame rate at 60 FPS[citation needed]

Set Windows compatibility mode to "Windows XP SP3"

Change in-game options
Set Camera speed to Slow. Set Slideshow to Off. Set Alternate controls to Disabled.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c	Steam release
OpenGL

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Audio	OpenAL

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Windows
	Minimum		Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP		Vista, 7
Processor (CPU)	1.0 GHz
System memory (RAM)	256 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	500 MB
Video card (GPU)	64 MB of VRAM OpenGL 1.2 compatible DirectX 9.0c compatible
Sound (audio device)	Sound card with DirectX 9.0c support

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.6.8
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz
System memory (RAM)	512 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)
Video card (GPU)	64 MB of VRAM OpenGL 1.2 compatible