Here's the information I wish I'd seen when I purchased this: don't bother buying it if you have a mac. The keyboard controls don't work - the game starts in fullscreen and doesn't respond to any key commands at all. The "fix" is to put it in windowed mode. Then the keys do work... kind of. But the whole thing is so laggy it's impossible to actually play. There are support request going back well over a year for this but it's not apparently fixed yet (Aug 25). Pretty rubbish, I was hoping to try Worms again after all these years and this is the only version which is allegedly Mac compatible.
Scratches starts off with great promise: the design of the mansion and its sprawling grounds and the overall atmosphere of isolation and decrepitude are both excellent. I really was very nervous for much of the beginning of the game. There are some brilliantly written (by adventure game standards) Lovecraftian manuscripts scattered about the place which really make for a promising start and made me jump at every dark corner. However as is sadly so often the case it does not pay off. There is one extremely scary bit roughly in the middle of the game but very little else. And the brilliant Lovecraftian stuff just tails off and leads nowhere. I love the old-school point and click adventure games and from a gameplay point of view this is a fairly standard affair. The puzzles are generally fairly logical although the sprawl of the place means it can be difficult to remember everything you've seen but not been able to use. As usual there is a certain amount of hunt-the-pixel but generally I didn't find it as frustrating as other, more professional productions (Mystery of the Druids, anyone?) Overall if you like the horror genre in fiction and the adventure genre in games you'll probably enjoy it, as I did, but feel quite let down at the end. It starts out as a fantastic Lovecraftian romp but ends up as a shaggy dog story. A pity.
