Scum hacks

 

For the perfect game experience of a survival game, Tomislva Pongrac carried out various self-experiments to find out how the metabolism reacts to different nutritional states. He consumed a greatly reduced amount of calories for months, then ate extremely much again and also had a very unhealthy diet. For a short period of time he was also completely starved.

The nutrition monitor on the right shows the player information about calorie requirements and consumption, as well as details about nutritional requirements and body functions. (Scum // Devolver Digital)

In Scum, food intake and metabolism are important elements of the game. This applies to most survival games, but in Scum it is not enough to eat and drink regularly, it also depends on what you eat and drink. If the player eats too one-sidedly and there is a lack of nutrients from certain foods, deficiency symptoms occur and his character becomes weaker. If the player only eats unhealthy things and that without a break, he becomes fat and slow. But the end of the metabolic process also plays a role and the player has to relieve himself regularly. If he forgets that, it can lead to, well, forced toilet breaks even in unfavorable situations. Probably nothing in Scum is more humiliating than having to pull your pants down in the middle of a fight with another player.

In Scum, big business is part of the game. (Source: Scum // Digital Devolver)

These game details go back to Pongrac's self-experiments. Over three months he ate 600 fewer calories than he needed and only did endurance exercise during that time. As a result, he lost both his muscles and his body fat and in the end he was “too weak to open a jar of pickles.” After that, he ate what he wanted and whenever he wanted for a month and got his muscles during this time return.

In the third experiment, he ate nine to ten 300-calorie meals a day, but during that time he felt fantastic, even if he had to get up several times at night to eat. He combined every experiment with a sports program and injured his spine during an exercise. He used this compulsory break to try another experiment in which he consumed tons of sugar. The consequences were three months of non-stop diarrhea, which was tolerable due to being high due to the sugar.

However, he also skipped the extreme of starving for a long time and tried absolutely nothing to eat from it for only 3 days. The first day had been terrible, but after the third he had the feeling that he would be able to go without food for at least five days. In all of his experiments, he kept a record of the exact calories he consumed or not.

Pongrac has invested a lot in Scum, whether it was worth it is difficult to say, the indie game is currently in ear access on Steam. Probably the player himself does not get any of the efforts of Pongrac in the game and the information about the human metabolism could probably have been obtained from a book or from an expert.

Scum hacks