unsettling and cinematic atmosphere. The developers opted to create their own engine called Scream (Simple Creation Engine for Adventure Makers), rather than licensing a pre-existing engine. The Scream engine utilised a combination of pre-rendered graphics and 3D, creating what the team referred to as “pseudo 3D”, an effect which was hard to create using existing adventure game engines. The game was designed to be non-linear. The games "horror" atmosphere has been compared to that of Resident Evil. Artwork from the game started being released in 2004. Scratches: Director's Cut saw changes analogous to those between MYST and Realmyst. Scratches went Gold on February 21, 2006. Release Scratches was first released in North America on March 8, 2006 through game publisher Got Game Entertainment. However, Nucleosys had plans to release several international versions of the game worldwide. A German version of the game has been available since March 2006 (published by Rondomedia), as has the Italian version Graffi Mortali (published by Power Up). A Greek version of the game is also available. A Russian version of the game has been available since May 2006 (published by Russobit-M). The Spanish version of the game (Rasguños) was announced but was never completed. Nucleosys in 2007 released a "Director's Cut" version of Scratches, which includes an alternate ending and two more hours of gameplay. In addition to remastered sound, graphics and more. This version was announced on March 16, 2007. The title was part of Got Game Entertainment's mixed genre of games in 2007. On October 21, 2010, Meridian4 announced that they had signed a digital publishing agreement with Nucleosys for this game. There were plans to create a Director's Commentary with a few additional features but as a result of Nucleosys' shutdown, it will not be released. In 2012, Meridian4 released Scratches on Steam. Versions for Linux and Mac OS X were planned, but were never released before the demise of the developer. Critical reception Globally, Scratches sold more than 150,000 units by March 2007. By 2012, sales had reached roughly 250,000 units. Upon release of the director's cut, Wired asserted "You probably didn't play PC game Scratches". In March 2006, Scratches ranked in the top 10 of Amazon.com's Top Sellers in Computer and Video Games, as well as in popular game indexes such as GameRankings.com. Scratches received mixed reviews but overall achieved an average to high score from most review sites. According