like if silent hill and resident evil took estrogen then had nasty sex

in all seriousness. the inspirations are VERY clear. it's like a love letter to the survival horror genre. what i like about signalis in particular is that it nails the "survival" part of "survival horror" pretty well. unless you're playing on easy, you are almost certainly not going to get anywhere just blasting everything in your path. enemies can and will come back. you don't have enough ammo. you never do.

i had a real pant-shitting moment when i got lost in the second area of the game with exactly ZERO ammo for any of my weapons. exploring new rooms was scary without any way to fight back.

also yes. the lesbian robot thing. i am so, so normal about it.

Signalis is a really good survival horror game that takes inspiration from Resident Evil and Silent Hill, mixes it with a bit of Lovecraft and leaves you with a brilliantly tragic title that left me wishing there was more of it.

Some of the coolest stylization of any horror game I've experienced, each cutscene was done really really well and it managed to be both scary but also stunning in its beauty. This game is more about the world and the story than its combat and enemies, but I found this tragic tale more than enough to satisfy me where shooting didn't.

I really should have loved this game, but I'm just gonna say it, its inventory management system tainted my experience. Small inventories and backtracking are staples of the survival horror genre but wow this game just takes it to the extreme. Here's something that would happen a lot: I'd see something and have no space for it (in my 6-slot inventory which is criminally small). So I'd go back to my storage crate, drop off what I thought I didn't need at the time, and then go back to the room that I was just in to pick up these new item(s), which half the time went back into the crate for later use. This happens, CONSTANTLY. And you never get much of any ammo for one gun, so you're forced to carry 2 or more guns at a time. This can take up to 5 of your 6 slots, leaving a single slot for the rest of everything else that you pick up lol. It doesn't build the atmosphere. It doesn't add to the suspense. It's tedious and adds incessant amounts of backtracking to an otherwise stellar game. I felt frustrated and that my time was being wasted. It felt reductive and pointless. It unfortunately degrades the game severely for me, which is a shame because other parts of this game are truly excellent.

Speaking of ammo, this game has probably the single stupidest inventory design decision I've ever seen. You know how each ammo type has a max amount that you can carry in one slot? This is pretty normal for the genre. What isn't normal, is having a max amount of a type of ammo that you can carry in your entire inventory. There was a point in this game where I was unable to pick up some ammo even though I had an empty slot in my inventory. Well, that's because, I already had the max amount of ammo of that type in another slot and I guess you can't exceed a certain amount even if you have the space for it. So yeah, I had to go to my storage crate, drop off the ammo, go back to the room, pick up the ammo, and then go back to the storage crate to add to my store (the crate doesn't follow the same restrictions in terms of ammo). All of that nonsense, instead of just letting me take it in my empty slot. Fucking. Annoying.

But aside from my gripe about the inventory, to end on a positive note, I do recommend this game. The sprite work, the music, the storytelling, the puzzles... they're all very well crafted. Especially, the puzzles. They redeem this game for me. They're thoughtful and reminiscent of old-school puzzle design.

7/10