elster's journey is similar to my own
except im human
and i'm not a robot
and i'm not in space
and not in a relationship at all
and on top of all of this I'm a he/they black man from chicago
but we're basically the same
except im human
and i'm not a robot
and i'm not in space
and not in a relationship at all
and on top of all of this I'm a he/they black man from chicago
but we're basically the same
really split here. the mechanics, the framing onto the animation, especially the immaculate first person puzzles, were engrossing to me. i love a good romp around spaces while micromanaging an inventory and avoiding enemies. however, the blatant, almost pandering references to other media coupled with an extremely abstracted storytelling structure just sort of punctured the work and deflated it. collapsed the narrative space entirely. i think you need a certain strength of theme to have the narrative economy to do things like "scene intentionally left out" -- and near the final boss fight i was begging for the game to end. it sincerely reminds me of bakemonogatari. no other way really to express it: the writing is amateur hour. an incredibly talented production taxed in this way. a shame.
I cannot explain the feelings I felt playing Signalis. this game is a simply a masterpiece to me. The moment my eyes witnessed the trailer for this game I instantly knew this game was going to become something special to me and something special it became. Everything from the graphics, character designs, story , gameplay and world surrounding this game there is not a single thing I dislike about this game past a few nitpicks.
This plays like a true old school survival horror game so if you are into the genre this is a MUST play if you are into stuff like RE1R. The puzzles were honestly very easy and I didn't find myself stuck on any past a few but you will be fine as long as you explore everything and read all the files you find there will be no issues with the puzzles this game has.
Now I won't get into the story for spoilers sakes and just for the simple fact this game is very enriched and deep in its lore and I simply have not really gathered a grasp on its plot and lore but I have a base idea but am continuing to do more research on what it all meant it really has been fun reading other peoples theories and guesses. But to give a very quick run down you play as Elster who wakes up from a long sleep and is now in search of her partner and her dreams where you will explore a government facility set in a dystopian future to find the answers you seek and answers you will find (well you will probably be very confused like me)
This game is oozing with love and care and you can tell how much went into making this masterpiece. This game has risen to my top 3 indie games of all time if not my fav indie game of all time now.
I will play anything Rose-engine has to offer and I cannot wait for their next title you have earned yourself a new huge fan !!
I will end the review with this.
THIS GAME IS A MASTERPIECE
This plays like a true old school survival horror game so if you are into the genre this is a MUST play if you are into stuff like RE1R. The puzzles were honestly very easy and I didn't find myself stuck on any past a few but you will be fine as long as you explore everything and read all the files you find there will be no issues with the puzzles this game has.
Now I won't get into the story for spoilers sakes and just for the simple fact this game is very enriched and deep in its lore and I simply have not really gathered a grasp on its plot and lore but I have a base idea but am continuing to do more research on what it all meant it really has been fun reading other peoples theories and guesses. But to give a very quick run down you play as Elster who wakes up from a long sleep and is now in search of her partner and her dreams where you will explore a government facility set in a dystopian future to find the answers you seek and answers you will find (well you will probably be very confused like me)
This game is oozing with love and care and you can tell how much went into making this masterpiece. This game has risen to my top 3 indie games of all time if not my fav indie game of all time now.
I will play anything Rose-engine has to offer and I cannot wait for their next title you have earned yourself a new huge fan !!
I will end the review with this.
THIS GAME IS A MASTERPIECE
Sci-fi Silent Hill with space lesbians. It rocks.
a game that, in almost every aspect, perfectly illustrates the difference between "being derivative" and "being iterative"
is it like Resident Evil and Silent Hill? in game design yes, but is it a clone? not really. does it have motifs similar to other various popular media? yes, but is it just a series of "hey do you like this other thing" moments? not really.
a very good exploration of ideas wrapped tightly into a well-presented box. excited to see more from this team.
is it like Resident Evil and Silent Hill? in game design yes, but is it a clone? not really. does it have motifs similar to other various popular media? yes, but is it just a series of "hey do you like this other thing" moments? not really.
a very good exploration of ideas wrapped tightly into a well-presented box. excited to see more from this team.
Signalis felt like a mind-bending experience that I was unable to completely wrap my head around on my first playthrough. It is exceptionally atmospheric in all of its senses; the music and sound design are both beautiful and haunting, and the visuals stylistic and creepy. Not to mention the use of language! English, German and Japanese mixed together fit the world of Signalis very well in my opinion.
Comparatively, the puzzle elements of Signalis are much stronger than the combat aspect. I concede that the game would feel a bit empty without combat, but it was quite annoying to wade through hordes of enemies in tight spaces while emptying clips that did seemingly no damage. The puzzles are so incredibly original and fun, though. Signalis creatively combines all kinds of stimuli into its puzzles, so that the player feels rewarded by completing them. I personally loved the radio mechanic, which is something I have never seen so cleverly used in any other game to date.
Aside from missing a key from time to time, the puzzles were never unclear due to convenient "lore letters" revealing information about core concepts, such as how to operate certain puzzle mechanics. In other words, players that are interested in reading background information are rewarded with hints. All this information is stored and easily accessible later, so getting stuck is never frustrating either.
In the next couple of days, I will be looking into the lore of Signalis a little more to hopefully increase my understanding of the story. This game is very interesting, to say the least. Fans of Resident Evil will surely get a kick out of this, seeing as Signalis greatly resembles that playstyle.
Comparatively, the puzzle elements of Signalis are much stronger than the combat aspect. I concede that the game would feel a bit empty without combat, but it was quite annoying to wade through hordes of enemies in tight spaces while emptying clips that did seemingly no damage. The puzzles are so incredibly original and fun, though. Signalis creatively combines all kinds of stimuli into its puzzles, so that the player feels rewarded by completing them. I personally loved the radio mechanic, which is something I have never seen so cleverly used in any other game to date.
Aside from missing a key from time to time, the puzzles were never unclear due to convenient "lore letters" revealing information about core concepts, such as how to operate certain puzzle mechanics. In other words, players that are interested in reading background information are rewarded with hints. All this information is stored and easily accessible later, so getting stuck is never frustrating either.
In the next couple of days, I will be looking into the lore of Signalis a little more to hopefully increase my understanding of the story. This game is very interesting, to say the least. Fans of Resident Evil will surely get a kick out of this, seeing as Signalis greatly resembles that playstyle.
Signalis has lived rent free in my head since the moment I started it. It is both a game I want to go on about endlessly, dissecting it's thousand details and it's lineage of inspiration - and a game that I think everyone should just straight up play for themselves. Brilliant in worldbuilding and aesthetics, strong puzzle-boxy game design ripped straight from Resi 1/2, Surrealism that both comes in spades and is perfectly balanced to keep you on your toes, and a story that slowly forces its way under your skin, unravelling in a manner that is currently living rent free in my head.
I would concede that Signalis appeals particularly to my sensibilities - theres a bit of the thing, bit of lynch, bit of alien, and a whole lot more. But it's reference and reverance is never out of line and never takes away from what's an insanely compelling experience. It is a game that uses the best of the past to set a baseline for a good horror game and set up the game language, only to twist the knife.
Its not flawless, but to even broach the flaws feels like doing a disservice. Like, there's little niggles with the difficulty, enemies, and one or two puzzles in retrospect. But Signalis is such a ridiculously compelling game that it never really matters, it was never something I was thinking about actually at the time. Only progressing onward, unpicking it's puzzle box levels and slowly unravelling it's story.
Easily game of the year, and one of the best horror games in a long, long time. This game made me buy a damn book, play it.
I would concede that Signalis appeals particularly to my sensibilities - theres a bit of the thing, bit of lynch, bit of alien, and a whole lot more. But it's reference and reverance is never out of line and never takes away from what's an insanely compelling experience. It is a game that uses the best of the past to set a baseline for a good horror game and set up the game language, only to twist the knife.
Its not flawless, but to even broach the flaws feels like doing a disservice. Like, there's little niggles with the difficulty, enemies, and one or two puzzles in retrospect. But Signalis is such a ridiculously compelling game that it never really matters, it was never something I was thinking about actually at the time. Only progressing onward, unpicking it's puzzle box levels and slowly unravelling it's story.
Easily game of the year, and one of the best horror games in a long, long time. This game made me buy a damn book, play it.
I was pretty worried I would find Signalis to be too scary. Instead, I found Signalis to be too boring.
I’m not really a fan of horror and, as such, I have played basically zero games in this genre, including any of the Resident Evil games. So my closest analog to Signalis is “it’s like an old adventure game but with creepy monsters that keep getting in your way”.
Most of my major criticisms of this game are things that I think fans of this genre would consider to be standard features of survival horror games - things like an extremely limited inventory. I know this is done to make me pick and choose which tools to carry, but 50% of my time playing this game was just running back and forth between rooms and my storage as I juggle critical quest items with my three open inventory slots.
I also think fans of classic Resident Evil games will be no stranger to weird aiming, movement, and shooting controls. I never thought having to shoot 2-3 enemies slowly hobbling toward me would be annoying but it’s honestly some of the worst shooting controls I’ve ever experienced in a console game, new or old, and this game came out in the year 2022. I will never understand why modern game devs feel the need to make a brand new video game that feels and plays like a game from over 20 years ago. It reached the point pretty quickly where I began just running around the enemies to avoid combat because engaging with them was just annoying.
Beyond the bad combat controls, navigating the world with a controller sucks and is made all the more challenging by the overly dark environmental design that makes it difficult to see the items you’re supposed to be interacting with. I cranked the brightness all the way up and I still found myself bumping into black objects on the dark ground that I couldn’t see.
This game also has puzzles! Some of these puzzles are fun, some are incredibly simple, and some are as obtuse as the game’s story. From what little I could glimpse of the story from the cutscenes comprised of static images and flashes of screens that say “INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK”, it seems like there’s maybe an interesting mystery here, but I’m not really one for abstract storytelling and that’s the only language Signalis knows.
Overall, there were parts of Signalis I enjoyed - like when I was running around, collecting objects, and solving puzzles like a classic adventure game. But that is all bogged down by terrible inventory management, opaque storytelling, overly dark environmental design, and frequent annoying combat encounters.
+ Some neat puzzle solving and exploration
+ Cool art design
+ Interesting world (kind of)
- Terrible inventory management
- Combat feels bad
- Frequent enemies are a nuisance
- Obtuse, abstract storytelling
- Environmental design is far too dark
I’m not really a fan of horror and, as such, I have played basically zero games in this genre, including any of the Resident Evil games. So my closest analog to Signalis is “it’s like an old adventure game but with creepy monsters that keep getting in your way”.
Most of my major criticisms of this game are things that I think fans of this genre would consider to be standard features of survival horror games - things like an extremely limited inventory. I know this is done to make me pick and choose which tools to carry, but 50% of my time playing this game was just running back and forth between rooms and my storage as I juggle critical quest items with my three open inventory slots.
I also think fans of classic Resident Evil games will be no stranger to weird aiming, movement, and shooting controls. I never thought having to shoot 2-3 enemies slowly hobbling toward me would be annoying but it’s honestly some of the worst shooting controls I’ve ever experienced in a console game, new or old, and this game came out in the year 2022. I will never understand why modern game devs feel the need to make a brand new video game that feels and plays like a game from over 20 years ago. It reached the point pretty quickly where I began just running around the enemies to avoid combat because engaging with them was just annoying.
Beyond the bad combat controls, navigating the world with a controller sucks and is made all the more challenging by the overly dark environmental design that makes it difficult to see the items you’re supposed to be interacting with. I cranked the brightness all the way up and I still found myself bumping into black objects on the dark ground that I couldn’t see.
This game also has puzzles! Some of these puzzles are fun, some are incredibly simple, and some are as obtuse as the game’s story. From what little I could glimpse of the story from the cutscenes comprised of static images and flashes of screens that say “INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK”, it seems like there’s maybe an interesting mystery here, but I’m not really one for abstract storytelling and that’s the only language Signalis knows.
Overall, there were parts of Signalis I enjoyed - like when I was running around, collecting objects, and solving puzzles like a classic adventure game. But that is all bogged down by terrible inventory management, opaque storytelling, overly dark environmental design, and frequent annoying combat encounters.
+ Some neat puzzle solving and exploration
+ Cool art design
+ Interesting world (kind of)
- Terrible inventory management
- Combat feels bad
- Frequent enemies are a nuisance
- Obtuse, abstract storytelling
- Environmental design is far too dark
A bluntly referential homage to the survival horror canon. The moment-to-moment map navigation is a joy but is undercut by a second act pivot to geometrically perverted, cosmic horror meat mazes. An over adherence to genre tropes makes for a fussy conclusion that struggles to escape Silent Hill's Event Horizon, and a litany of small frustrations (why can't I drop items?) compile into a game I was ready to be over.
The backdrop of a vaguely Soviet Union totalitarian regime and the nature of personhood in artificial intelligence go unexplored despite being the only source of narration for 2/3 of the game, before switching gears to an even more thinly articulated trauma allegory. There's a strong mechanical foundation here but without a coherent thematic or narrative direction it ends up little more than a competent imitation.
The backdrop of a vaguely Soviet Union totalitarian regime and the nature of personhood in artificial intelligence go unexplored despite being the only source of narration for 2/3 of the game, before switching gears to an even more thinly articulated trauma allegory. There's a strong mechanical foundation here but without a coherent thematic or narrative direction it ends up little more than a competent imitation.
the presentation is some of the greatest from a genre title across the past decade plus but the funkier gameplay bits are keeping me from giving this the higher score that i wanted to.
i don't know what it was that made things feel so off but the finicky behavior with interactive spots (items, doors, puzzle spots, etc.) did such a number on my enjoyment by the end of the game. i got my shit wrecked by mobs of enemies because a door didn't open again and again. it feels like such a small thing to have as a sticking point in the grand scheme of shit but when like 80% of the game is navigating through the locations to puzzle solve, inventory manage, fight or flighting with enemies, and the like it really hurts things.
thankfully i don't have a ton of complaints otherwise. the puzzles in this game are among the absolute best in the genre, at least my favorites since the hard/extreme puzzle difficulties in SH2 and 3. the game does a nice job job of keeping thematic and aesthetic cohesion within its universe during them which is a nice bonus.
visuals and music are wonderful as well but they're kinda something that one needs to experience for themself.
for better and worse, Signalis as a game embodies Survival Horror to me more than any game since possibly the PS2 era. i can't recall the last time i found myself feeling so stressed due to ammo/healing reserves, enemy mobs, finding my way forward and the like while almost universally enjoying my time all the same.
it won't be long until i come back for the other endings. maybe upon replays on the lower difficulty setting i'll find myself bumping the score.
i don't know what it was that made things feel so off but the finicky behavior with interactive spots (items, doors, puzzle spots, etc.) did such a number on my enjoyment by the end of the game. i got my shit wrecked by mobs of enemies because a door didn't open again and again. it feels like such a small thing to have as a sticking point in the grand scheme of shit but when like 80% of the game is navigating through the locations to puzzle solve, inventory manage, fight or flighting with enemies, and the like it really hurts things.
thankfully i don't have a ton of complaints otherwise. the puzzles in this game are among the absolute best in the genre, at least my favorites since the hard/extreme puzzle difficulties in SH2 and 3. the game does a nice job job of keeping thematic and aesthetic cohesion within its universe during them which is a nice bonus.
visuals and music are wonderful as well but they're kinda something that one needs to experience for themself.
for better and worse, Signalis as a game embodies Survival Horror to me more than any game since possibly the PS2 era. i can't recall the last time i found myself feeling so stressed due to ammo/healing reserves, enemy mobs, finding my way forward and the like while almost universally enjoying my time all the same.
it won't be long until i come back for the other endings. maybe upon replays on the lower difficulty setting i'll find myself bumping the score.
Olhar para Signalis é ver todas as suas influências, clássico RE, Silent Hill e uma série de outras. Ele pega pedaços dessas influências e as combina em algo novo e original. Embora a jogabilidade de Signalis se assemelhe mais a RE, o tom é muito mais Silent Hill. A arte é espetacular, pegando todo o charme e atmosfera de uma estética 3D.
Uma coisa que gostei muito em signalis é o seu inventário limitado forçando você a fazer escolhas difíceis sobre quanto equipamento carregará e quantas viagens repetidas fara em áreas perigosas. A jogabilidade principal não é a ação/furtividade ou os puzzles (embora existam muitos) É o processo de fazer decisões e a estratégia de como você aborda cada situação. Vou trazer muitas armas e munições? O combate será fácil, mas talvez eu não tenha espaço para itens de cura. Vou andar por aí com um estoque quase vazio? Perigoso, mas posso tentar evitar o combate, e tentar pegar varios itens e nunca mais precisar voltar para lá. Posso dizer que isso cria uma tensão constante enquanto você luta para planejar suas excursões em cada sala.
Tambem vou ressaltar a força que signalis tem em seu cenário. O mundo misterioso e de ficção científica é incrível e honestamente, foi uma delícia. Naves espaciais acidentadas a seres totalmente tenebrosos semelhantes a andróides e outras coisas que só podemos sonhar em ter um dia na vida real. Signalis tem tudo, e também acerta tudo. O cenário também é complementado com maestria tanto pela trilha sonora quanto pelo visual do jogo.
Mais uma coisa importante: e o terror? Afinal, o jogo é vendido como um jogo de terror de sobrevivência, então como ele se sai nisso?
Bem, na minha opinião, é ótimo, mas é importante ressaltar que esta NÃO É UMA EXPERIÊNCIA ASSUSTADORA, ou pelo menos não foi para mim. O jogo não tenta assustá-lo, especialmente com táticas baratas de jumpscares. Os elementos de terror aqui residem novamente em seu cenário e na tensão criada pela atmosfera
Bom, se você quer uma história de terror de ficção científica sobrenatural com garotas apaixonadas de oito horas, esse é o melhor.
Resumindo, virei uma grande fã desse jogo. Espero que esta review tenha ajudado a esclarecer por que exatamente eu gostei tanto dessa experiência perturbadora e emocionante♡
E não se esqueça da promessa.
Uma coisa que gostei muito em signalis é o seu inventário limitado forçando você a fazer escolhas difíceis sobre quanto equipamento carregará e quantas viagens repetidas fara em áreas perigosas. A jogabilidade principal não é a ação/furtividade ou os puzzles (embora existam muitos) É o processo de fazer decisões e a estratégia de como você aborda cada situação. Vou trazer muitas armas e munições? O combate será fácil, mas talvez eu não tenha espaço para itens de cura. Vou andar por aí com um estoque quase vazio? Perigoso, mas posso tentar evitar o combate, e tentar pegar varios itens e nunca mais precisar voltar para lá. Posso dizer que isso cria uma tensão constante enquanto você luta para planejar suas excursões em cada sala.
Tambem vou ressaltar a força que signalis tem em seu cenário. O mundo misterioso e de ficção científica é incrível e honestamente, foi uma delícia. Naves espaciais acidentadas a seres totalmente tenebrosos semelhantes a andróides e outras coisas que só podemos sonhar em ter um dia na vida real. Signalis tem tudo, e também acerta tudo. O cenário também é complementado com maestria tanto pela trilha sonora quanto pelo visual do jogo.
Mais uma coisa importante: e o terror? Afinal, o jogo é vendido como um jogo de terror de sobrevivência, então como ele se sai nisso?
Bem, na minha opinião, é ótimo, mas é importante ressaltar que esta NÃO É UMA EXPERIÊNCIA ASSUSTADORA, ou pelo menos não foi para mim. O jogo não tenta assustá-lo, especialmente com táticas baratas de jumpscares. Os elementos de terror aqui residem novamente em seu cenário e na tensão criada pela atmosfera
Bom, se você quer uma história de terror de ficção científica sobrenatural com garotas apaixonadas de oito horas, esse é o melhor.
Resumindo, virei uma grande fã desse jogo. Espero que esta review tenha ajudado a esclarecer por que exatamente eu gostei tanto dessa experiência perturbadora e emocionante♡
E não se esqueça da promessa.
"terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow."
It truly honors the "survival" part. It's also absolutely flawless in its level design and atmosphere.
The biggest draw, though, is literally everything else. The cryptic story, the interesting characters, the setting and abstract world-building, the excellent art and sound design, the intense and haunting soundtrack, the claustrophobic atmosphere, and the very cinematic and surrealistic presentation are all supremely crafted, sucking you into its cold world and making for a wholly unique and unforgettable experience.
Easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's simultaneously so fun and hellish to play at the same time and I'm still thinking about it.
It truly honors the "survival" part. It's also absolutely flawless in its level design and atmosphere.
The biggest draw, though, is literally everything else. The cryptic story, the interesting characters, the setting and abstract world-building, the excellent art and sound design, the intense and haunting soundtrack, the claustrophobic atmosphere, and the very cinematic and surrealistic presentation are all supremely crafted, sucking you into its cold world and making for a wholly unique and unforgettable experience.
Easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's simultaneously so fun and hellish to play at the same time and I'm still thinking about it.
Had this one on my backlog since I saw it come to game pass and finally got to experience it. I enjoyed the old-school horror ps1 type of game and was pleasantly surprised with how many weapons and items they squeezed in here for being an indie game. That being said I read as many files as I could and tried to grasp the story, but it was just so hard for me to follow, and with a game like this it certainly is hard for me to care about these characters. Any time a cutscene would trigger or something would happen I would just be like "Umm okay then" lol. At first, the inventory management wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but the later areas in the game made it more of a chore to deal with, not to mention each area has the same similar type of tasks with some varying puzzles thrown into it. Really liked how the nowhere area was and the art direction behind that and the similarities to the other world in Silent Hill. A solid game to scratch the survival horror itch, but some quality-of-life improvements would go a long way with this one.
i wish i liked signalis more. but i feel like a lot of the enjoyment i got from it was just from it being in a genre i love, which is only recently getting a resurgence, and not from the choices the game actually makes.
the game is inspired by a lot of fantastic media. resident evil (the remake of 1 in particular), silent hill (mostly 1 and 2), evangelion, the shining, lovecraft, and more. i can tell because it won't shut up about it. i'm not opposed to wearing your inspirations on your sleeve, but this game does it so blatantly and so frequently that it distracts me from the game i'm supposed to be playing and enjoying, and makes me thinks of other things i like better instead. yes, signalis, i remember the part in resident evil where jill plays moonlight sonata on a piano to open a secret passage. that was a cool moment. you aren't recapturing that by putting a piano in one of the save rooms and playing moonlight sonata in the background, because it's not tied to anything, it has no relevance, you're not doing a new twist on it. you're just making a reference to a game you like. yes, signalis, i recognize the carpet from the shining. yes, signalis, i remember angela from silent hill 2. yes, signalis, i've seen end of evangelion. can we make our own thing now? the worst of it is the blatant, absolutely shameless lifting of an entire major area from silent hill, taking its mechanical gimmick, its aesthetic, and even its name. the game even has the nerve to recycle an entire major plot moment from SH2 in that area. there is a line between "cute reference" and "borderline plagiarism" and signalis crosses it.
signalis strikes me as a game made by people who like a lot of things, but don't understand why they like the things they like. they like the resident evil remake, a game where some downed enemies will eventually get back up unless their bodies are burned, and need to be killed again in a stronger form. but they wanted to one-up that mechanic, so now EVERY enemy gets up unless burned, infinite times, which discourages combat too much. stealth quickly becomes the dominant strategy, slowing the pace of the game down and leading to the player stockpiling way too much ammo and healing. by the time i reached the final boss, my item box was stuffed with dozens of healing items and bullets for every gun, and i'd never touched any of those guns aside from the pistol, and maybe the shotgun once or twice. it's not that the game is too easy once you've figured it out, it's that it's too easy to figure out. enemy encounters should be as much of a puzzle as any door code or wall safe combination.
maybe the biggest offender is the save system. resident evil requires you to spend an ink ribbon to save for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is pacing. in a game where every bullet/healing item is precious, the player is gonna wanna save often to lock in their progress. by tying your ability to save to a resource, the game keeps you from ducking into a save room every 30 seconds and slowing the game to a crawl. it also means that if you wanna savescum to try a room over and over until you can do it without spending bullets or healing, then it'll at least cost you a save ribbon, probably two since you're gonna wanna save again after your perfect run. it's another thing the designer has to balance, but the effort is worth it.
signalis takes the easy way out and allows infinite free saves. so if you wanna play safe, which you SHOULD because that's the name of the game, then you'll shatter the game's pacing by saving after every single room clear. you'll savescum rooms over and over until you get by without taking a hit, then you'll save again, and it won't cost you anything. call that exploitative if you want, but we already had a mechanic that stopped players from playing this way nearly 30 years ago in the original resident evil for ps1, and signalis fails to learn from that despite constantly referencing that game. even the resident evil 2 remake, which had free saving, still had a hardcore mode which brought back the ink ribbons. i wish signalis' hard mode did the same, instead of just lazily increasing enemy health and damage.
also, for god's sake, why do the defensive items take up an item slot? and why can't i have a stun rod and the flashlight equipped at the same time? REmake doesn't make you give up an item slot to carry a taser, and silent hill doesn't bar you from using melee weapons if you have your flashlight out. this is just a stupid, misguided attempt to make inventory management more intense, when what it actually does is make stun rods worthless to carry around, force you to run back to the item box every time you wanna go through a dark room, and make the theoretically cool in-game screenshot item a waste of time and inventory space.
the story is fine, but it takes a lot of skill to pull off this sort of lain-esque, stream of consciousness, highly interpretive storytelling, and i don't think signalis sticks the landing. there's only one Serial Experiments Lain, and that's for good reason. i'm not sure even david lynch could put "Image Intentionally Left Blank" where a cutscene would normally go and make it work. i understand the story fine, but it's trying way too hard with its presentation. simple in-engine sequences would be much more effective than the 15 different styles of cutscene this game cycles through, especially the amateurish-looking anime ones that are way too clean and pretty for such a grungy, rusty, bloody game. though i suppose i haven't seen many games before which have such explicit lesbian overtones. depending on who you are, that element might hit hard.
if i weren't such a junkie for Scary Hallway Logistics Simulators, i'd probably be more down on this game. when i actually think about it, so much bad comes to mind. but even if it's fucked up, inferior resident evil, it's still resident evil, which i'll never stop finding fun. and given this game was made almost entirely by just two people, it's a monumental achievement. i just wish it were a better game.
the game is inspired by a lot of fantastic media. resident evil (the remake of 1 in particular), silent hill (mostly 1 and 2), evangelion, the shining, lovecraft, and more. i can tell because it won't shut up about it. i'm not opposed to wearing your inspirations on your sleeve, but this game does it so blatantly and so frequently that it distracts me from the game i'm supposed to be playing and enjoying, and makes me thinks of other things i like better instead. yes, signalis, i remember the part in resident evil where jill plays moonlight sonata on a piano to open a secret passage. that was a cool moment. you aren't recapturing that by putting a piano in one of the save rooms and playing moonlight sonata in the background, because it's not tied to anything, it has no relevance, you're not doing a new twist on it. you're just making a reference to a game you like. yes, signalis, i recognize the carpet from the shining. yes, signalis, i remember angela from silent hill 2. yes, signalis, i've seen end of evangelion. can we make our own thing now? the worst of it is the blatant, absolutely shameless lifting of an entire major area from silent hill, taking its mechanical gimmick, its aesthetic, and even its name. the game even has the nerve to recycle an entire major plot moment from SH2 in that area. there is a line between "cute reference" and "borderline plagiarism" and signalis crosses it.
signalis strikes me as a game made by people who like a lot of things, but don't understand why they like the things they like. they like the resident evil remake, a game where some downed enemies will eventually get back up unless their bodies are burned, and need to be killed again in a stronger form. but they wanted to one-up that mechanic, so now EVERY enemy gets up unless burned, infinite times, which discourages combat too much. stealth quickly becomes the dominant strategy, slowing the pace of the game down and leading to the player stockpiling way too much ammo and healing. by the time i reached the final boss, my item box was stuffed with dozens of healing items and bullets for every gun, and i'd never touched any of those guns aside from the pistol, and maybe the shotgun once or twice. it's not that the game is too easy once you've figured it out, it's that it's too easy to figure out. enemy encounters should be as much of a puzzle as any door code or wall safe combination.
maybe the biggest offender is the save system. resident evil requires you to spend an ink ribbon to save for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is pacing. in a game where every bullet/healing item is precious, the player is gonna wanna save often to lock in their progress. by tying your ability to save to a resource, the game keeps you from ducking into a save room every 30 seconds and slowing the game to a crawl. it also means that if you wanna savescum to try a room over and over until you can do it without spending bullets or healing, then it'll at least cost you a save ribbon, probably two since you're gonna wanna save again after your perfect run. it's another thing the designer has to balance, but the effort is worth it.
signalis takes the easy way out and allows infinite free saves. so if you wanna play safe, which you SHOULD because that's the name of the game, then you'll shatter the game's pacing by saving after every single room clear. you'll savescum rooms over and over until you get by without taking a hit, then you'll save again, and it won't cost you anything. call that exploitative if you want, but we already had a mechanic that stopped players from playing this way nearly 30 years ago in the original resident evil for ps1, and signalis fails to learn from that despite constantly referencing that game. even the resident evil 2 remake, which had free saving, still had a hardcore mode which brought back the ink ribbons. i wish signalis' hard mode did the same, instead of just lazily increasing enemy health and damage.
also, for god's sake, why do the defensive items take up an item slot? and why can't i have a stun rod and the flashlight equipped at the same time? REmake doesn't make you give up an item slot to carry a taser, and silent hill doesn't bar you from using melee weapons if you have your flashlight out. this is just a stupid, misguided attempt to make inventory management more intense, when what it actually does is make stun rods worthless to carry around, force you to run back to the item box every time you wanna go through a dark room, and make the theoretically cool in-game screenshot item a waste of time and inventory space.
the story is fine, but it takes a lot of skill to pull off this sort of lain-esque, stream of consciousness, highly interpretive storytelling, and i don't think signalis sticks the landing. there's only one Serial Experiments Lain, and that's for good reason. i'm not sure even david lynch could put "Image Intentionally Left Blank" where a cutscene would normally go and make it work. i understand the story fine, but it's trying way too hard with its presentation. simple in-engine sequences would be much more effective than the 15 different styles of cutscene this game cycles through, especially the amateurish-looking anime ones that are way too clean and pretty for such a grungy, rusty, bloody game. though i suppose i haven't seen many games before which have such explicit lesbian overtones. depending on who you are, that element might hit hard.
if i weren't such a junkie for Scary Hallway Logistics Simulators, i'd probably be more down on this game. when i actually think about it, so much bad comes to mind. but even if it's fucked up, inferior resident evil, it's still resident evil, which i'll never stop finding fun. and given this game was made almost entirely by just two people, it's a monumental achievement. i just wish it were a better game.
incredible. the best silent hill-like game, ever. incredibly ui design. love the story, and love how much it lets you figure it out on your own. genuinely jaw dropping at times. never found it too hard. wish there was a greater variety of enemies but its a very minor thing.
If you asked me until now, I’d have said Citizen Sleeper was my sleeper hit this year. But Signalis just blew my mind. One of the best times I had with a game this year, which is unbelievable, since it was one hell of a year for games yet again.
I need to think about this a lot more before I can put it in proper writing, but what those two devs managed to achieve in terms of atmosphere and style is stunning. And the fact that it’s clearly being an homage to games from a time, where I was too young to play the clear inspirations, makes this all the more rewarding to play through as an adult. It’s a love letter to clunky ps1 horror survival games, it even doesn’t spare you from the more tedious and unforgiving parts of the era. But it worked for me. The limitations worked wonders, because it asked me to be more resourceful than other games. It made me plan my trips from safe house to safe house, it made me micromanage my inventory to adapt to certain trips. All of it worked so well for me, I didn’t dislike a second I spent with the game. It’s more like I embraced its flaws. And did I already say the atmosphere knocks it out of the park? It really does.
I’m kinda speechless still, because it pushed all my buttons. Holy fuck.
I need to think about this a lot more before I can put it in proper writing, but what those two devs managed to achieve in terms of atmosphere and style is stunning. And the fact that it’s clearly being an homage to games from a time, where I was too young to play the clear inspirations, makes this all the more rewarding to play through as an adult. It’s a love letter to clunky ps1 horror survival games, it even doesn’t spare you from the more tedious and unforgiving parts of the era. But it worked for me. The limitations worked wonders, because it asked me to be more resourceful than other games. It made me plan my trips from safe house to safe house, it made me micromanage my inventory to adapt to certain trips. All of it worked so well for me, I didn’t dislike a second I spent with the game. It’s more like I embraced its flaws. And did I already say the atmosphere knocks it out of the park? It really does.
I’m kinda speechless still, because it pushed all my buttons. Holy fuck.
I recently got a 3060ti and decided the perfect game to stress test this sucker was Signalis, a game that looks like it clawed its way out of a Playstation. Plus, uh, it never hurts to get really fucking depressed right before Thanksgiving.
I'm not going to write a lengthy review on its themes or its story, because frankly I'm not sure I can untangle it all. There's some excellent write-ups on this site already that really dig in to what Signalis means and what it has to say about identity, the loss of self, and the pain of losing others. It tells its story in a way that is intentionally confusing, always keeping you questioning who is who, what your motivation is, where you're even at, and when in time you're currently existing. There's a lot of great stuff going on with its narrative and I think it's best enjoyed without understanding anything more specific than what I just laid out, but I probably couldn't dissect it with any more accuracy than that if I tied.
As a game, Signalis is survival horror in the most old school way possible, with limited resources that need to be managed, and scant few inventory slots with which to do so. Enemies cannot be properly killed, only incapacitated for a period of time, almost like REmake's Crimson Heads, though without the added aggression on resurrection. Signalis uses respawning enemies to force the player to consider who to put down and who to spare. A tight corridor you often travel might be better to clear out than a wide open room where enemies can be safely juked, but you also have to consider that corridor will become dangerous again if you don't hustle. Enemies also patrol on set patterns regardless of whether or not you're in a room, which is at times problematic given their predilection to group near doorways, leading to some cheap shots; but the idea is certainly there, and it does nevertheless add to the tension when enemies aren't stationed in a way that's predictable.
Puzzle design is mostly good with a few clunky ones hampering the experience. On the one hand you have things like the Magpie frequency puzzle, on the other you have the pump room puzzle which is so bad they just write the solution down next to the pump station. The game bounces around between Resident Evil and Silent Hill in terms of how difficult these are to solve, though the vast majority are very engaging, and the story is woven in with progression in a way that feel quite seamless. Every problem you have to solve carries some narrative weight, it tells you more about the place you're in and the people who used to live there, so even the few that are mechanically iffy still have something there to draw you in.
One area where my criticisms aren't metered with praise is the controls. The targeting system is just not good, and it doesn't feel like it's by design. It frequently fails to target enemies you've got a clear shot at, and attempting to line up accurate shots in a crowd is a pain given its propensity to target whoever the hell it deems worthy of getting blasted, whether they're who you wanted to unload into or not. Going through doors can also be troublesome, as it sometimes just doesn't seem to register inputs. This isn't too much of a problem unless you're being chased by an enemy, in which case i just want the door to open please open they're coming for me oh god why is their head a leg open up please god please
But really, control problems and a few dodgy puzzles are absolutely not enough to take away from how good Signalis is. Every single survival horror game to resonate with me this much is at least two decades old at this point. That's not to say I don't like modern survival horror, but good god, I haven't played anything "modern" that feels so clued in to the design ethos of the genre's earlier days like Signalis.
A lot of this game is going to stick with me. Its story, its puzzles, its atmosphere... The game's art style is just gorgeous, I adore the way it mixes aliased graphics with pre-rendered elements. A few locations (such as Nowhere, the highlight of the whole game for me) seem to be clearly inspired by Silent Hill, while others reminded me of Myst in ways I'm not sure were really intentional, but impactful nonetheless. It's been a long time since I felt a modern game was made just for me, appealing to everything I love about not just the survival horror genre, but horror in general, with a presentation that is also so tuned in to what I like that it almost makes me a bit paranoid, like I'm being spied on. Like someone is in my head.
God damn. Go play Signalis.
I'm not going to write a lengthy review on its themes or its story, because frankly I'm not sure I can untangle it all. There's some excellent write-ups on this site already that really dig in to what Signalis means and what it has to say about identity, the loss of self, and the pain of losing others. It tells its story in a way that is intentionally confusing, always keeping you questioning who is who, what your motivation is, where you're even at, and when in time you're currently existing. There's a lot of great stuff going on with its narrative and I think it's best enjoyed without understanding anything more specific than what I just laid out, but I probably couldn't dissect it with any more accuracy than that if I tied.
As a game, Signalis is survival horror in the most old school way possible, with limited resources that need to be managed, and scant few inventory slots with which to do so. Enemies cannot be properly killed, only incapacitated for a period of time, almost like REmake's Crimson Heads, though without the added aggression on resurrection. Signalis uses respawning enemies to force the player to consider who to put down and who to spare. A tight corridor you often travel might be better to clear out than a wide open room where enemies can be safely juked, but you also have to consider that corridor will become dangerous again if you don't hustle. Enemies also patrol on set patterns regardless of whether or not you're in a room, which is at times problematic given their predilection to group near doorways, leading to some cheap shots; but the idea is certainly there, and it does nevertheless add to the tension when enemies aren't stationed in a way that's predictable.
Puzzle design is mostly good with a few clunky ones hampering the experience. On the one hand you have things like the Magpie frequency puzzle, on the other you have the pump room puzzle which is so bad they just write the solution down next to the pump station. The game bounces around between Resident Evil and Silent Hill in terms of how difficult these are to solve, though the vast majority are very engaging, and the story is woven in with progression in a way that feel quite seamless. Every problem you have to solve carries some narrative weight, it tells you more about the place you're in and the people who used to live there, so even the few that are mechanically iffy still have something there to draw you in.
One area where my criticisms aren't metered with praise is the controls. The targeting system is just not good, and it doesn't feel like it's by design. It frequently fails to target enemies you've got a clear shot at, and attempting to line up accurate shots in a crowd is a pain given its propensity to target whoever the hell it deems worthy of getting blasted, whether they're who you wanted to unload into or not. Going through doors can also be troublesome, as it sometimes just doesn't seem to register inputs. This isn't too much of a problem unless you're being chased by an enemy, in which case i just want the door to open please open they're coming for me oh god why is their head a leg open up please god please
But really, control problems and a few dodgy puzzles are absolutely not enough to take away from how good Signalis is. Every single survival horror game to resonate with me this much is at least two decades old at this point. That's not to say I don't like modern survival horror, but good god, I haven't played anything "modern" that feels so clued in to the design ethos of the genre's earlier days like Signalis.
A lot of this game is going to stick with me. Its story, its puzzles, its atmosphere... The game's art style is just gorgeous, I adore the way it mixes aliased graphics with pre-rendered elements. A few locations (such as Nowhere, the highlight of the whole game for me) seem to be clearly inspired by Silent Hill, while others reminded me of Myst in ways I'm not sure were really intentional, but impactful nonetheless. It's been a long time since I felt a modern game was made just for me, appealing to everything I love about not just the survival horror genre, but horror in general, with a presentation that is also so tuned in to what I like that it almost makes me a bit paranoid, like I'm being spied on. Like someone is in my head.
God damn. Go play Signalis.
This review contains spoilers
Just not really all that enamoured with this one I'm afraid.
People have been telling - sometimes begging me - to play this game for an incredibly long time now. My friends occupy a vast spectrum of opinions yet the one thing they can agree on is "Mira should play this game".
So I did.
And... Hoh boy, where do I start...?
Just to get the good out of the way first: This game is stunning. The animated cutscenes, the first person scenes, the environments, the music, the creature designs, the character designs, everything. If I was rating this game based on presentation it'd be 5/5 and sitting just underneath Disco Elysium on my favourites. Really, that 2.5 is because of the presentation alone.
The rest, though, is kind of exhausting. And not in a good way.
For starters, the gameplay is just... Not fantastic. I've seen an obscene amount of people regard it as a 'modern' take on classic survival horror, which is frankly kind of funny because it clings to survival horror trends that everybody got sick of in the early 00s. That, and the games it's inspired by are old enough to fuck.
I figured that the 6 inventory slot limit was in service to tension, that the choice between "convenience in ferrying items" and "safety in ammo/healing" was going to be a huge thing. That maybe, just maybe, the devs were aware why inventory limits sucked in older games and why even other retraux games either did away with them or had a key item feature.
So, anyway, before I quit Signalis the last two chapters were like 20% playing the game and 80% going backwards and forwards between the storage box and a 'puzzle' to hoist items around. The 'Nowhere' segment is really bad for this. Even with the expanded inventory (8 slots vs 6, also flashlight and screenshot eye don't take up slots), there's still an unholy amount of backtracking. There is, as it turns out, reasons to not be entirely faithful.
Not helping matters is that the enemy design, both visually and functionally, is really barebones? It's somehow worse at this than Resident Evil 1. Not the remake, the PS1 title. There are enemies that run at you. After that, there are enemies that run at you. After that, there are enemies that run at you. After that, there are big enemies that shoot at you and are only vulnerable for brief moments. After that, there are enemies that do nothing but fuck up the screen. After that, there's a boss that runs at you... You get the idea.
Towards the latter half of the game, the developers very obviously give up and just resort to throwing swarms at you. Here's four enemies that rush you, one shoots you, and there's also another hiding in the shadows. Have fun!
Normally, I'd just run past them, but I was informed early that the # of enemies killed affects the ending - for the better.
But none of this is why I quit, no. I have played worse survival horror games with worse inventories. I actually like Alone in the Dark 2008, after all.
No, I quit because this game's relationship to its influences is at best obnoxious and at worst, childish.
In the past I was told that this game was 'inspired' by numerous things: Lovecraft, the King in Yellow, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Evangelion, and so on. I took 'inspired by' to mean that it pulled from a diverse pool of influences, boiled them in a pot, and created something new.
And there is some original stuff in this game, buried under a thick crust of the just... endless, poorly executed shoutouts to better media. I will give this game one thing: It's a very interesting best-of compilation of media I'd rather be playing, watching or reading.
The core of Signalis is about a Replika (artificial human) named Elster looking for her Gestalt (real human) lover in a mining facility where, to put it gently, shit's fucked. If you're at all familiar with Nier then this will probably start ringing alarm bells, not helped by the fact that the premise of "emotionally unexpressive butch lesbian cares a lot about a waifish white haired girl" is the plot of Nier Replicant. Set amidst a backdrop of what is ostensibly analogous to life in late East Germany under decaying Soviet rule, Signalis uses a non-linear narrative and heavy ambiguity to tell a story with very few solid facts and numerous events which may or may not have happened.
And this is good, I like it. The love story on display here made my heart swell, as did Elster's steely determination to reach her lover and fulfill her promise - which is even reflected in the examine text, dude. It's phenomenal.
The problem is that it's a small minority of what's on screen. Besides the lackluster gameplay, Signalis primarily spends its time making references. References to other games, references to films the creator liked, references to eldritch literature, references to scientific concepts, etc etc. These references are obvious. Painfully, obnoxiously, immersion breakingly obvious. If you thought Nier Automata paying lip service to philosophers was inelegant, this game's intro makes it seem tactful.
At the end of the prologue, when the game truly 'starts', you find a copy of The King in Yellow lying around. Upon inspecting it, the game immediately throws its first mindfuck sequence at you while flashing quotes from Lovecraft's The Festival on screen with all the grace of a Skibidi Toilet skit. After it mercifully ends, you're deposited in a completely different area in a way which defies... everything, really.
I'll be honest and say that this scene kind of immediately soured me on the game's narrative. Perhaps it's because I'm really really sensitive to tropes common in ~mindfuck fiction~ or Lovecraft-derived tales, but it made a few facets of the narrative incredibly obvious. That the first hour has notes describing radiation sickness without naming it, NPCs finding Elster familiar, notes describing an unfamiliar woman around base (Elster) and other things really does not help.
It all comes to a head early on when you learn what "Bioresonance" is: The ability to project one's thoughts and feelings into someone else's mind, perhaps fatally. I think the game blew its load a bit too early with both of these, because it becomes immediately apparent that a lot of what's happening is either entirely imagined or not in tune with reality, and that time is looping.
I want to shout out one of my good friends here, because I wrote up what I thought this story was about and they had the grace to not tell me I was right. And I was, before even entering the worker's quarters, right about everything - except Alina, because I fell for that. Everything after is really just hammering it in, using imagery and references so hamfisted that they're legally considered actual pigs.
For example, it was obvious to me early on that there was a timeloop occurring. Sure enough, the worker's quarters opens with you falling into a massive pile of your own dead body. A generous player might think "Ah, maybe the Sierpinksi staff killed all their Elster units", but there are at least two notes (that I found) which shoot that down outright.
But to loop back to the topic of hamfisted references for a second, I really need to talk about the Nowhere segment. It's very obviously ripped from Silent Hill and not in a way I'd consider graceful or even respectful. The line between homage and plagiarism is monofilament thin but this game manages to stand on it.
'Nowhere' in the first Silent Hill is the final level, and the deepest part of the game's ongoing nightmare. It is covered in rust, flesh and other distinctly /red/ materials. As you navigate it, it becomes clear that Nowhere is reflecting reality to the point where several areas from the town are smashed together in a non-linear, impossible fashion.
'Nowhere' in Signalis is not the final level, but it is the final level of the first half. It is ostensibly the deepest part of Ariane's nightmare, covered in- Look I don't need to keep the bit going. You know what I'm whining about.
Once it's over, you experience what I can only describe as a slideshow of cheap Lovecraft references before the game reaffirms that yes, there is a time loop occurring. Hope you memorized the wall safe code.
To it's credit though, between the Act 1 (as I call it) and Act 2 transitions, there is Signalis' actual story here. And... I liked it. I wonder if people only ever discuss Elster/Ariane (and Falke) because it's the only part of this game which isn't reliant on some other piece of media. As I said up above, the love story is adorable. It is extremely heartening to just see two women be in love in a society which is tailormade to abolish love (and is also rife with allegories for being homophobic). But alas, this is a short segment.
I'm going to be deeply unkind for a moment: I am amazed that this game gets so much praise for its "smart" storytelling when it's so childish in its execution that it often feels like Tommy Wiseau wrote an adaptation of The Mask from The King in Yellow. The overly referential nature of the game isn't even in service to its own story and setting - which are great! - but simply in service to the references themselves. The store page references David Lynch, which is fitting because at times this game feels like Inland Empire if every other scene transition was a clip from a different movie.
Ultimately, it's this excessive abuse of references to horror media that did me in.
Let's talk about the worst scene in the game.
In the first Silent Hill, you meet a helpful girl named Lisa who hovers around and is generally the only friendly face you meet while you explore the game. She repeatedly tells you she doesn't have any memory of anything. After a pretty harrowing trek through Nowhere, you meet Lisa again. It turns out that she got her memories back, and that she's actually been dead the entire time. The Lisa you met is a construct of Silent Hill, and upon realizing that she isn't alive she turns red and basically dissolves - becoming a mook. She comes back near the end, and it turns out she had an antagonistic relationship with the big bad who she then murders.
In Signalis, you meet a helpful girl named Isa who hovers around and is generally the only friendly face you meet while you explore the game. She repeatedly tells you that she doesn't have many memories, and that like Elster she's looking for someone. She has an antagonistic relationship with the 'big bad' and eventually kills him, or tries to.
After a pretty harrowing trek through Nowhere - the deepest part of Signalis' nightmare which represents the gradual breakdown of Ariane's memories and her fear of a radiation induced death - you meet Isa again on Rotfront. Here, she finds out that her sister's been dead the entire time and promptly turns to rust. A short walk reveals Isa was dead the entire time to boot.
Rotfront in itself is painfully and obviously Lovecraft. It is 'the weird hidden village' trope played painfully straight. I don't like Bloodborne's DLC that much because it takes a lot of the implicit Lovecraftian elements and makes them agonizingly explicit with the Fishing Village. Rotfront runs into many of the same pitfalls, complete with a relatively insincere attempt at being a screwdriver for the plot.
I wouldn't know how it goes, though. The Isa scene was the last straw. I just did not want to give this game any more of my time- Or well, I did. But there's precious little Signalis here, and an exhausting amount of other works I'm already overfamiliar with.
At least I get why so many girls I know had Falke icons.
People have been telling - sometimes begging me - to play this game for an incredibly long time now. My friends occupy a vast spectrum of opinions yet the one thing they can agree on is "Mira should play this game".
So I did.
And... Hoh boy, where do I start...?
Just to get the good out of the way first: This game is stunning. The animated cutscenes, the first person scenes, the environments, the music, the creature designs, the character designs, everything. If I was rating this game based on presentation it'd be 5/5 and sitting just underneath Disco Elysium on my favourites. Really, that 2.5 is because of the presentation alone.
The rest, though, is kind of exhausting. And not in a good way.
For starters, the gameplay is just... Not fantastic. I've seen an obscene amount of people regard it as a 'modern' take on classic survival horror, which is frankly kind of funny because it clings to survival horror trends that everybody got sick of in the early 00s. That, and the games it's inspired by are old enough to fuck.
I figured that the 6 inventory slot limit was in service to tension, that the choice between "convenience in ferrying items" and "safety in ammo/healing" was going to be a huge thing. That maybe, just maybe, the devs were aware why inventory limits sucked in older games and why even other retraux games either did away with them or had a key item feature.
So, anyway, before I quit Signalis the last two chapters were like 20% playing the game and 80% going backwards and forwards between the storage box and a 'puzzle' to hoist items around. The 'Nowhere' segment is really bad for this. Even with the expanded inventory (8 slots vs 6, also flashlight and screenshot eye don't take up slots), there's still an unholy amount of backtracking. There is, as it turns out, reasons to not be entirely faithful.
Not helping matters is that the enemy design, both visually and functionally, is really barebones? It's somehow worse at this than Resident Evil 1. Not the remake, the PS1 title. There are enemies that run at you. After that, there are enemies that run at you. After that, there are enemies that run at you. After that, there are big enemies that shoot at you and are only vulnerable for brief moments. After that, there are enemies that do nothing but fuck up the screen. After that, there's a boss that runs at you... You get the idea.
Towards the latter half of the game, the developers very obviously give up and just resort to throwing swarms at you. Here's four enemies that rush you, one shoots you, and there's also another hiding in the shadows. Have fun!
Normally, I'd just run past them, but I was informed early that the # of enemies killed affects the ending - for the better.
But none of this is why I quit, no. I have played worse survival horror games with worse inventories. I actually like Alone in the Dark 2008, after all.
No, I quit because this game's relationship to its influences is at best obnoxious and at worst, childish.
In the past I was told that this game was 'inspired' by numerous things: Lovecraft, the King in Yellow, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Evangelion, and so on. I took 'inspired by' to mean that it pulled from a diverse pool of influences, boiled them in a pot, and created something new.
And there is some original stuff in this game, buried under a thick crust of the just... endless, poorly executed shoutouts to better media. I will give this game one thing: It's a very interesting best-of compilation of media I'd rather be playing, watching or reading.
The core of Signalis is about a Replika (artificial human) named Elster looking for her Gestalt (real human) lover in a mining facility where, to put it gently, shit's fucked. If you're at all familiar with Nier then this will probably start ringing alarm bells, not helped by the fact that the premise of "emotionally unexpressive butch lesbian cares a lot about a waifish white haired girl" is the plot of Nier Replicant. Set amidst a backdrop of what is ostensibly analogous to life in late East Germany under decaying Soviet rule, Signalis uses a non-linear narrative and heavy ambiguity to tell a story with very few solid facts and numerous events which may or may not have happened.
And this is good, I like it. The love story on display here made my heart swell, as did Elster's steely determination to reach her lover and fulfill her promise - which is even reflected in the examine text, dude. It's phenomenal.
The problem is that it's a small minority of what's on screen. Besides the lackluster gameplay, Signalis primarily spends its time making references. References to other games, references to films the creator liked, references to eldritch literature, references to scientific concepts, etc etc. These references are obvious. Painfully, obnoxiously, immersion breakingly obvious. If you thought Nier Automata paying lip service to philosophers was inelegant, this game's intro makes it seem tactful.
At the end of the prologue, when the game truly 'starts', you find a copy of The King in Yellow lying around. Upon inspecting it, the game immediately throws its first mindfuck sequence at you while flashing quotes from Lovecraft's The Festival on screen with all the grace of a Skibidi Toilet skit. After it mercifully ends, you're deposited in a completely different area in a way which defies... everything, really.
I'll be honest and say that this scene kind of immediately soured me on the game's narrative. Perhaps it's because I'm really really sensitive to tropes common in ~mindfuck fiction~ or Lovecraft-derived tales, but it made a few facets of the narrative incredibly obvious. That the first hour has notes describing radiation sickness without naming it, NPCs finding Elster familiar, notes describing an unfamiliar woman around base (Elster) and other things really does not help.
It all comes to a head early on when you learn what "Bioresonance" is: The ability to project one's thoughts and feelings into someone else's mind, perhaps fatally. I think the game blew its load a bit too early with both of these, because it becomes immediately apparent that a lot of what's happening is either entirely imagined or not in tune with reality, and that time is looping.
I want to shout out one of my good friends here, because I wrote up what I thought this story was about and they had the grace to not tell me I was right. And I was, before even entering the worker's quarters, right about everything - except Alina, because I fell for that. Everything after is really just hammering it in, using imagery and references so hamfisted that they're legally considered actual pigs.
For example, it was obvious to me early on that there was a timeloop occurring. Sure enough, the worker's quarters opens with you falling into a massive pile of your own dead body. A generous player might think "Ah, maybe the Sierpinksi staff killed all their Elster units", but there are at least two notes (that I found) which shoot that down outright.
But to loop back to the topic of hamfisted references for a second, I really need to talk about the Nowhere segment. It's very obviously ripped from Silent Hill and not in a way I'd consider graceful or even respectful. The line between homage and plagiarism is monofilament thin but this game manages to stand on it.
'Nowhere' in the first Silent Hill is the final level, and the deepest part of the game's ongoing nightmare. It is covered in rust, flesh and other distinctly /red/ materials. As you navigate it, it becomes clear that Nowhere is reflecting reality to the point where several areas from the town are smashed together in a non-linear, impossible fashion.
'Nowhere' in Signalis is not the final level, but it is the final level of the first half. It is ostensibly the deepest part of Ariane's nightmare, covered in- Look I don't need to keep the bit going. You know what I'm whining about.
Once it's over, you experience what I can only describe as a slideshow of cheap Lovecraft references before the game reaffirms that yes, there is a time loop occurring. Hope you memorized the wall safe code.
To it's credit though, between the Act 1 (as I call it) and Act 2 transitions, there is Signalis' actual story here. And... I liked it. I wonder if people only ever discuss Elster/Ariane (and Falke) because it's the only part of this game which isn't reliant on some other piece of media. As I said up above, the love story is adorable. It is extremely heartening to just see two women be in love in a society which is tailormade to abolish love (and is also rife with allegories for being homophobic). But alas, this is a short segment.
I'm going to be deeply unkind for a moment: I am amazed that this game gets so much praise for its "smart" storytelling when it's so childish in its execution that it often feels like Tommy Wiseau wrote an adaptation of The Mask from The King in Yellow. The overly referential nature of the game isn't even in service to its own story and setting - which are great! - but simply in service to the references themselves. The store page references David Lynch, which is fitting because at times this game feels like Inland Empire if every other scene transition was a clip from a different movie.
Ultimately, it's this excessive abuse of references to horror media that did me in.
Let's talk about the worst scene in the game.
In the first Silent Hill, you meet a helpful girl named Lisa who hovers around and is generally the only friendly face you meet while you explore the game. She repeatedly tells you she doesn't have any memory of anything. After a pretty harrowing trek through Nowhere, you meet Lisa again. It turns out that she got her memories back, and that she's actually been dead the entire time. The Lisa you met is a construct of Silent Hill, and upon realizing that she isn't alive she turns red and basically dissolves - becoming a mook. She comes back near the end, and it turns out she had an antagonistic relationship with the big bad who she then murders.
In Signalis, you meet a helpful girl named Isa who hovers around and is generally the only friendly face you meet while you explore the game. She repeatedly tells you that she doesn't have many memories, and that like Elster she's looking for someone. She has an antagonistic relationship with the 'big bad' and eventually kills him, or tries to.
After a pretty harrowing trek through Nowhere - the deepest part of Signalis' nightmare which represents the gradual breakdown of Ariane's memories and her fear of a radiation induced death - you meet Isa again on Rotfront. Here, she finds out that her sister's been dead the entire time and promptly turns to rust. A short walk reveals Isa was dead the entire time to boot.
Rotfront in itself is painfully and obviously Lovecraft. It is 'the weird hidden village' trope played painfully straight. I don't like Bloodborne's DLC that much because it takes a lot of the implicit Lovecraftian elements and makes them agonizingly explicit with the Fishing Village. Rotfront runs into many of the same pitfalls, complete with a relatively insincere attempt at being a screwdriver for the plot.
I wouldn't know how it goes, though. The Isa scene was the last straw. I just did not want to give this game any more of my time- Or well, I did. But there's precious little Signalis here, and an exhausting amount of other works I'm already overfamiliar with.
At least I get why so many girls I know had Falke icons.
Dripping in atmosphere and a narrative that manages to claw itself into your head hours and days after playing. There are a few design choices which could have been worked differently (I like limited inventory in games but the back and forth can get a touch laborious here) but the experience allowed me to pretty much completely overlook them.
damn, it only took me 6 months of processing to write this review
this game has hands down the densest atmosphere of anything i've ever played. a lot of this lies with my priorities- that is to say, sound design above all. even sitting in a brightly lit room, i can feel myself transported into the desolate corridors of signalis simply by listening to audio of the game on youtube. the whirrs and whines of the desktop. the click of elster's pointy feet on the metal floor. the muffled soundtrack that often blurs the line between the mechanical ambience of an automated place left abandoned and traditional composition. combine these immaculate soundsketches with the inky black visuals often only punctuated by the fuzzy lights of old tech and unforgettable art direction (top 10 coolest looking video game women list could consist of this entire cast) and you get a world that needs no scares to create tension. it feels like i myself am trapped there, am one with elster exploring these grim, haunted rooms. when simply walking around is so captivating independent of any mechanics, the decision to focus on a gradually disturbing non-linear story rather than straightforward scares (as would be default for modern horror games) is got damn poetry. that oneness i experienced with elster applies doubly as i watch her unfold this tragic penrose-ian mystery. i think it's notable how signalis primarily creates horror from the transhumanist and queer themes. it gives the story a heady cyberpunk edge i wouldn't expect from a survival horror title, but now that i've played this i don't understand why more games don't combine the two. for all of the blunt references, it's awe-inspiring how everything comes together to form that feels something new even for someone (me) who has experienced nearly all the media the creators are pulling from.
that being said the combat is piss-easy even on survival mode (i beat it in 5 hours carrying no health or weapons except for boss fights) and i kind of wish it was just like a puzzle game or something. not that the puzzles are tend to be fun or brain-stimulating either? the fact that the developer has had add a patch to make the game easier is so funny when you compare the difficulty to any ps2 survival horror game. kind of a massive milquetoast blotch on the game, but hey, what can you do. at least the low difficulty means that you'll spend most of the non-story time walking around, and damn, isn't this a great game to just walk around in.
this game has hands down the densest atmosphere of anything i've ever played. a lot of this lies with my priorities- that is to say, sound design above all. even sitting in a brightly lit room, i can feel myself transported into the desolate corridors of signalis simply by listening to audio of the game on youtube. the whirrs and whines of the desktop. the click of elster's pointy feet on the metal floor. the muffled soundtrack that often blurs the line between the mechanical ambience of an automated place left abandoned and traditional composition. combine these immaculate soundsketches with the inky black visuals often only punctuated by the fuzzy lights of old tech and unforgettable art direction (top 10 coolest looking video game women list could consist of this entire cast) and you get a world that needs no scares to create tension. it feels like i myself am trapped there, am one with elster exploring these grim, haunted rooms. when simply walking around is so captivating independent of any mechanics, the decision to focus on a gradually disturbing non-linear story rather than straightforward scares (as would be default for modern horror games) is got damn poetry. that oneness i experienced with elster applies doubly as i watch her unfold this tragic penrose-ian mystery. i think it's notable how signalis primarily creates horror from the transhumanist and queer themes. it gives the story a heady cyberpunk edge i wouldn't expect from a survival horror title, but now that i've played this i don't understand why more games don't combine the two. for all of the blunt references, it's awe-inspiring how everything comes together to form that feels something new even for someone (me) who has experienced nearly all the media the creators are pulling from.
that being said the combat is piss-easy even on survival mode (i beat it in 5 hours carrying no health or weapons except for boss fights) and i kind of wish it was just like a puzzle game or something. not that the puzzles are tend to be fun or brain-stimulating either? the fact that the developer has had add a patch to make the game easier is so funny when you compare the difficulty to any ps2 survival horror game. kind of a massive milquetoast blotch on the game, but hey, what can you do. at least the low difficulty means that you'll spend most of the non-story time walking around, and damn, isn't this a great game to just walk around in.
Not a chance this wasn’t focus tested on trans lesbians
This review contains spoilers
(Thank you to Cold_Comfort for basically buying me this game and to ConeCvltist for editing this)
The human mind is not something most can really comprehend. Its ability give life to the inanimate, to birth languages & actions, and to remember is something that most of us take for granted. Despite our own lack of understanding of ourselves, humanity has pushed on: we’ve explored space, made interplanetary discoveries, and created technological wonders. Gestalts & Replikas are shot out into the vast emptiness of space to explore the furthest ends of the galaxy for thousands of cycles. If they succeed, they get to rejoice in their successful expedition, but if they fail, they will have to accept the natural forces that fate has pushed upon them. And yet, the mind still goes unquestioned.
How does one deal with the acceptance of their death? It's recommended to have your Replika assist you in the swift process of death, but what if they too, fail? Would the human mind persist and prosper? It's an unlikely situation but the persistence of the mind has proven to be strong within the exploration of the infinite universes, and the creation of the complex yet refined Replikas. Our natural instinct to reject death would have the human grow older and older with every passing cycle, crying out for someone for comfort while staring into the cold face of death, their wails creating a beautiful symphony, one that contorts the perception of reality around themselves, corrupting the minds who can't take its wonderful composition, and creating twisted masses and amalgamations of flesh left to writhe where they shouldn't. A song that cries out for someone to fulfill a long forgotten promise, to dance to a long forgotten song. They project their memories onto others in desperate search for someone. The infinite vastness of space quickly becomes claustrophobic in the confines of memory, leaving those who haven't succumbed to the memory's symphonic nature cursed to relive the same day
over
and
over
again.
Remember our promise. Keep our promise. Make our promise.
The human mind is not something most can really comprehend. Its ability give life to the inanimate, to birth languages & actions, and to remember is something that most of us take for granted. Despite our own lack of understanding of ourselves, humanity has pushed on: we’ve explored space, made interplanetary discoveries, and created technological wonders. Gestalts & Replikas are shot out into the vast emptiness of space to explore the furthest ends of the galaxy for thousands of cycles. If they succeed, they get to rejoice in their successful expedition, but if they fail, they will have to accept the natural forces that fate has pushed upon them. And yet, the mind still goes unquestioned.
How does one deal with the acceptance of their death? It's recommended to have your Replika assist you in the swift process of death, but what if they too, fail? Would the human mind persist and prosper? It's an unlikely situation but the persistence of the mind has proven to be strong within the exploration of the infinite universes, and the creation of the complex yet refined Replikas. Our natural instinct to reject death would have the human grow older and older with every passing cycle, crying out for someone for comfort while staring into the cold face of death, their wails creating a beautiful symphony, one that contorts the perception of reality around themselves, corrupting the minds who can't take its wonderful composition, and creating twisted masses and amalgamations of flesh left to writhe where they shouldn't. A song that cries out for someone to fulfill a long forgotten promise, to dance to a long forgotten song. They project their memories onto others in desperate search for someone. The infinite vastness of space quickly becomes claustrophobic in the confines of memory, leaving those who haven't succumbed to the memory's symphonic nature cursed to relive the same day
over
and
over
again.
Remember our promise. Keep our promise. Make our promise.
man...i have a lot of things to say about this game. i decided to actually play it after hearing a lot of praise and honestly i expected way more than it delivered. this game felt like a weird mashup of nier automata, silent hill and resident evil. the vibes were there but the storytelling is too cryptic and unclear for my taste. also the endgame is very frustrating because you don't have a map and enough inventory space so most of the time you're just backtracking and the enemies are pretty annoying so that left a bad taste in my mouth. i respect what the devs wanted to do and i love the idea and concept but i think it's not executed THAT well as everyone claims it is. would enjoy it probably more if i didn't know german and japanese but oh well. i really wish i could like it as much as everyone did :/
Minor spoilers ahead? But probably worth knowing?:
Hey, game designers! If you're going to do a fakeout ending, please signpost it in literally any way! This game signified absolutely in no way that its fake ending was actually fake. Myself and at least 3 other people I've talked to about it fell for it. The credits played in full and I literally uninstalled the game after it because I straight up thought it was over. I only found out that I hadn't actually finished the game because I tried looking up alternate endings and everything was completely foreign! Please just tell me in any clear way that I'm not done please?
Hey, game designers! If you're going to do a fakeout ending, please signpost it in literally any way! This game signified absolutely in no way that its fake ending was actually fake. Myself and at least 3 other people I've talked to about it fell for it. The credits played in full and I literally uninstalled the game after it because I straight up thought it was over. I only found out that I hadn't actually finished the game because I tried looking up alternate endings and everything was completely foreign! Please just tell me in any clear way that I'm not done please?
the narrative is elliptical in a way i wouldve loved to chew on like 10 years ago ... but i'm old now and insensate and respond only to sensory inputs like color and sound. luckily this game is full of weird crunchy noises and gross textures in addition to a cast of morose lesbians who look like fanart of themselves. If everyone is gay i think ... no one is gay. i have so much patience and LOVE for proudly tedious, unreconstructed survival horror mechanics!!! the loop here is finessed just enough; you'll come upon puzzle solutions naturally as u explore new rooms, but it's also exhausting to find the item you need with a full inventory and the nearest save room half the map away :))))) a masterclass in what i think the kids call "filtering" ...
also happy to see a game that doesn't bother with delicately alluding to other art (subtle intertextuality ... that thing videogames are famous for); it just plops it in front of you whole-cloth. the silent hill save screen and meat world slop are really obvious, all the classical pieces & cosmic horror texts, but the use of the böcklin painting "isle of the dead" is especially canny — he painted a handful of versions (plus a cheerier follow-up "isle of life"), there are several potential IRL inspirations, it was widely proliferated in his home country ... its so thematically relevant girl!!
also happy to see a game that doesn't bother with delicately alluding to other art (subtle intertextuality ... that thing videogames are famous for); it just plops it in front of you whole-cloth. the silent hill save screen and meat world slop are really obvious, all the classical pieces & cosmic horror texts, but the use of the böcklin painting "isle of the dead" is especially canny — he painted a handful of versions (plus a cheerier follow-up "isle of life"), there are several potential IRL inspirations, it was widely proliferated in his home country ... its so thematically relevant girl!!
ATENÇÃO, NÃO PARE DE JOGAR NA PRIMEIRA VEZ QUE VER OS CRÉDITOS, CONTINUE JOGANDO, ME AGRADEÇA DEPOIS. Digo isso por que conheço gente que achou que o jogo tinha acabado ali.
Eu sempre fui medroso pra jogos de terror, então não joguei clássicos como RE e Silent Hill, mas agora depois de adulto tenho experimentado alguns jogos de terror como Layers of Fear, Observer, etc. Porém, Signalis é minha primeira experiência com Survival Horror, e hoje mesmo já adicionei Silent Hill nas minhas listas de desejo.
Signalis me atraiu muito por esse estilo gráfico PSOne (principalmente do primeiro MGS) e me capturou por sua atmosfera e construção de mundo muuuuuito instigante. Que jogo estiloso da p****!
Há anos que eu não jogo 6h diretas de um único jogo, muito menos terror. Mas a forma como tudo é feito em Signalis permite que, mesmo que a passos lentos, você se sinta sempre avançando.
E pra que isso aconteça de forma natural e boa, um ponto precisa ser feito com perfeição, e Signalis acerta muito nisso, seus Puzzles! Conforme se avança no jogo, a qualidade dos puzzles só melhora, sempre atingindo um equilíbrio perfeito de dificuldade.
A história é daquelas que se interpreta como pode, o que me lembra muito Neon Genesis Evangelion, que também serviu de referência visual, claramente. Pra mim, isso é um ponto extremamente positivo.
Eu poderia tentar achar algum motivo para reclamar do jogo, como o combate ou o inventário, mas a verdade é que apesar de não ser os pontos fortes do jogo, são detalhes que não incomodam, o inventário me fez ir e voltar na safe room umas 500x mas não me incomodou.
Eu sempre fui medroso pra jogos de terror, então não joguei clássicos como RE e Silent Hill, mas agora depois de adulto tenho experimentado alguns jogos de terror como Layers of Fear, Observer, etc. Porém, Signalis é minha primeira experiência com Survival Horror, e hoje mesmo já adicionei Silent Hill nas minhas listas de desejo.
Signalis me atraiu muito por esse estilo gráfico PSOne (principalmente do primeiro MGS) e me capturou por sua atmosfera e construção de mundo muuuuuito instigante. Que jogo estiloso da p****!
Há anos que eu não jogo 6h diretas de um único jogo, muito menos terror. Mas a forma como tudo é feito em Signalis permite que, mesmo que a passos lentos, você se sinta sempre avançando.
E pra que isso aconteça de forma natural e boa, um ponto precisa ser feito com perfeição, e Signalis acerta muito nisso, seus Puzzles! Conforme se avança no jogo, a qualidade dos puzzles só melhora, sempre atingindo um equilíbrio perfeito de dificuldade.
A história é daquelas que se interpreta como pode, o que me lembra muito Neon Genesis Evangelion, que também serviu de referência visual, claramente. Pra mim, isso é um ponto extremamente positivo.
Eu poderia tentar achar algum motivo para reclamar do jogo, como o combate ou o inventário, mas a verdade é que apesar de não ser os pontos fortes do jogo, são detalhes que não incomodam, o inventário me fez ir e voltar na safe room umas 500x mas não me incomodou.
Pros:
- Great level design with plenty of puzzles to tackle and strong atmosphere/music. With top down survival horror gameplay that emulates those of the PS1 era, it wears its influences on its sleeve but stands out as a well crafted game in its own right
- Its pixel art and visual style are really cool, managing to give a continuous sense of dread as you progress deeper into the facility and the game grows more chaotic
- The story’s a bit difficult to follow as it’s told through disjointed scenes and you’re never sure of what’s actually happening, but it’s really interesting nonetheless. And you can tell it takes from the likes of Evangelion in how abstract the presentation can be
Cons:
- You only have 6 equipment slots the entire game, which did feel a bit restrictive when you have to hold weapons, modules (like the flashlight), ammo and collect numerous puzzle pieces. The only reason you’d need to backtrack in this is to dump stuff into storage cause you couldn’t pick up what you needed, and this happens often enough to be annoying
- Combat is just serviceable. It’s usually easy enough to run by enemies and avoid fights, but boss fights are unsurprisingly a weak point. I wish they weren’t always in these kind of horror games, but they weren’t a frequent part of it at least
- A nitpick but sometimes the door prompts don’t appear unless you move away from them and back again, this tended to be an issue whenever you were in a room running from a bunch of enemies lol
- Great level design with plenty of puzzles to tackle and strong atmosphere/music. With top down survival horror gameplay that emulates those of the PS1 era, it wears its influences on its sleeve but stands out as a well crafted game in its own right
- Its pixel art and visual style are really cool, managing to give a continuous sense of dread as you progress deeper into the facility and the game grows more chaotic
- The story’s a bit difficult to follow as it’s told through disjointed scenes and you’re never sure of what’s actually happening, but it’s really interesting nonetheless. And you can tell it takes from the likes of Evangelion in how abstract the presentation can be
Cons:
- You only have 6 equipment slots the entire game, which did feel a bit restrictive when you have to hold weapons, modules (like the flashlight), ammo and collect numerous puzzle pieces. The only reason you’d need to backtrack in this is to dump stuff into storage cause you couldn’t pick up what you needed, and this happens often enough to be annoying
- Combat is just serviceable. It’s usually easy enough to run by enemies and avoid fights, but boss fights are unsurprisingly a weak point. I wish they weren’t always in these kind of horror games, but they weren’t a frequent part of it at least
- A nitpick but sometimes the door prompts don’t appear unless you move away from them and back again, this tended to be an issue whenever you were in a room running from a bunch of enemies lol
Existem jogos que foram feitos para revolucionar, criar novas tendências, tirar a mesmice da comunidade e mostrar que ciclos são feitos e produzidos através de pequenas ou grandes alterações. Porém, existem jogos que seguem o caminho oposto, tentam se manter com a atual tendência e ao que parece acabam marcando bem mais do que os “revolucionários”.
Pode parecer estranho começar com um comentário como esse, mas Signalis entra diretamente no topo da segunda opção, pois o jogo não tem nenhuma novidade ou algo que vai deixar muita gente surpresa ao ponto de grandes empresas se espelharem e desenvolverem uma quantidade absurda de jogo idênticos e isso pode parecer uma critica ou um tipo de ataque, mas é algo muito mais íntimo, pessoal e extremamente positivo.
Na minha visão, o gênero de terror está passando por uma das maiores estagnadas criativas desde sua popularização e a situação tem se mostrado real quando a maioria dos títulos tentam buscar gráficos e gameplay, apagando dois fatores que são essenciais para o gênero: enredo e diversão.
Curiosamente, assim como no FPS o surgimento de um subgênero parece segurar toda a última linha de salvação, sendo essenciais para a continuidade de uma pequena paixão não só minha, mas de uma comunidade em amplo crescimento.
A ideia de jogos de terror com ampla influência dos clássicos como SH e RE me faz vibrar de maneira positiva, o que é bem estranho quando penso no meu desinteresse em relação aos dois citados anteriormente, porém por algum motivo esses jogos em desenvolvimento me capturaram de maneira exemplar, sendo praticamente impossível retornar ao meu ‘EU’ antigo.
Como comentei, Signalis não tem nada revolucionário, sua gameplay tem o estilo extremamente clássico com o sistema estranho e “bagunçado” sendo justamente um dos responsáveis pela vontade de zerar várias vezes. Inclusive, acredito na possibilidade de jogar sem matar ninguém, sem usar certas armas e sem tomar dano, mas isso vou deixar para quando jogar novamente futuramente.
Em relação aos puzzles, posso dizer que o nível é fácil/médio, ou seja, não temos uma dificuldade extremamente fácil ao ponto de ser chato e muito menos nada que vá nos deixar presos em um ambiente, porém pode surgir dificuldades em momentos que ocorrem a mistura de outros idiomas, o que também já é difícil graças a falta de legendas em PT-BR.
O enredo é uma apreciação a parte, gerando dificuldade para comentar sem parecer um spoiler ou algo mais pessoal, então acho que posso resumir tudo como algo subjetivo, onde cada jogador planta e colhe as ideias que desejar e mesmo com vários vídeos, comentários e discussões cada um vai encontrar seu ponto de satisfação.
O ambiente que somos inseridos também não causa tanta surpresa, mas consegue atender muito bem e passa o que deve ser transferido de maneira rápida e pouco bagunçada. As soundtracks presentes se relacionam com o todo e o estilo adotado me deixou bem satisfeita e até um pouco surpresa, mas não é algo marcante ao nível absurdo da coisa.
A combinação de todos os fatores leva Signalis a um dos melhores lançamentos de 2022 e também a ser um dos melhores do subgênero com poucos polígonos e isso me deixa bem feliz, pois espero que muitos outros desenvolvedores olhem e parem de desejar revolucionar algo a cada momento, pois as vezes tudo o que queremos são jogos com um sistema harmônico e divertido.
Pode parecer estranho começar com um comentário como esse, mas Signalis entra diretamente no topo da segunda opção, pois o jogo não tem nenhuma novidade ou algo que vai deixar muita gente surpresa ao ponto de grandes empresas se espelharem e desenvolverem uma quantidade absurda de jogo idênticos e isso pode parecer uma critica ou um tipo de ataque, mas é algo muito mais íntimo, pessoal e extremamente positivo.
Na minha visão, o gênero de terror está passando por uma das maiores estagnadas criativas desde sua popularização e a situação tem se mostrado real quando a maioria dos títulos tentam buscar gráficos e gameplay, apagando dois fatores que são essenciais para o gênero: enredo e diversão.
Curiosamente, assim como no FPS o surgimento de um subgênero parece segurar toda a última linha de salvação, sendo essenciais para a continuidade de uma pequena paixão não só minha, mas de uma comunidade em amplo crescimento.
A ideia de jogos de terror com ampla influência dos clássicos como SH e RE me faz vibrar de maneira positiva, o que é bem estranho quando penso no meu desinteresse em relação aos dois citados anteriormente, porém por algum motivo esses jogos em desenvolvimento me capturaram de maneira exemplar, sendo praticamente impossível retornar ao meu ‘EU’ antigo.
Como comentei, Signalis não tem nada revolucionário, sua gameplay tem o estilo extremamente clássico com o sistema estranho e “bagunçado” sendo justamente um dos responsáveis pela vontade de zerar várias vezes. Inclusive, acredito na possibilidade de jogar sem matar ninguém, sem usar certas armas e sem tomar dano, mas isso vou deixar para quando jogar novamente futuramente.
Em relação aos puzzles, posso dizer que o nível é fácil/médio, ou seja, não temos uma dificuldade extremamente fácil ao ponto de ser chato e muito menos nada que vá nos deixar presos em um ambiente, porém pode surgir dificuldades em momentos que ocorrem a mistura de outros idiomas, o que também já é difícil graças a falta de legendas em PT-BR.
O enredo é uma apreciação a parte, gerando dificuldade para comentar sem parecer um spoiler ou algo mais pessoal, então acho que posso resumir tudo como algo subjetivo, onde cada jogador planta e colhe as ideias que desejar e mesmo com vários vídeos, comentários e discussões cada um vai encontrar seu ponto de satisfação.
O ambiente que somos inseridos também não causa tanta surpresa, mas consegue atender muito bem e passa o que deve ser transferido de maneira rápida e pouco bagunçada. As soundtracks presentes se relacionam com o todo e o estilo adotado me deixou bem satisfeita e até um pouco surpresa, mas não é algo marcante ao nível absurdo da coisa.
A combinação de todos os fatores leva Signalis a um dos melhores lançamentos de 2022 e também a ser um dos melhores do subgênero com poucos polígonos e isso me deixa bem feliz, pois espero que muitos outros desenvolvedores olhem e parem de desejar revolucionar algo a cada momento, pois as vezes tudo o que queremos são jogos com um sistema harmônico e divertido.
This review contains spoilers
Metaphor for a missing moment
Pull me into your perfect circle
One womb, one shame, one resolve
Liberate this will to release us all
Gotta cut away, clear away
Snip away and sever this umbilical residue
Keeping me from killing you
And from pulling you down with me in here
I can almost hear you scream
---------------------------------------------------------
Signalis is about cycles, loops, circles and other various forms of figurative ouroboroi.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in stark contrast to its robotic protagonist, the bulk of the horror in Signalis is of the viscerally organic and fleshy breed: cancer is not only a direct element of the plot as Ariane (as well as countless background characters) suffer the effects of radiation poisoning, but the means by which Signalis marks its steady detachment from reality. Pulsating masses of gory red flesh and throbbing tumors permeate more and more of the game as time goes on, from the lesions and clumps adorning the enemies to the pseudosentient piles of viscera that block your path within the game's final area.
Cancer is an abundance of life, spontaneous cell growth without aim, measure or reason - a natural cycle being thrown out of balance much like Elster's refusal to allow the loop to come to an end over her dozens, if not hundreds of journeys to keep her promise. Elster and Ariane both have a trait in common in that they seem hesitant to accept death as the natural end of the cycle they exist in, with the former not only refusing to give up no matter how many times she fails but also evidently having chickened out of her promise to mercy kill Ariane (herself having been unwilling to let Elster kill her in the past, instead choosing a longer life of prolonged suffering as the radiation poisoning robbed her of her body, spirit and livelihood) countless times across her loops.
The "Promise" ending signifies an acceptance of death as not only a natural part of the cycle of life, but as a reprieve from suffering: in breaking the cycle of the loops by fulfilling her promise, killing Ariane and finally dying herself Elster finally puts a stop to the infinite suffering of all that are involved in it, from herself and Ariane to Isa and even to antagonists such as Falke and Adler. Death is natural, infinity being a concept humans are not equipped to comprehend nor experience - and though it is tragic love need not be cut short by the departure of one or both involved parties.
If anything, the imagery of cancer as life in abundance applies equally to their love: while it was indeed the source of the pain and suffering that all characters of Signalis are trapped in, it is also a bond that no amount of turmoil, strain or time passed can truly break. Even as Elster and Ariane spend their last living moments together their love for one another is perhaps more strong than it has ever been - dying at one another's sides with each other being the last thing they see or think about. The love goes down with the lovers, those final seconds of life etched into the annals of time for all eternity. Nothing can take that from them, not those who would keep them apart, not the institutions that would forbid their romance, not even death itself. That love persisted through an eternity's worth of cycles as Elster tried time and time again to no avail to find Ariane, her promise being the sole motivating factor as she endured and doled out untold amounts of turmoil and despair.
In sum, I don't think the promise between Elster and Ariane is explicitly, specifically and exclusively referring to Elster's promise to kill Ariane when she could no longer bear to live.
I think the promise was "I'll love you forever."
Pull me into your perfect circle
One womb, one shame, one resolve
Liberate this will to release us all
Gotta cut away, clear away
Snip away and sever this umbilical residue
Keeping me from killing you
And from pulling you down with me in here
I can almost hear you scream
---------------------------------------------------------
Signalis is about cycles, loops, circles and other various forms of figurative ouroboroi.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in stark contrast to its robotic protagonist, the bulk of the horror in Signalis is of the viscerally organic and fleshy breed: cancer is not only a direct element of the plot as Ariane (as well as countless background characters) suffer the effects of radiation poisoning, but the means by which Signalis marks its steady detachment from reality. Pulsating masses of gory red flesh and throbbing tumors permeate more and more of the game as time goes on, from the lesions and clumps adorning the enemies to the pseudosentient piles of viscera that block your path within the game's final area.
Cancer is an abundance of life, spontaneous cell growth without aim, measure or reason - a natural cycle being thrown out of balance much like Elster's refusal to allow the loop to come to an end over her dozens, if not hundreds of journeys to keep her promise. Elster and Ariane both have a trait in common in that they seem hesitant to accept death as the natural end of the cycle they exist in, with the former not only refusing to give up no matter how many times she fails but also evidently having chickened out of her promise to mercy kill Ariane (herself having been unwilling to let Elster kill her in the past, instead choosing a longer life of prolonged suffering as the radiation poisoning robbed her of her body, spirit and livelihood) countless times across her loops.
The "Promise" ending signifies an acceptance of death as not only a natural part of the cycle of life, but as a reprieve from suffering: in breaking the cycle of the loops by fulfilling her promise, killing Ariane and finally dying herself Elster finally puts a stop to the infinite suffering of all that are involved in it, from herself and Ariane to Isa and even to antagonists such as Falke and Adler. Death is natural, infinity being a concept humans are not equipped to comprehend nor experience - and though it is tragic love need not be cut short by the departure of one or both involved parties.
If anything, the imagery of cancer as life in abundance applies equally to their love: while it was indeed the source of the pain and suffering that all characters of Signalis are trapped in, it is also a bond that no amount of turmoil, strain or time passed can truly break. Even as Elster and Ariane spend their last living moments together their love for one another is perhaps more strong than it has ever been - dying at one another's sides with each other being the last thing they see or think about. The love goes down with the lovers, those final seconds of life etched into the annals of time for all eternity. Nothing can take that from them, not those who would keep them apart, not the institutions that would forbid their romance, not even death itself. That love persisted through an eternity's worth of cycles as Elster tried time and time again to no avail to find Ariane, her promise being the sole motivating factor as she endured and doled out untold amounts of turmoil and despair.
In sum, I don't think the promise between Elster and Ariane is explicitly, specifically and exclusively referring to Elster's promise to kill Ariane when she could no longer bear to live.
I think the promise was "I'll love you forever."
Eternity in a Box
Signalis gets under your skin. I will, past it’s runtime, continue to live within you. This horrible tragedy, horrifically engrained in your mind. Twisting and turning in your psyche until it cements itself as one of the most impactful experiences in recent memory. If you’re not put off by the dozens and dozens of references and homages to other media, it will manipulate you to love every frame of its horrifying tale of dying in a long dead machine.
I am shaken to the core by this experience and it became one of my favorite games of all time. I feel lucky to having been born in Germany and thus being able to read most of the untranslated text on screen, with the exception of maybe the Japanese text. It is a game deeply tied to the DDR and other eastern countries under the Soviet Union. All of my ancestors lived in eastern Germany and thus have I been heavily influenced by the tales of my parents and grandparents alike, for all of my post Mauerfall upbringing. Signalis is a punch in the gut. A sweet one. A pain I did not want to end. Having the historical cultural knowledge to view Signalis through a lens of the divided Germany’s elevated my experience a lot in that sense, I believe.
Mechanically a wonderfully done Survival Horror game with lovely puzzles and very well executed difficulty curve that never felt unfair to me, narratively a shiver inducing psycho-horror mindbend that will stick with me forever.
The soundtrack goes from somber to hectic and chaotic in a heartbeat, pulling one into the many locations of Signalis world.
I’m in awe of this masterpiece and by no means done thinking and writing about the game, while probably replaying it a hundred more times before I go under the ground. I can’t express my love in a totally for me satisfying way yet, but eventually I will find the words to do this masterpiece justice.
Signalis gets under your skin. I will, past it’s runtime, continue to live within you. This horrible tragedy, horrifically engrained in your mind. Twisting and turning in your psyche until it cements itself as one of the most impactful experiences in recent memory. If you’re not put off by the dozens and dozens of references and homages to other media, it will manipulate you to love every frame of its horrifying tale of dying in a long dead machine.
I am shaken to the core by this experience and it became one of my favorite games of all time. I feel lucky to having been born in Germany and thus being able to read most of the untranslated text on screen, with the exception of maybe the Japanese text. It is a game deeply tied to the DDR and other eastern countries under the Soviet Union. All of my ancestors lived in eastern Germany and thus have I been heavily influenced by the tales of my parents and grandparents alike, for all of my post Mauerfall upbringing. Signalis is a punch in the gut. A sweet one. A pain I did not want to end. Having the historical cultural knowledge to view Signalis through a lens of the divided Germany’s elevated my experience a lot in that sense, I believe.
Mechanically a wonderfully done Survival Horror game with lovely puzzles and very well executed difficulty curve that never felt unfair to me, narratively a shiver inducing psycho-horror mindbend that will stick with me forever.
The soundtrack goes from somber to hectic and chaotic in a heartbeat, pulling one into the many locations of Signalis world.
I’m in awe of this masterpiece and by no means done thinking and writing about the game, while probably replaying it a hundred more times before I go under the ground. I can’t express my love in a totally for me satisfying way yet, but eventually I will find the words to do this masterpiece justice.