Signalis (2022)

S Game Completed
#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

So this is a really tough game to evaluate, because I'm not even sure I understand what the fuck even happened. 😀

I'm only sort of kidding, but the truth is, it doesn't really matter. This is one of those games where the vibes do the heavy lifting, and I fully appreciate it for what it is.

Let's get my mechanical nitpicks out of the way first - the tank controls, while optional, are really bad, with the rotation being overly sensitive to the point of frequent frustration. I could not figure out how to set the controls back, so I was stuck with this the whole game. 😭 Second, the CRT filter is quite ugly. There were also way too many different weapons for the length of the game, leading to a scenario where I was unloading a clip, finding ammo for a different gun, running to the item box, swapping, repeat.

Okay so gripes aside... Signalis is an artistic marvel. The visual design, the sound design, the themes, the world building, the setting, all extremely interesting stuff. The storytelling is deliberately esoteric, but the game never gets so far up its own ass that it becomes annoying. It shows a lot of restraint and intent from the game's creators, and it's exactly the sort of high-effort, inspired work we're not getting from the AAA market anymore.

I don't entire understand the story, but I'm not too bothered either. I'm not entirely clear on what was real and what was metaphor... And I'm not sure if really matters. In the scope of the game and the story and themes it was trying to present, it doesn't really matter, and while I'm sure there is a 5-hour video essay breaking down the minutae of the story and why everything happens the way it does and the mechanics of how the psychic meat works, I don't feel like it's necessary to get something out of the experience. It trusts the player enough to leave things to interpretation, and I appreciate that.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how the game depicted queerness, because with the way I've seen this game discussed in social media, I was concerned it would be really heavy-handed and patronizing, but no, I was really happy to see a very pleasant, very human presentation of love. And in the same vein, I was really happy that it didn't go the "every horror game after Silent Hill 2" route of using a relationship to beat the player over the head with ham-fisted allegory, but that wasn't there either. My expectations were subverted!

As a bit of a tangent too, I also loved all the puzzles involving the radio signals and noise stations. That was cool as fuck.

I don't know where this one will land on my all-timer list. As much as I appreciate everything it is, I also never felt it sinks its hooks into me like the best games do. I can see it's remarkably well-made, but I also frequently felt like I had to force myself to play it. It took me like 3 or 4 weeks, and while part of that was just life being crazy, I also never really felt like, "I need to see where this goes." But I still recommend it!

Oh, and special shout-out to the Japanese box art being one of the all-time best, like look at this thing:

The combat and bullet economy of a Resident evil, the abstraction of a Silent hill mixed in with the visuals of a Dead space and a quick Ghost in the Shell reference at the back end just for funsies.

Lowkey surprised that I finished this and it reminds me why it's so cool that I'm old enough to appreciate walkthroughs and Youtube full gameplay videos instead of being embarrassed by the fact that sometimes I need them. The story (or lack thereof) made getting through the 3rd an absolute slog. It's funny, I used to be a really big Kauffman fan but the older I grow the more annoying this abstract bullshit gets, like I barely know what to say about how I feel about this game and this world because its functionally a bunch of individual ideas mashed together in an intentionally incoherent way, fuck are we doing here? How dare you sacrifice emotional resonance with your audience for the sake of some vaguely artsy ass vibe.

Anyway to each their own, I'm just happy I got to play something atleast Resident Evil adjacent cause I'm way too broke to buy a new PC and replay the greatest game ever made Resident Evil 2 Remake!!!!! . This'll have to do for now and honestly, I didn't mind it.

This game starts off strong, with enough gameplay variety, intriguing story setup, and nostalgic references to classic survival horror. The second half of the game felt like a chore to me - not much new gets added, and the story becomes a convoluted mess that I mostly lost interest in.

I absolutely hated that all enemies have that same annoying aggro sound (that you'll hear 300 times), and the "scary" combat music is just unpleasant. Puzzles and scarce resources were nice, but all this just made me want to replay Resident Evil or Dead Space.

Signalis met me with everything it has been promoted for and even exceeded my expactations.

This is an extremely well crafted horror-survival game inspired by old-school Silent Hill and Resident Evil style of gameplay with beautiful art design, breathtaking story of tragic love, characters which i couldn't stop feeling for both of my playthroughs. The vast amount of symbolism, references and omage to classic literature and philosophical ideas presented in this game outmatches any other videogame i can remember.

It's hard to describe all my feelings for this game, all i can do is recommend it to other people who are into this genre and wish all the best to extremely talented developers from Rose-engine. Can't wait for their next future project to see the light of the day, whatever if it will be a continuation of Signalis, which i hope will be not as tragic and depressing, or a maybe a whole new story.

Signalis draws from all sorts of media I enjoy, Lovecraft (The Festival, directly referenced), Ghost in the Shell, cute robot lesbians, survival horror, etc.

Yet, it never gets derivative. The game takes these cool concepts and turns them into its own brand. The gameplay is janky, and the inventory system (now fixed! it was not when I played it!) a joke for a game that has a puzzle with 6 different parts in it. Speaking of, the puzzles are janky and the secret ending is a big ??? on how you're supposed to figure that one out on your own.

Negatives aside though, the visuals are gorgeous, the story is one of the best I've played in an indie game "I am me again, but you're not you anymore."(this game was made by TWO people btw!!!), the endings are affected by the WAY YOU PLAY AND INTERACT WITH THE WORLD (genius by the way) and for all its jank the gameplay is very serviceable, the gunshots are very meaty and the sense of tension permeates through the experience as you descend upon layers and layers of seemingly more twisted madness. The score is good, albeit a bit forgettable because of how many short songs there are, bloating the OST a lot and not making it so that you can point out a lot of tracks since they're fairly derivative anyway. So, definitely not something you'll listen to in your free time, but in-game it's absolutely amazing.

AND it comes in a bite-sized 8-10hr experience! Your mileage may vary on how terrible you are at survival horrors. I love it when games don't waste my time.

Signalis is one of those games that is of instant interest to me. While it is top-down (almost) all game, it is clearly and purposefully an homage to the old school survival horror games of the ps1/ps2 era. The game itself is littered with references to those games and aspects of the story even parallel a very popular game in the pantheon of that era's classics. It's not a nostalgia-frenzy game in some sense because the look and feel doesn't really evoke the deja vu feeling you get from true mimicry, but if you played a few Resident Evil and Silent Hill games from back in the day, you're bound to recognize something. I personally tend to enjoy those nostalgia fests to some extent, but this game felt at least a bit more subtle with it in that nothing feels entirely shoe-horned in and the game stands on its own as its own unique individual thing. While ultimately, I did find the game lacking in some ways, I really respect what the game is trying to accomplish by marrying this familiar and strange (often very strange) and am really happy I got to play this.

The gameplay of Signalis is very much in the vein of the old school Survival Horror games, mostly Resident Evil. Looking at screenshots of the game, that looks unlikely and my concerns when I was first researching the game was that it didn't really look like a callback given the top-down view, but it's quite similar. You have very limited inventory space, which must contain your weapons, ammunition, healing, tools, and any key items you need to solve the various puzzles throughout the various areas. Combat is also similar with an aim and shoot that's not super agile and puts you at risk, while burning through precious ammunition. Much of the game involves moving from room to room searching for keys to unlock doors to lead to your next destination in the story, or the key item you need to solve a puzzle that will unlock said key or door. There are a number of puzzles, mostly item puzzles (find the right item and use it in the right place) in addition to general manipulate-the-thing-based-on-the-clues puzzles.

As far as how I'd rate all these aspects, I found the puzzles a little above average in this game, not great, but good. The combat I'd say was hit or miss. It's pretty common in Survival Horror that running past the enemies is often best and learning where to spend your ammo is the key strategy. However in this game, I felt like I almost never wanted to bother killing random enemies especially as they almost all just get back up in very little time. I have been itching for a challenging inventory management system in recent horror games but I think it needs to be carefully balanced and here, with the number of items you get and how much space your guns, ammo, and tools take up, it was irritating having so few item slots and think one or two more would've been fair without trivializing the mechanic. My biggest issue is the general traversal of the game. Backtracking, at least to some extent, is a staple of the games Signalis is calling back to and it's unsurprisingly present here. However, while I've never minded that tendency (not even in Resident Evil: Code Veronica), this is the first game I found it actively bothered me. I'm honestly not super sure why and have pondered over this more than a few times since finishing the game. My best guess is that it has to do with the enemies. In a lot of early Resident Evil games, you tend to want to clear a certain path to the point it's relatively safe to reuse over and over, and avoid others. This is actually a fun part of the strategy in those games to me and makes it all the more tense when you do have to brave the more dangerous route. But in Signalis, since I rarely cared to waste ammo on an enemy that would get up in 5 minutes, every path was the dangerous path, or at least the one I have to dodge 10 enemies on. That paradoxically lessened the tension in that the whole game was dodging enemies from room to room. As a caveat, you can perma-kill the enemies eventually but those resources were limited and, again I, often more problematically, didn't have the space to carry them. Ultimately this was the biggest issue in the game for me. It didn't bug me till about halfway through, but some segments felt like way more of a chore than I would've liked with the tedious bouncing between rooms. If I hadn't had this issue, this would probably have been a 5 star review, or closer to it at least.

I mostly like the presentation of the game. There is very strong atmosphere and that's probably one of the best things about it. The ambient sound is minimal but evocative and the dim lighting and claustrophobic hallways give the game a nightmarish aura. I generally am not a huge fan of the mildly monochromatic look with how most things are shades of gray, but it does work here to add to that surreal feeling. The game is fairly pixelated, likely as a further callback to the games it is descended from, but honestly, I kind of wished I could turn that off even if the graphics remained simple (a similar semi-recent Survival Horror homage, Alisa: The Awakening had this option and I ended up using it for my playthrough). The cutscenes, while not state of the art, do feature cleaner and smoother graphics. My only major complaint is that there's a lot of uniformity in the game. I think that's good to an extent as it gives the game a distinct aesthetic, but for instance, several notes tell you about the many kinds of android units out there, often with pictures, but I kept getting them mixed up because they just weren't distinct enough and I think that weakened that world-building. But further, the rooms all look very same-y. The different major sections of the game each tend to have a certain look, but most of the rooms in those segments look extremely similar. While on balance, I still like the presentation, I think that could've been handled better.

For me, the story was very hit or miss, and quite extreme in both directions. This is definitely one of those stories that doesn't make a lot of sense for a long time and you just kind of deal with that until you get near the end and everything starts to fall into place. I won't bother trying to describe the full story. In short, there is a somewhat straight-forward "I'm looking for someone" plot that most of the game follows, but facts don't add up and even as a player I felt like I must be misunderstanding things. Now, in general, I don't mind a fairly complex story, but for me this went a bit to an extreme of making me pretty much just accept that the story wasn't going to make sense to me and I checked out, to some extent. That said, the good thing about such stories, when done correctly, is that the moment things do start to click, there's a big payoff. I would say this game did a somewhat poor job of this structure in that me feeling near apathetic for a chunk of the game is not a good thing. However, admittedly it did have a huge payoff when in the last 10 minutes or so, all of a sudden so many things were starting to make a lot more sense. Not only this, but I felt a surprisingly strong emotional connection to the ending (I got the Remember Our Promise ending). I played the whole game relatively solo but I put it up on a discord stream when I happened to be finishing it while waiting for some friends to join a Game Night and one of my friends was early. So he watched the end and I tried, as best as I could to explain what happened and I just sat there near-silent for like 5 minutes piecing it all together and then I ranted for another 15 minutes about how cool I thought it and the game were. This was especially funny because one of the first things I told him when he joined a little before the point when things started clicking was "honestly, I'm not really sure what this game is about." That was a pretty unique and memorable conclusion to the game and one that's stuck with me in the 5 months since I finished it and likely will for a while. I'm still conflicted on whether the game needed to be quite so enigmatic, but I did at least leave it on a high because of that payoff. I will also caveat that I probably could've paid a little better attention to the story as it went and maybe I wouldn't have been quite as lost as I was, but I expect at least some of that confusion is intentional.

In conclusion, I'm far more conflicted on Signalis than I expected to be for a game that in many ways feels made for me. My biggest issue is the fact that the traversal gameplay does feel a little stale around the midpoint and while on balance I have a real fondness for the story's conclusion, this is tainted by the perpetual "wtf is going on" I felt through the whole game. Still, as I stated before, I really love everything Signalis is going for with its vibe. My biggest wish now is that the gameplay made me want to replay it as I think I'd appreciate the story prior to the end more on a replay, knowing where it goes. I'm still really glad I played it and I'd definitely try another game by this studio.

so, this game seems to be pretty universally beloved and called, like, one of the best survival horror games of all time? i went in with pretty high hopes thinking this was going to be a classic indie gem

aesthetically, the game is great. good pixel art and it nails the vibe its going for. the story is fresh and unique. though it is kind of confusing for a while because the art style makes every character look the same with slightly different hair, honestly. the atmosphere is really good, it's creepy and the enemies do feel scary.

where it falls apart for me is the gameplay, specifically the map design and enemy variety. most rooms in this game are the same rectangular hallway copy pasted over and over. mixed with square rooms usually just 1x1 tile wide with some knocked over desks and furniture and etc. it's interesting at first but it never changes. once you've run past a zombie in a big rectangular hallway once you've done it a hundred times. aesthetically, the first area and the last area are basically the same, which makes the last area not feel very exciting as a climax. the only area with a unique layout is a short transition area that you don't explore much.

enemy variety - there's basically... i mean, what, only 4 enemies throughout the game? normal zombie, normal zombie with shield, stronger normal zombie, and... also stronger normal zombie? i don't recall any besides those 4, and even the stronger ones have the same movement and drop dead to a few bullets (from a stronger gun)

the backtracking is also an issue. i don't know exactly what it is, but in resident evil games backtracking is pretty fun - the way you have to plan your routes, weave past zombies, etc. it's all very tense. in this game it just feels tedious most of the time. the gameplay pattern is like, "go down a few hallways - oh, this room needs my flashlight - backtrack through the same hallways, pick up your flashlight, go back" or "go through some hallways - this room has 4 items in it and i can only hold 2 - grab the 2, run back, deposit items, return to the room get the other 2, run back again" and there's not much tension because dodging past the enemies in the hallways isn't particularly hard and every hallway is the same anyway.

anyway, it wasn't really bad, i still enjoyed it, i just think it could've been a lot better. i'm sort of baffled why the game is so beloved, it seems the story and characters really resonated with people, which i think is fair, but gameplay-wise there just isn't much depth. i never even used half the guns the game gave me. never used the rifle or flare gun a single time, because the pistol and revolver/shotgun were enough to take out any enemy. boss fights are just really slow enemies trodding around the room, you shoot them a few times they die. maybe play on survival mode first time if you want to feel any major tension tbh.

Survival horror isn’t usually my thing mostly because the absurdly difficult first Resident Evil game left a bad taste in my mouth. Signalis captures some of the same challenges R.E. presented with limited save opportunities, low quality and quantity in offensive options, and enemies that respawn. Despite this, however, I did manage to beat the game. The combat was generally not that hard once I figured out that avoiding enemies is almost always the way to go. I spent so much of the game avoiding combat that by the time I got to the final stage where you face so many enemies that you have to kill some, I had ammo aplenty stored up.

The real difficulty here is in the puzzles and some of these are doozies. I most definitely had to look up solutions on multiple occasions to even understand what I should be investigating. The use of radio frequencies, random notes that get buried in a deluge of memories, and various cryptograms make for a really challenging experience.

The basic story of the game is that you play an android on a distant planet. It seems as if the workforce on this offworld mining colony consists entirely of various android models and they’ve all gone mad. You play as Elster, whose name is derived from her model type: LSTR. The enemies you face are similarly named. This adds to the world-building by giving the artificially intelligent denizens of this depressed colony a sort of culture of their own.

Elster is searching for her human lover, Ariane, an ultimately futile attempt as this is not a game where a happy ending would have fit the theme. In my ending, Elster discovers that she is trapped in a neverending loop of trying to find Ariane and decides to give up and die.

The atmosphere in this game is really the high point. The cutscenes are strange and disturbing in the same way that early modern surrealist art often could be. There was plenty of dread and creepiness to go with the danger of the game. The devs are German but they use the German language in ways that are clearly going for atmosphere, like having the audio spout “Achtung!! Achtung!! Drei, Neun, Vier!!” in a distorted voice. The artwork is anime-inspired but definitely heavy on the dystopian, gritty noir imagery.

I had some trouble at first getting it to work on my Steam Deck. I tried some tinkering and it never helped but kept it downloaded as I primarily played on my PC, hoping it would work though it failed again and again. Eventually, one day, it downloaded something and from then it worked fine on my Deck and the cloud saves were perfect.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I could even see myself replaying it in the future.

I remember first hearing about Signalis in a video by The Sphere Hunter on youtube wherein she described it as “survival horror perfected.” I’m paraphrasing, but this game feels like the most influenced survival horror game ever made. I’ve never played Silent Hill 2 (though I know a lot about it) but I could tell that it is a MASSIVE influence on this game. It is nice to finally play that game somewhat vicariously through Signalis.

Up front, this game has fantastic atmosphere. I enjoy something that is willing to be uncompromising with its unrelentingly bleak tone. One of my favorite movies is John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” which could also be a big influence on this game. Something about exploring this abandoned facility is just such a vibe. I never felt especially confident in Signalis while making my way through the facility. I would plan routes through places based on where I knew there were enemies and how many were there. The game rewards stealth, too. Not fighting is a good choice a lot of the time. You can sneak around them, or just run. I would recommend wiping out enemies permanently if it seems like you’ll be heading through the area several times.

The limited inventory is something that I know a lot of people have bounced off of. It is unusual. This mailbox key takes up the exact same space as my shotgun. Can’t say this makes logical sense. It’s not like Resident Evil 4 with its excellent tetris inventory. It was weirdly thrilling knowing where I had to take a number of items and running out with three slots full of key items, a few healing items, and a gun with a single mag worth of ammo. It was the most minimal level of frustrating.

The story is the main crux of Signalis, though. I’ve read up on this quite a bit after finishing the game and–I’m still not sure I really understand it. There are many documents in the game and many seemingly innocuous details which are actually important. Some important details are given pretty late in the game (as far as I can tell) and are pretty important for understanding the plot. I think it’s possible that some media can stand to be LESS subtle. I think Signalis might fall into that category. I dunno. Maybe I’m a dummy dumbo.

I think at the core, this game evokes a great feeling. There is a bit of music that I keep humming occasionally after finishing the game. The melancholy melody almost makes me cry just hearing it. I will probably play it again to try to get a different ending. I can see some hope out there in the red void. Or maybe that’s just what I need to believe in to give it another try and maybe, this time, I’ll be able to fix what once went wrong. And maybe I just figured out the point of the game?

It's hard to rate Signalis. I did enjoy it a bit, but its imperfections kept troubling my experience.

Signalis is a beautiful take on classic survival horror games. It feels obvious to say this, but some of its inspirations will be thrown at your face at times and I actually liked this. It is a solid mix of the OG Resident Evil and Silent Hill, while trying to create its own identity. And it kinda does! With beautiful visuals, bloody character designs, haunting environments, ominous use of sound and cryptic story.

That is what I liked the most about Signalis. It manages to convey a retro horror portrait filled with style and mystery. The shooting mechanics work alright, weapon variety is good, soundtrack is beautiful, level design flows well, the atmosphere is great and the final boss is technically and visually impressive!

At first, it seemed like I was going to love this game, but after watching the credits, I realized that... I did not.

One of Signalis' major problems, in my opinion, is enemy placement and enemy respawn. From the moment you fall down the elevator shaft until the end of the game, levels will be FILLED with fast respawning enemies. As usual, the focus here is survival and exploration, not combat, so you're not really encouraged to do it, but you either get maimed by everybody or you waste all of your ammo. Avoiding them doesn't always work.

This messy design choice absolutely hurts exploration and story telling. To make matters even worse, there's a whole chunk of the game where you won't be able to access the map. It's frustrating and gets tiresome quick, especially while solving puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles: I didn't like most of them. Admittedly, I'm not a puzzle guy, but I know how to appreciate the clever ones. Here, they are original, sure, but ultimately unclear and overly complicated. Most of the times I was left looking at confusing and obtuse things on the screen.

And lastly but not least, the story. It is... fine, I guess? You can see influences from Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell in it (especially aesthetically), but there's something missing. Characters were interesting, the mystery kept me going, but it just didn't pay off in the end. In any of the endings, in fact. Also, there are, like, only 3 bosses in the whole game. They're good, but it could be SO much better!

Again, this is a conflicting one. I liked and disliked playing Signalis. But in the end, I just feel like not wanting to go back to it. Good idea, but wasted potential.

I felt compelled to write a review about a game that touched me during a moment where i needed to feel again, and strangely enough, Signalis was that game. It is generally typified as a game 'like resident evil and silent hill', and to be fair the resemblance is very strong. You only get 6 slots worth of items though, and while you should be prepared to run around a lot, I don't particularly find this to be a mark against the game. Let me explain.

Gameplay often asks us as players to be satisfied with combat, and oftentimes that is where many people draw their satisfaction. Your Elden Rings, your LoLs, what have you. Signalis makes gameplay tense in a way ive never felt before. I dont ever feel that im having 'fun' shooting horrors. If anything, I almost feel like I'm wasting my time, given that if I pop back into this room enough times, they'll spring back to life. What then?

At almost every turn, the game imposes choices on you and forces you to live with those decisions. There is no autosave either, so if you screw up a good ways on from a save, be prepared to start from very far away or learn to live with a whole new set of problems. Constantly, and i do mean constantly, the game is forcing you to be at odds with what you would be used to doing in a 'resident evil-style survival horror game' and what is right for you in the moment, and to cap all that off? Just when you think you're getting used to things, it throws another awful horror your way to deal with. Given the harsh scarcity of healing items and bullets in the game and the ease with which they're wasted, by the time you get down deep into the game, a repair patch you might have passed up in the first level of the game are extraordinarily precious indeed.

But none of that crap even matters to me. Well, okay, fine. It DOES, obviously, but gameplay can be meticulously crafted in any indie game. They're allowed to do that sort of thing. No, what caught me was the game's particular brand of horror. A game that directly invokes both Lovecraft's work AND The King In Yellow. This game doesnt just wear its influences on its sleeves, you are forced to reckon with them within the very game itself. Its almost as if the game is daring you to trust the veracity of what you're seeing.

I cannot spoil this story. Its too incredible to experience and I think you should play it for yourself. Trust me when I say that it is one of the most touching, heart wrenching, blood curdling experiences I have had to date. Its rumination on self and whether we can ever truly escape the ghosts of our past, as well as the simulation of memory loss in a truly dystopian world not too far from our own is...honestly, I don't say this often, but this game is just beautiful. Please play it on its own terms and experience something wonderful as well.

Wow this game is great. It draws from Silent Hill and Resident Evil a ton, while both honoring and expanding on every element.

The art style is incredible. It’s a mixture of low-poly 3D, pixel art, and illustration (I think). It looks like nothing I’ve played and it exudes atmosphere.

The game is perfectly balanced. You always feel on edge, but capable. It takes strategizing and learning your environment. The game eases you in to the madness, but you also grow more and more confident as a player.

It has all the classic stuff - inventory management and inventory puzzles, hard decisions on when to take down an enemy, interesting notes with bits of lore. As I said, each level grows a little darker and a little harder, but if you play the game smart it pays off a ton in the late game.

I had an absolute blast with this and it really is nearly a perfect game. The story is a little vague and hard to follow, but that didn’t make me lose interest. Definitely recommend to any survival horror fan.

Edit: apparently there’s a whole second half to this game after the end credits! Will update review once I do that. So excited

Edit 2: yep content after fake ending is just as good