What's Good About Signalis
Told y’all I’d make it up.
As I’ve noted multiple times over the last few years, I’m a coward. I get startled very easily, and it leads to my anxiety spiking. But there is a lot there that I like: the sense of loneliness in a hostile space, the puzzles, the air of dread from the unknown or very known monsters taking a chunk out of your ass, etc. But the original heyday of the genre was in the original PlayStation and being in a one-console household in the 90s, my siblings and I gravitated towards the Nintendo 64. This sucks because I didn’t realize that horror as a genre could benefit greatly from the interactivity of games until I was much older. This brings up this week’s spoopy entry, Signalis. Developed by rose-engine, the two-person team of Yuri Stern and Barbara Wittmann, Signalis is their love letter and take on the survival horror which I’ve played this week. And I can confirm that it’s not only a great horror game but could be one of the best games of the year.
Taking place on a derelict mining facility at the edge of the solar system, Signalis takes place from the perspective of an android technician named Elster. She awakens on her ship alone, with both her ship damaged and her human partner missing. Upon getting to the facility it becomes quickly apparent that shit went sideways and it’s up to you to find out what happened. The story so far does not shy away from its influences, chief among them the cosmic horror stylings and tropes of H.P. Lovecraft. Minus all of the racist stuff, thankfully. The facility itself is run down, broken and dirty. The monsters you encounter are all androids who’ve been warped and changed into strange, flesh-obsessed creatures, the use of memories and flashbacks tie into it plot beats that also feel incredibly dream-like, and an aura of hopelessness so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw. Hell, you even find an ancient copy of The King in Yellow and the game opens with an excerpt of Lovecraft's short story "The Festival". This game is not subtle in the least. But at the same time, it doesn’t rest on its laurels and is using all of that to both subvert expectations and do its own thing, and I respect the hell out of it.
The influences aren’t just in The narrative and themes. It’s also in the mechanics and structure. Signalis is a PS1 ass PS1 game and I mean that as a compliment. Its perspective in the game simulates the fixed camera angles of the day but is functionally more top-down from what I’ve noticed. And the game is full of tricks like that, between the chunky pixels on the 3D models to make them look hella old, the darker lighting, and even the visual filters on it all make Signalis look like a game that never got released in the ’90s and was discovered today. Its controls also do their best to emulate the tank controls of the day, but still, feel modern enough that you don’t need to worry about them. The same goes for combat, I can count the number of times that I’ve fought enemies trying to kill me on one hand. But I can tell you that this game is big on puzzles.
There are puzzles with multiple moving parts, components and even locations that tie them together. This combined with the inventory only having six slots is where the real challenge comes into play. Because there are lots of puzzle pieces and keys to keep track of on top of weapons, ammo, and healing items. And while I will admit that some of these puzzles are obtuse to the point where I had to look up a guide for some of them, they weren’t the most obnoxious thing in the world. It’s also a pretty short game as well, I managed to get through half of it in nearly three sittings, which is what made the decision to get me to write about Signalis in the first place.
Signlais is a great horror game that I cannot talk more about because of some of the more out-there and weird shit it gets into. Just know that if you like your horror on the more Lovecraftian side (minus the bigotry of course) and want something that’s also quick to get through, I highly recommend it.
