Signalis review: potent, terrifying sci-fi survival-horror on Game Pass

SignalisA new sci-fi survival horror game from developers rose-engine (aka Barbara Wittmann and Yuri Stern) opens with the last line excerpt from HP Lovecraft’s 1925 short story.festival“:

Big holes have been secretly dug where the pores of the earth should have been enough, learning to walk what should crawl.

As far as the epigraph goes, it’s a pretty fitting one considering it takes dozens of hours to complete the game.

Players assume the role of Elster, a “replica” android who wakes up from hypersleep and goes on a reconnaissance mission aboard a small spaceship after crash-landing on a remote, snowy planet. With no memory of what happened, Elster ventures deep into an abandoned underground facility in search of answers and missing companions. But what she finds is a murderous host of zombified androids that roam and hunt survivors.

A self-proclaimed love letter to the golden age of survival horror, Signalis is a third-person horror shooter with fixed top-down camera angles and interactive puzzles similar to the early Resident Evil games. The game may switch to first-person perspective at key moments in the story. Silent Hill 4: The Roomplayers navigate through fugue-like interactive dream sequences to retrieve important items and solve puzzles.

The plot is decidedly sinister. It is conveyed more through moody imagery, brooding music, and environmental storytelling than spoken word. Themes of identity, abuse, trauma, and suicide permeate the game, creating an oppressive and evocative atmosphere that challenges players to put the pieces together themselves while gesticulating toward every answer. The game’s oblique storytelling makes some of the finer details of Sub-her character’s relationship with Elster a little harder to parse, but the broader emotional stakes of her personal arc are more than just an understatement. It ultimately has devastating effects.

Image: rose-engine/Humble Games, PLAYISM

SignalisDrawing aesthetics freely from anime and manga like Hideaki Anno Neon Genesis EVANGELIONTsutomu Nihei Blame!and Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film Ghost in the Shell. and stylistically reminiscent of The use of fast-cut intertitle cards during cutscenes that superimposes Japanese kanji text and ominous German phrases in Tatsuya Oishi’s Kizumonogatari trilogy. No, but in the end it settles into a visual language that is just as utterly bizarre as it is utterly engrossing.

the universe of Signalis It revolves around a fascistic space civilization with retro sci-fi tendencies in Eurasia that governs every aspect of its citizens’ lives with ruthless precision. This totalitarianism extends to the game’s inventory system, which limits players to carrying no more than six objects at a time, per the Empire’s “Rule of Six” protocol. In reality, though, this is just a clever in-universe way to articulate that the game pays homage to the design principles of its ancestors. That same DNA is reflected in another aspect of the game’s design: difficulty.

Early combat encounters are straightforward. Scavenge for ammo and mow down slow-moving enemies with your trusty laser sight. In some cases, throw in a healthy stomp as a good measure. However, the problem increases after about 5 hours. Fallen enemies will randomly heal from mortal wounds if their corpse is not incinerated with either a thermite he torch or a flare gun round.

Image: rose-engine/Humble Games, PLAYISM

Each level of the complex has a limited amount of ammo, so you need to carefully consider where and when to use your bullets and health items. Killing just one enemy may mean later at the mercy of hordes of enemies.

But even this is nothing compared to the steep difficulty curve of the game’s puzzles. The first dozen or so problems are easily solved by intuition and close observation (or simple brute force guesswork). But around the same time enemies start reviving themselves, a late-game puzzle almost exactly recalls the most obscure-looking detail in the various documents and posters scattered throughout the complex. It’s starting to be necessary.

Often this leads to an exhausting amount of backtracking, especially common in the final third of the game, in true Resident Evil throwback fashion, otherwise adrenaline pumping. Stop the momentum of the race. There was one puzzle I was able to solve, especially since I had the good fortune to take lots of screenshots via the Steam overlay during my playthrough. Signalis It has a unique and convenient in-game screenshot feature in the form of an equipable “video module” that can record up to 6 photos at once.

Image: rose-engine/Humble Games, PLAYISM

Another important element introduced in the middle of the game was the thematic tuning of these modes of gameplay, as well as the game’s combat and puzzle mechanics, allowing the player to hear certain sound frequencies. A radio module that can Certain enemies can distort the player’s vision, causing a flood of static noise and visual artifacts that obscure his display heads-up. The only way to fight back is to tune your radio to the same frequency these creatures emit (the exact number flashes briefly on the screen when you enter the area).

Whether it’s the high pitch of a radio signal or the low growl of an android zombie, Signalis‘The sound design is perfect. And so is the music. Co-composer his 1000 Eyes and his Cicada Sirens weave a pathetic and occasionally jarring score that easily complements classical arrangements such as Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude” and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” . Combined with an eerie post-industrial sci-fi setting, both the sound design and music create an atmospheric and immersive experience that draws the player in.

Signalis It’s a game that asks you to dive into the abyss again and again and face what you encounter there. Those willing to look beyond its occasional nagging pain points and homage-filled surface will find a surprisingly intimate look at cosmic horror. , and how far they will go to keep their promises to their friends.

Signalis Releases October 27th via Game Pass on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. This game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Humble Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.