These are hard times for the Survival Horror genre or it would be better to say that always have been hard times. There have been empty promises of a returnal but I´m not sure about that, I can´t stop thinking that there are too many remakes but no new ideas, seems like we´ve got stucked and to be honest, I think I´ve given up, or that´s what I was thinking until I got to play Signalis, a game that made me feel the sensations I got while playing old Silent Hill and Resident Evil games, Signalis is a videogame that has given me hope for the future, that maybe not everything is lost.
Signalis is set into a dystopian future where the technology is at its peak, humanity can even colonize planets and stuff; in this world, there are Gestalt and Replikas, Gestalt are the humans you would see in your everyday, in the other hand, Replikas are like copies, which are androids who are, like I said, copies of Gestalt people. Normally, a Gestalt and a Replika are put together in order to work for the nation, this time being a totalitarian nation. I´d like to give more details but I think it´s better if you find out by yourself the story.
The thing is, the ship we are on suffers an accident and we land on an unkown surface, when we woke up from the accident, our ship is highly damaged so no way to return, our Gestalt parthner is nowhere to be found too. Elster, which is the name of the Replika, decides to find her Gestalt parthner, instead of searching for our dead wife, we´ll search someone who we don´t even know if is really alive, this is where the nightmare begins.
Signalis contains a higly opressive atmosphere which is no easy task to make in a videogame, all of this due to certain circumstances. You see, Signalis doesn´t need a complex soundtrack, jumpscares or a high budget to make you feel scared, silence is one thing that Signalis needs to make an uncomfortable setting.You enter into a more or less dark room, there is no one or nothing attacking you, however, that silence in the room only makes you feel more uncomfortable, you feel a strange sensation of paranoia, despite the fact that there is nothing there, you prepare for the worst, it´s incredible how many feelings the game makes you feel with silence and the correct setting.
Well, Signalis is not everything about silence, there is a soundtrack which is pretty good, but overall, the game uses ambient sounds, like metalic sounds which can make the player uncomfortable, the sounds of the monsters can get really uncomfortable, more in stresful situations, if you played Silent Hill you´ll understand what I´m talking about.
Elster is not a super android or something and this is something that is well implemented through the gameplay, what I´m trying to controlling her feels like controlling a normal person, the gameplay can get pretty tough if you are not used to this kind of games, she is not that fast and controlling the aim can get a little annoying when you are in a grave situation. The game scenarios are pretty reduced, so you can imagine moving through them can be complicated when there is a lot of monsters over the area, Signalis uses everything at its advantage so we can feel insecure, but without getting unfair.
Signalis knows that monsters are part of the main course but I like the fact that it knows its monsters are not everything, that the scenario and how it plays with the player is even more important. Games these days are so obsessed with showing you a “creepy“ monster at the begining and letting it to follow you anywhere that it gets boring pretty fast, in the other hand, Signalis makes you to get used to the scenario and the monsters actually take their time to appear, so their appearance makes even more impact.
Signalis, at the end of the day, is a psychological horror game, so the way it makes horror is by subtlety, sure there is some gore and monsters and all you want, but the game use a lot of details to finish decorating the setting, details which I can say they did more to the psycological horror stuff than the monster, that´s why I say Signalis understand its scenario is pretty important, of course, the game is inspired way too much in Silent Hill, still I think Silent Hill is the king at the hour of subtle horror, even so, what a great job Signalis did.
As usual in this kind of game, the ammo is scarce and quite a lot, at first I felt that the game was giving me a lot of ammo but later I realized that it was only giving me what was necessary and a little more, keep in mind that in Signalis there is no melee weapon, so we will totally depend on firearms to defend ourselves, as I said before, the game does a great job of making us feel insecure without being unfair to the player, the game provides you with the tools but it´s up to you to manage everything in the best way possible.
Signalis, as I mentioned before, has a very oppressive and dark setting, I couldn't help feeling lonely while playing it, in a place where darkness and monsters reign, loneliness is the only thing I could feel. Besides loneliness, Signalis is a video game that expresses a lot the feeling of sadness and melancholy, it is not a happy game, on the contrary, if you immerse yourself in the game enough, you will be able to feel all those sensations. Yes, it is true that there are characters, but very few of them, we don't know anything about them, if they are a threat, even if there are characters, we talk to them on very few occasions.
Signalis is a Survival Horror game and we all know this kind of game contains puzzles, and let me tell you, this game is difficult when we are talking about puzzles. At first, easy puzzles, then I don´t know why but the game just let you be with a puzzle and they don´t even explain you what to do right and if they do, they just tell you pretty basic stuff, sometimes puzzles can get way too cryptical, I´m someone who doesn´t like to use guides and I had to use one like three times and I felt kind of bad because of that not gonna lie.
In this game, there is a whole mechanic which involves a radio, I mean, every Replika is built in with a radio, said radio works with frequencies and it´ll be used in puzzles sometimes, but trust me, it´s really cool, frequencies in this game are important. These frequencies can be chilling or stressful, especially in situations where you have to use it and you are in a quiet environment, the sounds that emanate with static really doesn´t leave you indifferent.
Signalis is not a perfect video game, there is a design decision that I don't know if it is the most correct. In this game there is an inventory which is extremely limited which is understandable, this problem existed before in videogames of this nature and the solution was to allow said inventory to be expanded, however, in Signalis can´t be expanded, you are forced to carry only 6 items, forever. I wouldn´t complain about this if it wasn´t by the fact that the game gives you a lot of items: Guns, ammo, key items, etc.
Like I said, the game gives you a lot of items, a lot, most of the times you´ll have to do a big quantity of backtracking, there were a lot of times when I found like three or four key items and I just wanted to kill myself because I had no more space in the inventory and I had to do some backtracking and evading some monsters that I didn´t kill in order to save ammo and oh my god, imagine doing this for the rest of the game, well, it sures gets you in the edge of the chair, because, you´ll really have to calculate what is better to carry and if you missed something, bakctracking to some safe room to saving items into a box and then returning to recollect that item you missed, then, once again, returning to the safe room, it can get pretty stresful, I remember this happened a lot tome when my life was low and I was low on ammo too.
I can't help but think that Signalis has surprised me quite a bit, I had expectations for the game but they were exceeded it greatly. Signalis is a dark, sad, melancholic and terrifying video game that, despite its limitations such as the low budget for being an indie, manages to shine.
It´s s a video game that understands the genre and it´s a bit sad we are not able to play proposals like these in AAA games. I found it curious that Signalis has a strong inspiration in cinema, in directors like Stanley Kubrick or in works like Neon Genesis Evangelion, others like Ghost in the Shell. The truth is, Signalis is a very psychedelic video game.
All of the screenshots were taken by me