Intro
Signalis the game is brought to life thanks to the rose engine and it is a simple, classical inspired, and pure, honest horror survival gaming experience without repetitive filler content, that delivers a unique sci fi cosmic horror art style and emotional driven story telling experience packaged in Japanese, German, sexy yet befitting art style.
Gamers on all platforms like Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S consoles, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 along side the Nintendo Switch and PC can get their hands on it digitally available now and soon in February of 2023 in physical form. It is also available in Xbox Game Pass.
Gameplay
Signalis has simple gameplay wise is reminiscence of the original classical survival video games like silent hill and resident evil. It is a top down view, pixel, art, survival shooter with minor melee abilities with a limited inventory of six items to navigate the world.
It is a sci fi only single player narrative experience that brings the tension home with resident evil levels of weak melee weapons forcing the combat fight to take place at weapons length like pistols and shotguns.
The game world is all interconnected rooms where you search and find keys or items that aid in the puzzles by combining items in safe rooms allowing you to carry the tools you need in order to survive.
You will encounter enemies that can be pushed when you don’t have ammo in the pistols, or shotguns that you find throughout the game world as you attempt to make sense of what and why you are doing what you are doing in this mysterious planet.
The game starts off simple and easy, but you will find out that the difficulty increases dramatically as the game progresses, epically, towards the end, with enemies that will come back to life, pop out of vents and floors, plus simple, easy, yet satisfying claustrophobic boss fights.
I would say that it is not the games fault per say, but if you progress in the game considerably, let’s say two or three hours in and then you stop for a few days coming back can be hard because the game doesn’t necessarily spoonfeed you what you were supposed to do next and with the map being a little hard to understand new players might be thrown off at first, but use guides and stretch your brain muscles trust me the pain is worth it.
The enemy variety is a bit limited for my liking, but it was made by 2 people so I forgive that easily cause what is there is for the most part simple, classical, and effective use of survival horror enemy game design.
Story
The game’s story takes place in a dystopian future presented in a way that makes you think and ponder the ending and meaning of the story, rather than just complete the game, and get told what the story means. You are meant to ponder it.
I personally found the storytelling mechanics of the female workers and male and female representation through the machines in a supposedly communist style work environment interesting.
I won’t go much in the details to avoid spoilers, so let me just say that it is not an easy story to digest, and you are left to interpret, in my opinion, the meaning of things, for it is not based on logic and reality, per say.
Graphics/Performance
For graphics and performance of Signalis the game I won’t be doing a deep analysis because it performs good and it looks good for its unique art style. It runs efficient and beautifully on any device that you can play it on pretty much and I honestly hope it comes to mobile like iPhone and Android soon.
I do recommend playing it on an OLED Tv or Monitor for it looks beautiful.
Sound
When it comes to sound, just take a listen:
For being done mostly by two people, I think the sound design is simple, yet really effective at delivering claustrophobic adrenaline rush moments accompanied with a calmness that invigorate the whole experience into a roller coaster of survival horror emotions.
Achievements/Fan Service
On the achievements side, the game is actually easy to get all the achievements and according to trueachievements.com, you can get them all with an 8 to 10 hours. You can even finish it in less time if you want to speed run it.
On the fan service side to things the anime Japanese inspired characters have cute, gorgeous, big eyes, and the feminine figure is represented through the art style itself and it I find it fitting and satisfying. Therefore I give it a thumbs up man of culture approved and if you think it’s not enough, I’m gonna have to recommend that you go touch some grass right now. Pause the video and go.
Conclusion – Silent Hill Meets Ghost In The Shell Signalis survival horror game review
To conclude, I will say that this is one of the survival horror games that will go down in history as a simple yet really high-quality Indie developer. Success story game that I believe any fan of survival horror. Specially, classical style, resident, evil, and Silent Hill titles needs to give it a chance and experience.
I don’t replay most of my single player games fully thru so I won’t working towards the extra endings, but I can say I’m glad and proud of having had the opportunity to experience this unique journey into madness from the rose engine publisher.
I invite you to check out our review in another great survival horror game The Callisto Protocol from the creators of Dead Space
