During the busy fall season, when the AAA titles compete for a shout-out, we sometimes overlook the smaller but equally exciting titles. SIGNALIS from German duo Rose Engines, clearly fond of PlayStation 1-era survival horror games, caught my attention, but rats, Norse gods, and an invasion from outer space have me exploring the retro-futuristic spaces of Sierpinski Base only now and corridor. While a review about two months after its release might seem a bit stale, this is a “better late than never” situation, as SIGNALIS is both a beautiful and twisted love letter to its seldom-locked past , and also an incredible fashion plunge into a cosmic nightmare that I never wanted to wake up to.
At first glance, SIGNALIS’ mix of low-poly and pre-rendered environments looks like an utterly classic rendition of early Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, but within a few minutes, Rose Engine’s impeccable sense of style reveals its face. The Sierpinksi base is kept in a dark palette full of shades of gray and brown, but classic third-person exploration is often broken up by shifting into first-person as you investigate key locations like elevators, TVs, and communication relays. Here, pre-rendered images really flesh out the detailed retro-futuristic world. It’s a trick the Resident Evil games also master, but Rose Engine goes the extra mile by introducing longer sequences in first-person. Then there are the cutscenes, for example, which look completely different from the rest of the game with their sharp edges and bold use of red. Besides the frequent use of stylized title cards that introduce new chapters or special rooms, they give SIGNALIS a visual appearance unlike any other game I can recall. It’s blatant and eclectic in some ways, but the Rose Engines seem so confident in the way they approach the different styles that the end result seems utterly cohesive.
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Fortunately, behind the impeccable presentation, beats a heart that is both narrative and mechanical. The former in particular guides Silent Hill, with its ambiguous relationship with reality and missing girlfriend, but never feels copied. This is partly due to the setting – the aforementioned Sierpinski base – which is set on the edge of the solar system and its retro-futuristic interior, a far cry from the silent city. The same goes for the replicas that make up the bulk of the game’s cast. Artificial intelligence is modeled on real, flesh-and-blood humans. You are alone, and it was your search for girlfriend Alina that brought you to the Sierpinsky base, where you were a stranger to most people.
As a location, Sierpinski is perfect for this methodical survival horror. The era of chaos that seems to continue down to the core of the earth and the indescribable that must be hidden in the depths. You start at the top and slowly work your way down by exploring, fighting, and walking in search of answers. SIGNALIS revels in the unknown and ambiguity, but you always feel like you have a clear purpose, even if everything around you can be explained. As usual with psychological horror, there’s an emotional core that propels you forward — think of James Sunderland’s quest for answers in Silent Hill 2. In SIGNALIS, it’s the relationship with your missing girlfriend, the nature and circumstances of which are constantly being negotiated through new revelations.
Around a central relationship, Rose-engine builds an impressively well-crafted world through journals, journals, promotional posters, and stuff as dry as an instruction manual. While our two central characters are flanked by secondary characters, the storyline is comprehensive. I actually think SIGNALIS’ story would be fine for a less detailed universe, but the game’s incredible sense of place is certainly enhanced by the amount of detail. I probably don’t need to know what it’s like to live on all the fictional solar system planets and colonies, but that’s why I still read it with great curiosity.
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All in all, exploring the world of SIGNALIS has been a real pleasure. The game borrows heavily its structure from Resident Evil 2, with its few large areas consisting of countless rooms and corridors. Each area is like a jigsaw puzzle where you have to put everything together correctly, but as soon as you move on to the next area, the slate is wiped clean–although you keep usable items, of course. Puzzles range from simple to complex, and you’ll need to connect pieces of information from several different locations. One of my favorites is digging through medical records and finding a social security number I read in an email that should be the combination for a lock elsewhere in the area. Some of the more esoteric puzzles involve tuning the radio to the correct frequency to produce specific patterns that you then have to identify around you, but even in these moments SIGNALIS strikes a nice balance between challenging your little gray, without becoming too abstract or disjointed. This is mostly due to the very useful map, which conveniently marks particularly interesting locations and color-codes doors based on whether they are open, openable with a key or similar, or completely inaccessible. A great example of a quality of life that helps bring the genre into the modern age without compromising its spirit.
However, as the source of the inspiration suggests, you can’t solve Sierpinski’s conundrum at your leisure. A mysterious disease strikes the base’s inhabitants, turning them into twisted hunks of flesh with a burning urge to kill. SIGNALIS enemies come in several different variations of the same type, and can be dispatched with some of the most obvious firearms, such as pistols, shotguns, revolvers, and grenade launchers. Unlike Inspiration, you don’t have to worry about aiming up or down, just make sure you aim at enemies long enough to hit effectively. It’s a powerful but unobtrusive system, and oftentimes it’s worth going broke, especially since the termites that keep enemies stuck forever are in short supply. Resource management in particular plays an important role and ends up being a double-edged sword. At best, this aspect forces you to think about what you really need on the go, but in SIGNALIS, it’s so restrictive that it often requires going back to the nearest chest or reloading your last saved game to get Get the correct key items. In the early areas of the game, where the progression is more linear, it’s not a major problem, but toward the end, where SIGNALIS opens up more, it’s a real nuisance.
However, the above is far from enough to dampen my enthusiasm for Rose Engine’s debut. With its brilliant presentation, powerful gameplay, and ambiguous, emotional, and multi-layered narrative, SIGNALIS is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have this year. It was the presentation that got my attention, it was the gameplay that got it, but it was the story that cemented my love for SIGNALIS and made it my favorite indie game of the past year.