Signalis immediately mesmerised me when I first played the demo in Steam Next Fest. Survival horror is one of my favourite genres. Unfortunately, apart from Resident Evil: Village, we haven’t gotten many in the current year. So naturally, my excitement was high. And the preview backed up my excitement very well to the point that this is one of my hotly anticipated titles.
I generally do not write previews of games I tend to review because I feel I won’t do justice to them. Hence, I’ll write about my overall experience and the various emotions I was going through while playing the preview.
The zero hour
It is all dark. Our player character Elster wakes up from a pod with nothing around her. Accompanied by silence, the game gave away that something was wrong. Regardless, I kept going through the crashed spaceship. Throughout the preview, I discovered two things which set the tone for the overall game and the world-building.
Firstly, the propaganda posters. Signalis takes place in a world run by a totalitarian government. The few letters in the preview by crewmates also gave that away. It is a world where people were forced to do bidding for the government, and any protest results in stern actions.
The second was the inventory screen. I accidentally opened it up while pressing all the keyboard buttons. The first thing I noticed is that it has limited space. At a time, five things are allowed to be carried by Elstar, bringing inventory management. Signalis makes it clear that they have to micromanage what items they want.
With both of these things going through my mind, Signalis introduced the first puzzle of the title: a button lock. Once again, backtracking through the crashed spaceship, we reach the cockpit.
Inside, the perspective changes to first-person for us to pick up a convenient polaroid picture.
The picture introduces another feature – examining things inside the inventory. Behind this polaroid, we find the puzzle for the player. With answers, we gather the second item and venture out.
Protecting Oneself
The second half introduces us to the combat against this hellish creature inside a mining factory. Elster picks up a gun and some bullets. However, the bullets were limited and finite throughout the map. This introduces the other factor of Signalis – resource management.
Signalis wants players to avoid enemies instead of shooting and wasting their bullets. Instead, ammo conservation and usage are incentivised for moments where it is needed. For example, two enemies blocked my way, with no option of avoiding them. At that time, I used the trusty handgun to incapacitate them for some head stomping. Titles like Silent Hill 2 and more inspired the enemy encounters in Signalis, and it works well.
The preview gave a great idea of what Signalis tried to do – present a stylish survival horror title. The game’s totalitarian tones, with the momentary cryptic storyline and the survival horror gameplay loop, make Signalis one of my most anticipated games from this month.
Signalis by rose-engine and Humble Games launches for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on October 27, 2022.
