As Replika Elster, Signalis will force you to untangle a mess of writhing flesh and malfunctioning memories to separate dream from lived experience. So, in keeping with dream logic: You’ve played Signalis before, and you’ve never played anything like it. It lovingly adopts the trappings of PS1-era survival horror, and more importantly, it fully understands why those systems, aesthetics, tropes, and technical limits are so engaging. But it also presents and explores love and loss, freedom and manipulation, fear and trauma, in its own cruelly captivating way. It’s strange and familiar, gorgeous and horrible. It’s an absolute banger of a videogame, made all the more impressive by its indiest of indies price tag and two-person dev team.
Fundamentally, it's a love story. Things go bad for space technician Elster, but she made a promise she intends to keep. We’ll get back to this later. First up: Signalis excels at capturing the essence of survival horror - those juxtaposed feelings of possibility and unease that hit you entering a long hallway, flanked by doors, only to find all but two locked or malfunctioning. You’ll be back here soon enough, you know that. Probably with a new key. Maybe with a new gun. But there’s also a good chance things will have…changed, by then. A floor tile might reveal new horrors. You might have spent your last bullet. So, left or right? Or maybe back? You can only carry six items, after all.