Deep in the mines of Sierpinski, you can find a biomechanical EULE Replika unit mourning a dying STAR Replika unit. The STAR Replika unit lies in a pool of blood, and bodies surround her. If you listen closely, you can hear the EULE Replika’s sobs faintly echoing around you. The STAR Replika gently comforts her friend, even as her life fades. In their heartbreaking and emotional final moments together, you forge a powerful, human connection with these characters.
Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin. Horror games are known for their jump scares and intense gore, emphasizing isolation and loneliness to create fear. But the most gripping and compelling stories are the ones that remind us of our connections and dreams, even in moments of fear and uncertainty. They are hopeful and illustrate the value of human connection.
Developed by German game design team rose-engine, SIGNALIS is a survival horror game that masterfully weaves in tense ambiance and atmospheric terror with emotional and contemplative storytelling. It is heavily inspired by classic survival horror video games such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil, with a fixed top-down camera and resource management mechanics. And while these inspirations shape SIGNALIS, it is not defined by them, either. It is more than just a throwback, cemented as a classic and distinct addition to the horror genre through its poetic storytelling and atmospheric setting.
SIGNALIS is intentionally disorienting, dropping you immediately into new and mysterious areas with little to no explanation. Similar to the jumps between the acts of a play, our sense of time and continuity is constantly bent and disrupted. You take control of a Replika unit called LSTR-512 (better known as “Elster”) after crash-landing on a mysterious, snow-covered planet. Carrying nothing but a photograph, Elster is on a mission to find someone important to her. The story unfolds through limited cutscenes, relying primarily on the scattered notes and environmental storytelling.
In this way, SIGNALIS expects the players to engage, inherently trusting them to pick up the pieces. For example, early on in the game, you find something like the first edition copy of The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories written by Robert W. Chambers and published in 1895. Its inclusion in SIGNALIS is deliberate. Chambers’ prose and poetry, themes and narratives, echo throughout the game. The classical painting Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin is featured as one of the game’s puzzles and has thematic significance in the story. In a reality-bending sequence, players can explore the shoreline of Lake Hali near Carcosa, the city referenced in The King in Yellow, where its black spires rise towards the sky.
SIGNALIS is a game about life and death, and its references to classic literature and art deepen its story, characters, and worldbuilding, without being obtuse; you won’t find long-winded exposition dumps here. It’s all woven together as a fundamental part of the experience. The flashes of strange, disturbing images and cryptic dialogue do more than remind us that we’re playing a survival horror video game. They reinforce the notion that there is always more to the characters and setting than meets the eye. There is meaning and significance everywhere. Uncovering these secrets is incredibly refreshing and rewarding.
SIGNALIS’s visual storytelling is masterful thanks to its strong and unified art design and ambient sound design. Blending stunningly detailed 2D pixel graphics and fluid 3D motion graphics, SIGNALIS’s sci-fi world is distinct and tension-filled. The color saturation pulls you in as you navigate dark corridors with flashing lights, the floors stained with blood and littered with corpses. The sound design makes you strain your ears to hear the hum of a computer, the whirling of vents, or the sound of machinery in the background. The game’s true terrors are often best conveyed in moments of uneasy quiet, or Elster’s dry, matter-of-fact observations that belie something truly sinister. In response to an elevator shaft full of dead bodies, Elster says, “The elevator is out of order.” SIGNALIS’s sense of humor is equally amusing and terrifying.
The gameplay in SIGNALIS is smooth, responsive, and feels good to play. The button mapping is simple and intuitive, and running through corridors is fluid. Elster can equip guns or stun rods for combat, but she can only carry a limited amount of each; importantly, you only have six inventory slots. Subsequent game updates have alleviated some of these item woes by allowing healing items and ammunition to stack. While very convenient, these quality-of-life updates don’t detract from the expectation that players must manage their items wisely.
Many of the game’s locations, such as the labyrinthian Sierpinski and the confusing, flesh-infested corridors of Nowhere, are meant to be challenging to navigate. SIGNALIS requires you to engage with the combat and exploration mechanics to succeed. Because resources like ammunition and repair patches are infrequent finds, you must quickly learn enemy patterns, know when to fight or flee, and be strategic about which items to carry and when. In addition, your map includes markers for each puzzle, highlighting the ones that still need to be completed. It’s a huge time saver in a game that prioritizes the importance of resource management.
SIGNALIS features multiple puzzles to access new areas and progress. Some require you to adjust the valves on a water tank, collect key cards to open a door, or input safe codes based on a radio frequency. Refreshingly, each puzzle is different from the next, and in some cases, it adds additional layers for a new challenge. There is a bit of a learning curve for some of these puzzles. The objective isn’t always clear from the outset, and the button layouts can sometimes be confusing. Despite that, the sheer variety is welcome, and the way they add to the worldbuilding and lore of SIGNALIS is much appreciated. For example, one of the puzzles requires you to place rings on a statue’s hand in a particular order, but this isn’t just any statue; it depicts an essential figure in the game’s mythos. Small details like this show incredible attention to detail, which is persistent throughout SIGNALIS.
SIGNALIS has multiple endings that you can unlock, depending on how well you play or how quickly you beat it. You aren’t required to, but SIGNALIS encourages you to play the game multiple times to unlock the full story. The game is relatively short; on average, the main story takes about ten hours to complete. It took me about seventeen hours to beat the game on my first run, though I took my time to explore and talk to NPCs, save frequently, backtrack to manage items, and even reload so I could re-do fights more efficiently. SIGNALIS throws a lot at you, and being incentivized to play through a game again to pick up the finer details is always appreciated.
Ultimately, horror games will continue to push the envelope, finding new ways to terrorize and amaze. And while frequent jump scares can be frightening in the moment, what are players left with afterward? SIGNALIS answers this question by remaining grounded in a profoundly human and emotional story. It is a reminder of where the horror genre excels, empowering players to overcome hopeless, seemingly impossible situations.
SIGNALIS is available on Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
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