SIGNALIS

About SIGNALIS

SIGNALIS is a survival horror game by rose-engine, a two-person studio, released on October 27, 2022. It is set in a future where humanity has colonised the solar system under Eusan, a totalitarian regime that rules through surveillance and propaganda and uses android Replikas as workers, civil servants and Protektors. You play Elster, a technician Replika who wakes from cryostasis in a wrecked vessel, stranded on a cold planet, and sets out to find her lost partner. Her search leads into a doomed facility, mostly a mining complex on a remote world, whose other Replikas have turned hostile.

You explore from an overhead view through low-poly 3D rooms built to look like horror of the late 1990s and early 2000s, with pixel textures, grain and a CRT-style haze, and at times the view shifts to first person. The rules are old-school: interconnected rooms, locked doors, logical and abstract puzzles, an inventory of six slots (five once you carry the flashlight), finite healing, and saves only in safe rooms, which also hold storage chests. The map marks doors as locked, barred or open as you find them.

A few things set it apart from its kin. A radio tuner decodes signals that give clues and are sometimes used in combat. From the Resident Evil remake it borrows a panic item slot and incendiaries for burning corpses, since downed enemies can get up again. PC Gamer notes that it avoids sudden loud scares in favour of constant insecurity, with industrial drones on the soundtrack.

Its makers name Kubrick, Hideaki Anno and David Lynch among its inspirations, and its mood sits closer to Silent Hill than to action. There are alternate endings that reward a second run. It runs on PC through Steam, on PlayStation 4 (playable on PS5), Xbox One and Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, and suits players who want old-school survival horror, puzzles and a slow, unsettling mystery.

How to play SIGNALIS

1. Buy SIGNALIS on Steam for PC, or on the PlayStation Store, Xbox or Nintendo eShop.
2. Play as Elster and explore the facility from the overhead view, checking the map, which marks doors as locked, barred or open.
3. Manage your six inventory slots, leaving what you do not need in the storage chests of safe rooms.
4. Use the radio tuner to pick up signals that give clues, and solve the puzzles that open the next area.
5. Save in safe rooms, and decide fight or flight for each enemy, since ammunition and healing are finite.
6. Follow the mystery of Elster's lost partner toward one of the game's endings.

Tips

• Keep your inventory lean: some puzzles need free slots, and the flashlight takes one of the six.
• Downed enemies can rise again, so burn their bodies with incendiaries where you will pass often, or go around them.
• Set a healing item in the panic slot so you can use it quickly in a fight.
• Try the radio in new places; its signals give puzzle clues and can help in combat.
• Explore for spare supplies, but save ammunition for threats you cannot walk past.

Questions