The Haunted Hoard: Signalis (Xbox Series X)

When you first begin the sci-fi survival horror game Signalis and start encountering rampant androids that do nothing but patrol small rooms and kill anything they can get their hands on, it’s easy to think that the story will lean into a more common narrative of robots turning against their masters through corruption or malfunction. The Replika you play as, an LSTR nicknamed Elster, seems exceptional, more human than androids she’ll have to evade. As you explore more and start to uncover some of the truth behind why things went awry though, Signalis’s haunting truths start to become apparent, the final revelations near the end hitting with such intensity that even if you haven’t fully parsed the complicated plot, it can still strain your heartstrings to realize the awful truth of the situation.

 

Signalis takes place on a facility on a planet far afield from normal civilization. Separated from her human companion, Elster heads out into what seems like a barren planet only to find a subterranean facility where the Replika androids have begun to kill anything not corrupted in a similar manner to them. One of the more effective elements of the revelations Signalis doles out gradually is how long it allows you to just consider these patrolling machines as mere enemies, but the deeper in the facility you get, the more you come to understand how these humanoid machines are made in this unfortunate future. They are more than mere workers but still clearly suppressed, but Signalis also has the government overseeing this facility and many others like it be the kind of callous overreaching despotic regime where it’s hard to work out the truth from the propaganda. With the empire as willing to clinically treat its human workers the same as the Replikas, the line blurs further on what you can trust from the files you find and yet, the details that do slip through can start to elucidate some heart-breaking facts and build up moments that stick with you for their simple poignancy or dark implications.

Signalis certainly isn’t forthcoming with details to help parse its plot at points, the game flashing many sudden images that lack context until much later down the line and not even sticking to a single language for the things you uncover at parts. It is definitely an intentional obfuscation for the sake of unease and to drip feed you early previews of things that acquire deep importance later in the adventure. The slow burn and some deliberate mysteries left unsolved can certainly dissuade an inattentive player, although Elster’s mechanical nature at least allows her to retain every document in her memory for later review, this particularly helpful not just for decoding the plot but for puzzles that can require direct referencing of details found previously. Signalis does contain multiple endings interestingly enough, although the ones on offer are less tied to direct choices and more towards your play style. While one can only be obtained on a second playthrough, the others will account for things like your overall playtime, how many times you’ve died, how often you were damaged and healed away damage. The endings do mostly feel like they could all be proper payoffs so you won’t need to strain yourself to try and achieve some perfect or preferred one, and while some are certainly more cryptic or emotionally resonant, they do all work as part of the late game’s incredible ability to start to unite the pieces of the plot into something that leaves you considering all you’ve seen along the way.

 

Signalis’s story, especially with its later portions that really can wow the player, can help to leave a powerful impression, but the survival horror game does have quite a few ups and downs until then when it comes to how its interactive elements are managed. The world of Signalis is presented in a dark and detailed style that works well for creating eerie industrial spaces and shadows for foes to hide in, and while its diagonal perspective looking down on the action sometimes obscures doors on the edges of the screen, Signalis puts together designs that can both lean into the empire’s unfeeling brutalism before splashing it with the disrepair and viscera befitting the facility’s current state. The characters are often rendered in a pixelated style that obscures features and makes them look especially basic in 3D cutscenes, but more dedicated art is used for moments to evoke more emotions both positive and haunting. There can be some narrative meaning to the graphical presentation as it makes these many Replikas appear less human, but at the same time the game expects you to remember faces and yet many look pretty similar even in the higher quality art. Signalis can definitely construct unnerving locations and situations where you’re nervous about approaching the dangers you can sometimes only barely see, so its unlikely you’ll get hung up on the moments its presentation stumbles due to art style decisions.

Signalis’s hindrances are more likely to come from the composition of its exploration. The facility you find yourself in is large and filled with murderous androids, and you are meant to be careful in how you handle them. Your weapons can put them down with a few shots most of the time, but ammo isn’t too plentiful and there’s a big difference between incapacitating a danger and it truly staying dead. You aren’t just asked to consider when to stand and fight or blast your way through a room, but you have to think about which enemies you want to more permanently eliminate since that’s an even greater strain on your resources. Elster is certainly capable, but her activities will put her in constant conflict with increasingly more deadly android designs while your own attack options are much slower to evolve, but the item management is what is meant to add tension to even a simple encounter even if Signalis perhaps doesn’t approach your inventory in the best manner.

 

You have six item slots at any time, you usually should at least have one gun and maybe its ammunition. You can only carry so much ammunition in one slot, Signalis not allowing you to have a second set of ammunition in hand at the same time. Keys, puzzle items, and other objects necessary for progress also fill these slots, and some spaces require modules like a flashlight to be able to even act in a space. At the game’s save rooms there is a storage box you can move items into and out of, but even if you don’t want to scrounge up every bullet you find, it feels like returning to such boxes becomes a far too frequent necessity as you shuffle around items you need and support tools, and after doing so you might head into a new room and then realize you didn’t bring the right key item. It is not difficult to see the intention behind this design, Signalis wanting you to head through certain areas repeatedly to increase the risk involved in not dealing with certain enemies and testing your resolve in trying to work your way through an area with little back up gear or healing items. However, Signalis often sends you backtracking across the facility quite a bit, the player sometimes heading to a floor, doing an important interaction in one room, having to walk off to head up to another floor and cover ground there to do a single action there before heading out to another distant location. Retreading ground was already inevitable by design without the inventory woes, Signalis not helping it when sometimes it can be a little unclear where to head on top of these details.

 

Luckily, some of the puzzles and interactions do help Signalis recover from the more tedious parts of solving them. Signalis will do things like sometimes switch you into first-person exploration to interact with areas, this sometimes for more immersive play and at others helping you to better manage a range of dials or systems at once. Signalis has some puzzles where you need to feel your way through mechanical interactions until you solve how to move things properly, it has times you need to tap into electronic signals to try and figure out clues for how to proceed, and some symbol parsing or details tied to story notes help to make unraveling the truth and working your way towards your goal more diverse and certainly more compelling than just handling the right keys and codes. The actual action in Signalis is often more about its weight as a danger to your safety, the player needing to endanger themselves a bit to properly line up shots for the best damage and accuracy so it is more about decisions than adrenaline-pumped fights. In fact, the game’s few bosses are often not much of a step up from regular battles, the last one certainly more trying than anything else you face but before then most enemies are set apart by durability and doggedness in pursuing you. The first boss did have an unfortunate glitch occur though where their vulnerability period was slashed to what felt like a third of a second when I first fought them, but mostly in combat, your mind is doing a lot more work than your fingers and when you do get hurt you often feel more like you made a poor judgment call rather than your reflexes or aim failed you.

THE VERDICT: Signalis has a powerful pay-off for the slow build of its story, a building horror helped by the uncanny situations and unsettling sights that bear you through its more confusing moments. Puzzles come in a range of shapes so unique interactions continue to keep your mind busy between puzzling out the plot, and even enemy encounters tend to be more about weighing the value of engaging with them rather than needing to be capable in combat. The inventory management and backtracking does start to reach obnoxious levels at times, but the details of the world end up so compelling that you soldier on and are rewarded for pushing through to see its more artistic and thoughtful moments.

 

And so, I give Signalis for Xbox Series X…

A GOOD rating. My heart wants to give the game a GREAT and I am certain many will happily rate it even higher as the plot eventually clicks into place with incredible pathos that lands so well thanks to the way it spaces out key details to string you along or upend your preconceptions. At the same time, there will be players who might scoff, because it is also quite easy to get disheartened by the need to keep swapping around key items or unusual objects in your storage box, and even if you were immaculate in having the right items on hand every time, you still need to retread so many spaces it can become confusing and not always with the same intentionality that the plot gets away with thanks to its strong finale and good sense for what questions should have their answers more ambiguous. The puzzles are a fortunate part of the game’s design as they can ease up the focus on traversing the facility so often, and when an area is fresh, the tension of trying to slink around less attentive androids and the fear of contending with a situation that could go awry helps them to be initially appropriate for a horror title. Some conflict is underwhelming but that’s because encounters work best when you’re making decisions rather than the game leaning on peril and activity to sustain such things, but Signalis also doesn’t try to go too long without catching your interest with some new element in its world or unfolding narrative so you can’t settle into too comfortable a play style and erode the horror.

 

Signalis’s incongruity between handling the distribution of story details and the amount of necessary traversal ends up pushing it down a bit lower than it probably deserves, but the quality in what it handles best pierces through the moments of frustration or tedium as you end up engrossed in a setting and tale that contains much greater depths than its cryptic start primes you for. Much like that plot, Signalis is complicated and it’s vital certain things click into place for it to work, but stay focused and stay committed and Signalis’s narrative on matters of life, suppression, futility, and other heavy themes will come together in a fascinating way.