The elevator ate Elster's key, and she can't call Maintenance about it because they're zombies now. Robot zombies. Isn't that always the way? Twitch stream with chat: / 1674777657
Radio Voices: 2 1 8 4 1 2 4 1 7 8 ... Seems to be number stations, repeating number sequences like in the intro. (What are they for? It's a surprise tool that might help us later. Maybe.) ID Card: Starling - S2320 Overseer Sick Bay Level 3 Cycle 3-9 5 key surgery door: Special Access Surgery Theater Side note: The signs near the center are Bagua trigrams, Taoist symbols that correspond to certain elements, numbers, body parts and so forth. They could be considered a 3 bit sequence, with 3 lines and each either broken or unbroken. As such, there are 8 possible configurations. For example, the L key position stands for "Luft" (Air), with the corresponding trigram confirming this. VCR: "The way home" Writing behind white haired girl: "Keep door closed at all times" (the entire train is plastered with generic passive aggressive German rail safety decals) Side note: We get the Gold card here, with the trigram for "Heaven". Interestingly, the trigram doesn't seem to be associated with gold, and the corresponding lock at the door has the letter "K". While all other letters are just the first letter of each element, I am not certain what the K could mean. I like how the Ara replica's welding mask is positioned to look like a fancy, elegant hat. As the complaint form implies, they are anything but. Some backseat gaming: Check the notes. The notes usually have all answers needed for puzzles. If stuck with a puzzle, check the notes. However, the game is called SIGNALIS after all, and we got a lot of proper signalling action here. A bit of a background about one of the inspirations behind the replica designs: They seem to be heavily based on the works of Tsutomu Nihei. You might have heard of him either through the Netflix adaptions of Blame! or Knights of Sidonia. By the by, Q Hayashida, creator of Dorohedoro was an assistant mangaka of his. You might see some influences here and there. Blame! is fairly popular in German speaking countries due to a getting a translated release in the mid 2000s, just as the manga phenomenon was taking off. Nihei's earlier works like Blame! feature a signature style of extremely lanky characters, often either cyborgs or artificial humans with chalk white skin, raven black hair and dressed in black bodysuits. The main characters of Blame! and Biomega are extremely powerful cyborgs, equipped with a deceptively small but powerful handgun. Blame! also features a female rival named Sanakan, whom Elster is a dead ringer for.
SIGNALIS is the game I keep getting mixed up in my head with "the machine that breathes". I remember the demo for that game being so refreshing, with a similar sort of atmosphere and old school horror feel, not to mention it's fun utilization of pixelart. Both games feature a female robot protagonist suddenly awaking and the player having to slowly unravel the story themselves. However, SIGNALIS is unfortunately a game that unlike "the machine that breathes" feels like it's mashing too many genres and vibes together; zombie horror, sci fi, and psychological BS horror (I don't know what else to call it, whenever Devs think they're witty when they flash things across the screen and make the story harder to comprehend lmao). "the machine that breathes" just stuck to sci fi and it felt much better even only as a demo. I think it's safe to say it's important to stay focused when making a game and not get wound up in too many ideas/references. That is to say, the game looks gorgeous. I love the fact its top down and also 1st person, the shading is incredibly atmospheric and the simple 3d models look awesome, it all gives me a very 3DS game vibe but more polished than that hardware could handle.
Signalis is a game that ... I want to like more than I do. I would rather have a game like this than many others and I think it has very neat ambitions and love behind it. But it unfortunately - to me - collapses under the weight of its references and love of survival horror and horror at large. I've had a good amount of people disagree with me vehemently and I understand that. This is very much a queer cosmic horror story. Drawing heavily from the collection The King In Yellow is a blatant reference and affection on the part of the game. But I think the handling of allusions is poorly done. I think that the queerness is superficial - and I know this is mean to say, I know this game was made by queer people. My issue is rooted in how heavily it obscures its narrative, leading to the undertones to be six feet underground much of the time. It has endless flashing screens for cutscenes and it's something I hate because I'd like to actually consider what's going on in cutscenes without actively going back over video and pausing it repeatedly. Most of the idea of the story of the game has to be explored far outside it. Discussions with NPCs are vague and meaningless beyond little notations. And then there's the survival horror references. I think every single puzzle in this game is taken from another horror game. There might be a few that aren't, but far too many are, and it wears deeply on my patience. It relies too often on number puzzles or substitution puzzles rather than using word riddles and other ideas. The save screen is the SH save screen. Which is neat. But then it goes on. Monsters and music that are /aggressively/ influenced by SH get to me and it struggles to create any visual identity of its own. The cutscenes are littered with visual references done by other media, rarely if ever indulging in the idea of its own visual identity. every enemy screams and i really wish they didn't!!! it baffles me! there is a lot of potential in this game but it. mm. just isnt really that interesting because its deeply invested in wanting you to think about it. but itt doesnt give me enough to hold onto.
I get you. When a game constantly wears its influences on its sleeves, it becomes more of tribute-game and less an original work, inspired by other stuff. Feels strangely fan-made or even fanfic-y. I'm not well versed enough in the survival horror genre to get all the refenrences, but the ones I do get are so 1:1 and on the nose, it is kinda distracting. Feels like a "we did our homework and are huge fans of the genre, see?" kinda deal. I think it's well made though and once you can see past its oddities, I like it quite a bit.
So I can't help but feel that this game isn't really playing to SGF's strengths. The game is great (i've been playing it myself and been rationing playing time to savour it), but a dense slow burner that's wholly dependent on you being completely engrossed to drink in the world and it's themes. There isn't much that's really wacky or silly for SGF to latch in to and really play off. Doom 3 worked because it's plot was perfunctory and VR allowed SGF to pull off some good physical comedy. If SGF was looking for a good survival horror that he could still work with I'd say Dead Space 2 would be a great suggestion. A rock solid game but it's tone is just the right balance of serious and goofy. ( the intro where a guy zombifies in front of you is supposed to be frightening I think but it's so ludicrously fast that it ends up being funny as well as the protags godly stomp)
Think SGF has more range than some "bad game" streamer unable to play anything good or just average without their schtick falling apart and needing to resort to reaching or nitpicky criticisms so they can still go OMG GAEM SO BAD DEVELOPERS PLZ JUST SHOOT DOOR WHY NEED KEY It might not be a giggles rollercoaster of nonstop comedy but i cant imagine he expected one going into this :d
@@mikepike7139 My point was more that the game itself isn't a great pick for streaming full stop and really seems built for an old-school LP style where you can choreograph the whole experience and try to draw out its strengths which as I recall was the reason for the old three month rule back on SA back in the day. SGF is a great streamer/LPer I've been following him since 2010, but blind streaming this particular type of game isn't looking to be an engaging choice. Hope he's enjoying the the game though and if he is, then rock on, I guess, but I'm thinking ill pass on this one and catch the next set when he switches/ next doom 3 upload.
I guess I don't understand why people are fawning over this game. Is it supposed to be scary? It really isn't. Everything about the gameplay seems pretty tedious and everything else about the game except the visuals ranges from uninteresting to mediocre imo. Also this is a minor point but I'm having a hard time taking this game as seriously as I think it wants to be taken when every character is an anime girl for no reason. Kinda clashes with the aesthetics of everything else.
It goes places. While it's not particularly scary and it's slow to roll, the story is exceptionally well put together and from a gameplay standpoint it plays very much like a classic RE game. I wasn't a fan of the visual style either initially but it does grow on you, it just needs some space to breathe.
While the aesthetics do clash a bit it makes it a unique style. This game is much scarier when actually played instead of watched because you get to decide how much further you want to risk going without saving, not knowing what’s behind each door. The story very much develops over the game through notes, but towards the end is when several major bombs are dropped and explained or give you the details to make an explanation. The game genuinely scares you without cheap tactics, with ambience and later disturbing parts. It isn’t for everyone but that’s why people love it.
