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Signalis still has me in its tortured loop, one year later
09.11.2023 - 23:20 / destructoid.com
It’s been around a year since I first played Signalis, and a year since it wormed into my brain. No matter how much I think about it, watch video essays about it, or replay it, something lingers.
Unraveling its secrets, getting to the heart of what Signalis is trying to do or say haunts me almost a year later. There are few games like it — Signalis hammers in its sense of hopelessness and rips my heart out with every playthrough. Everything about it feels oppressive and dire, but in a way that’s hard to move on from. I’ve embarked on Elster’s journey again and again, hoping for a better end, running this treadmill of maddening sadness. But it’s easier to go back here than move on.
So why is it that, in a year of titans like Baldur’s Gate 3, Zelda, and Armored Core, I’m still going back here? Signalis’s perpetual chokehold is probably best explained by its marriage of misery and love, a union of survival horror and sapphic works I long for.
Before moving on, I will warn there are story-heavy spoilers ahead for Signalis, including all of its endings.
Signalis leaves much to interpretation regarding its plot, but some things are made clear. Its basic premise sees an android (Replikas in this universe) named Elster attempting to find her designated Gestalt (human), and it doesn’t deviate from that. Elster devotes herself to Ariane Yeong, her crewmate aboard the Penrose-512, and also her lover.
So much of Signalis feels familiar, too. It plays like an amalgamation of classic survivor horror titles, taking the inventory management and save rooms from Resident Evil and mixing practical puzzles with ones operating on dream logic like Silent Hill. That, alongside its lo-fi polygonal art style, resembles survival horror titles from the PS1 era while keeping actual comparisons scant enough to stand on its own.
While Signalis’s gameplay loop is solid, its story and themes are its beating heart and soul. Devotion, in particular, plays a constant role, and it’s one that never pays off for its characters. Signalis is tragic — unabashedly bleak as it is sapphic. Its conclusions range from soul-crushing to simply devastating, but none of it matters because the events repeat themselves.
However hard Elster tries to break the hell she and Ariane are living, everything restarts, and they remain in perpetual misery. The cycle of tragedy borders on comical, but just like the cyclical nature of their doom, I keep going back here even when I know better. Even a year later.
There’s a moment in Signalis where it truly sells Ariane and Elster’s love. While there’s always plenty of dialogue, this scene leaves the couple mostly quiet, cuddling through Ariane’s calm and melancholy theme. And through their embrace, the sights and
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